It was 62° here in Austin when I tossed off the covers and started my day. For some that will sound routine but here in central Texas it's become rare enough to celebrate. I opened all the windows in the house to let the breezes flow through. I put on long pants and a long sleeve shirt to stay warm while drinking that first magical cup of coffee. I listened to the birds' songs, clearly, with no window glass in the way to mute their arias. It. Felt. Wonderful.
Our coach this morning was Dennis. The core of the workout was four sets of three descending 125 yard swims interspersed with five 25 yard sprints. At the end of each 125 yard swim there was a five second gap until the next 125 yard swim. If you stood up in the shallow end so that your chest and shoulders were out of the water you could feel this rare coolness wrap around you from the breeze. Delicious.
It's fun to be closing in on 70 and still being able to make the intervals and feel good all over. It's probably the best part of every day. The realization that, so far, I have dodged the sore knees, achy hips, painful lower back and all the rest of the maladies that seem prevalent in the general, geriatric population. I credit swimming, diet and general happiness as contributing factors to staving off the ravages of time. That, and my "Maturity Deficit Disorder..." (humor implied..).
I took possession of a "new-to-me" lens yesterday. It's an older lens, but not older tech by much. It's the Leica 35mm to 70mm f4.0 ROM lens that was made for the Leica R system of manual focus cameras. It was the third and last version of the 35-70mm compact zooms for that system and by far the best overall compromise. I say that it's the best compromise because there was also a 35-70mm f2.8 lens (not compact!) that is supposed to be breathtakingly superb in all regards. That lens currently fetches between $8,000 - $10,000 on the used market and is getting rarer by the day. Nope, the f4.0 version is, at least for me, the one to own. It's smaller, lighter and optically almost just as good but the compromise is the slower aperture. The f4.0 lens was designed by Leica and made by Kyocera; the same company that makes the Carl Zeiss ZM lenses and all the fun and high performing lenses bearing the Voigtlander name.
One of my photographer friends who is far more egregious about impulse buying cool stuff picked up this lens a while back and never really got around to using it. He knew that short range, high performance Leica zooms were something I've always been interested in and offered it to me at a tremendous discount. The perfect self-birthday present!!!
The lens is the final ROM version so one could use it with a Leica branded R to L adapter and be able to transmit aperture data and focus rotation data (good for auto magnification focusing) from the lens to a current SL body but that would be the extent of the data transfer. And the adapter is about $1,000 when purchased new. More than I paid for the lens itself!!! I rummaged through the drawers in the studio and found a Novoflex (dumb) adapter that works just fine to join the lens and body.
Why this particular zoom? Well, I have the current 24-90mm f2.8-4.0 Elmart SL and I've used it on hundreds of photo assignments. I don't mind carrying that behemoth around if people are willing to pay me for it but it's not a very convenient "street" photography tool. Or travel tool. And it's sure not very discreet. It's big, heavy and big. And heavy.
While the older 35-70mm f4.0 R lens isn't auto focus, doesn't communicate with my Novoflex adapter, and doesn't automatically stop down it's very high performing, optically, and much less than half the weight and size of the 24-90mm Leica SL zoom. For someone who is perfectly happy adapting M series lenses to L cameras it's just fine.
I'm looking forward to this afternoon's walk to "break in" the lens and see how well it works on an SL2.
On another unrelated, related note, I'm planning a series of images of farmer's markets both locally and in some of my other favorite cities. San Antonio used to have a big farmer's market just to the west of their downtown but sadly that location devolved into a mini-mall for tourist memorabilia and souvenirs. The remaining food service there is mostly cheap pizza, cheaper nachos and beverages. I'm not sure where all the produce markets went but I do aim to find them. I am constantly reminded of how beautiful fresh produce can look, and what it's emotional resonance is on us as humans, when I look through photographs of my three visits to the Marché Jean-Talon produce market in Montreal. I wish we had a resource like that here...
It's a beautiful day to be out with a camera so I'm signing off and will try to post some images from the new lens tomorrow. Have a great day.
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