Epiphanies over hamburgers. (UPDATE: 4:23 CST): The camera and accessories have arrived. The camera is tiny and cute. Five minutes of set up and ready to go...

Yesterday I had dinner with a good friend who is an even more frequent buyer of cool cameras than I am. We were supposed to have lunch this week, back on Monday, but a delivery delay changed our plans. Turns out he was waiting on the delivery of a brand new Hasselblad X2D camera and a very cute and very small 28mm lens. You know the drill I suppose. Few retailers will send out a $12K plus package of goods without requiring (demanding?) that you be home to sign for the delivered package. And most of us have gotten used to the idea that no matter when UPS or Fedex tell you your delivery window might be it will change faster than U.S. tariff policies over the course of the delivery day. In fact, for me, one of the most frustrating facets of modern life is the waiting for and then delayed delivery. 

Ever other delivery I get from a camera store or retailer, sent via UPS or Fedex, starts out so optimistically, almost cheery. Of course you'll get a notice telling you to expect your delivery between 9:50 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. on, well, today. It doesn't come so you check your tracking information in the email they sent. Now the time has been revised to between 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Which is then revised to just.... before 9 p.m. If you are a busy person you've basically just lost of a full day waiting around for someone to deliver that wonderful package that was supposed to be a solution to some problem or just a fun toy that would add some sparkle to your day. Now it has turned into a logistical nightmare. After dinner, the one you had to have at home after telling your friend, spouse or other potential dining partner that, unfortunately you have to change plans as you have to be home to accept and sign for your precious package... You eat leftovers while a rising sense of frustration climbs. Not to mention the dreaded social isolation...

Mid-evening, after clicking through Netflix and determining that you've seen every decent offering on the service, you decide to double check the delivery information with the tracking number for your package. Now, in a total deflation of happiness, you find that your expensive and much coveted package is now being rescheduled for delivery.....tomorrow. Which means you get to start the dreaded procedure all over again the next day. And to compound your frustration you are never, ever given a reason for the implied but failed promise. You are left dangling at the whim of a faceless corporation. A corporation that really doesn't give a f@ck about you getting your package on time. They'll get paid for it no matter when you get your products.

Can you tell that I'm waiting for a delivery today? 

Fortunately my friend did finally get his package on Monday but long after the promised time frame. Still, getting a Hasselblad X2D and a lens on the promised delivery day has to count for something...

We met for dinner last evening. We ordered our burgers and a shared big batch of French fries and sat down to chat about, of all things, photography, cameras, and monitor screens. What a nice divertissement from the off-key, fog horn pronouncements about the gyrating stock markets and the nasty tariffs. 

After we finished with our meal my friend disgorged the H-Blad from his WotanCraft camera bag and handed it over to me (yes, I had washed the fry and burger grease off my hands...) to inspect. I went straight for the EVF. Really nice! I visited the menus for a good while and was thrilled to actually find a menu that looks even better and even more distilled down to the essentials than my recent Leica cameras' menus. The body is gorgeous, minimal, almost stealthy and the lens he had attached to the camera was tiny. 

My friend is not at all interested in video production and was reveling in the fact that the X2D is completely video-less. None. Nothing to do with moving pictures. That really does help minimize the menu clutter. 

After an in-depth physical and mental handling inspection of the camera and lens he took it back from me (even though I had suggested that he let me test it for him on my upcoming trip) put it back in the bag and pulled out the latest iPad. The new one with the double layer OLED screen. We used the iPad to look at night time images he'd shot with the new camera. The images were great but the amazing thing was how perfect that screen was. Bright, clear, accurate and, well, just amazing. The camera is perfect for my friend but the introduction to it, in person, just cemented my preference for Leica SL cameras as high end work cameras. Will I ever buy one of the X2D H-Blads? Unknown. Maybe. Probably. Down the road. If photography survives. The camera takes amazingly good images. The H-Blad color science "hype" isn't hype; it's really, really good.

But I'm just as excited to be getting (hopefully soon!) the little Leica D-Lux 8. Seems it's the "new" even more than the product itself that generates most of the excitement. 

A few weeks back; maybe three weeks ago, I was having lunch with the same friend and our discussion turned to what he called, "stunt Leicas." In context,  he'd bought a Leica M9 for his growing camera collection and realized that it might eventually be irreplaceable if it was lost or stolen, hence the need for an alternate, widely available and more economical model that could be pressed into service for dicey location work. We both agreed that in Singapore or Tokyo you could take a diamond encrusted, gold plated Leica out with you and never worry about theft but on the other hand there are some cities in the USA in which it seems everything not nailed down is a target for larceny. Hence the need for a more replaceable option. Hence, the stunt camera.

He reached once again into the magical Wotan Craft camera bag and pulled out an almost perfect Leica M. The typ 240. Black paint finish. Brass top and bottom plates. It had seen use but was in great shape. My friend had a 3rd generation 50mm Summicron mounted on it. A perfect combination. 

Handling the camera caused me to realize that so much of my attraction to a particular type of camera has much more to do with the handling than the spec sheet drivel. Or the frame-to-frame speed. Or the noise characteristics. If a camera isn't fun to handle then what's the point?  I have several M240s and they are my go to cameras when I want to pare gear down to the absolute imaging essentials. In fact, to our dinner last evening I also brought an M240. The M-E. And I also had a 50mm lens attached. 

My friend started out his photo passion (he's an advanced hobbyist, not doing it for the $$$) he followed the usual path of Canon, Sony, etc. For years he (politely) teased me about the Leica thing. Until he actually bought one. And was transformed. The camera that did it is also a favorite of mine. It's the original SL. The world's first professional mirrorless camera. While it's futile to try to change anyone's mind via the written word or YouTube reviews it seems like one has to have tried various other cameras and then tried something like an SL if you want to change minds. Last evening we discussed the differences and we both agree that it's in the build quality that makes the cameras feel different but it's the finer differentiation of colors that make Leica files different. 

I think all camera makers generally use similar processors (not talking about sensors, just the processors that construct the files in camera during the capture phase) in terms of throughput and speed and overall processing power but each camera maker can fine tune what and how the processor does the work. We talk about a three legged stool when we talk about the exposure triangle but I think every processor works with its own compromises. Mostly the trade-offs are between capture speed and how much processing gets done to the individual file before it is written to the SD card. The faster the processing speed the quicker the camera can write files to the card but the compromise is that each file gets less or more economical processing which affects color differentiation. The slower time from capture to card writing can give the processor more time to work on each file for a more sophisticated final product. Everything is a compromise and I guess the question I would ask is: which parameter is more important to the final user? Or if most of the final users even notice the differences in file quality?

I've worked with many camera systems and I keep coming back to cameras like the SL and the SL2-S because I find the colors not "more saturated" or "sharper" but more nuanced in their color representation. And since I'm rarely in a hurry to shoot a couple thousand images in an hour I'm happy to make what I consider a reasonable compromise; choosing quality over speed. I may be as wrong as I can be about this. But you have to agree that it does make sense....

Oh, who am I kidding? You don't have to agree. You can have your own theories. That's what makes all of this so much fun. 

Just got the email that now tells me my delivery, which was originally scheduled to happen between 9:20 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., has now been (tentatively) re-scheduled for between 1:45 and 5:45 p.m. Just the right time frame to ruin my lunch plans and to make dinner plans with other people iffy. Thanks UPS.

What a precarious time for  the house manager to be out of town!!!