Thoughts about the role of critics revisited in a post from 15 years ago....

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/03/vital-role-of-critics-and-ongoing.html

A store on the drag near the UT campus. Sigma fp + Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic. A horrible combination for shooting in full sun. Without an EVF.....

Do I still like and use the Leica 24-90mm lens? Yep.

When shooting outdoors for clients on hot, Texas, Summer days one can have the best of intentions to bring out the "big guns." To pack the camera bags full of various, glorious prime lenses, a brace of big camera bodies and zoom lenses galore. But the heat and the weight will soon suck out all of your creative energy and leave your best intentions dehydrated and half fried. Better to simplify anywhere you can... The less you carry the further (and faster) you can go.

Two weeks ago we were on a shoot at a real estate development in far Southeast Austin. No cloud cover and, since the development is still in early days the shade trees weren't fully grown yet. I brought too much gear but left most of it in the trunk of the car for some unintended, spa-like, heat treatments. What I ended up doing as my heat management/image management strategy was to pick one great camera body and one flexible and magnificent zoom lens, leaving everything else behind. It was a good solution.

The camera and lens fit just right in a white canvas camera bag I wore cross body. Mostly in front of me. I could reach down and grab the camera/lens combination when I was ready to photograph and drop it back into the white bag as soon as I was ready to move on to the next shot or the next location. 

The entire shoot was outdoors. By 2pm you could see the tar bubbling on the side of the roads. We were drinking water continuously. You could feel the radiant heat bouncing up from the roads, trails and sidewalks in the same way I used to feel the heat off the griddle when I worked my way into the profession by supplementing my income as a short order fry cook in a diner. Fun times. Sweaty times. Never thought I'd do a heat bath for work at 69 years of age... But the miraculous thing is that it was still fun. And the pared down kit make the day manageable. 

The camera of choice was a Leica SL2. I have a pair so I always have an identical back-up when I use one of the them. The camera has 47.5 megapixels of resolution and a very wide dynamic range when used at its native ISO. The EVF is glorious. And I've accrued a bucket of batteries for these cameras which means I never have battery anxiety which is like range anxiety with electric powered cars. 

But the star of the show is usually the lens and that was certainly the case in this instance. While the Leica 24-90mm lens is hefty and big it's also a tour de force of optical engineering. Here is what Leica writes about it: 

"Construction Details:

Of the 18 elements in six moving groups, four are aspherical lens elements and 11 are elements made from glasses with anomalous partial dispersion for the correction of chromatic aberrations. Only one very light element is moved for focusing.  Very fast, almost-silent, precise focusing is enabled by a specially developed drive concept comprising a stepping motor and linear positioning. This means that the overall length of the lens does not change during focusing.”

Essentially it's a near flawless zoom lens that covers the full range of focal lengths I would normally use on just about any job. The lens also has built-in image stabilization which is great on bodies like the first generation of Leica SL cameras and my little Sigma fp, both of which are bereft of in-body image stabilization. The lens adds its own. It's also highly weather resistant as is the Leica SL2 body.
It was the perfect combination of tools for a challenging environment. Those, and a really good hat.

Dang sharp...even wide open.... although the chances of using it outdoors at f2.8 were ... limited. As in "none." 

Do I still like and use the Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4.0 Aspheric? On just about every commercial job I've undertaken since I bought the lens five years ago. It's big and heavy but it makes up for those drawbacks by being the best performing zoom, optically, that I have ever used. And that's cool. 

The lens is still in the current line up from Leica. When I bought mine, new, it was just over $4800 USD. The current price for a new one is a little over $6300. Amazing. 

 

No copy and no captions. Just images. Taking a break from typing to make more coffee...

 

Last week's photo job was fun. Here's a sample...

Scott Bader-Saye, dean and president of Seminary of the Southwest.

 

I know. I know. I should just retire and get it over with... But I'm still having fun working with nice people and doing jobs like the one we did last week. I did 15 portrait sessions last Thursday and when I get back all the selections I'll spend the better part of a day retouching and melding the portraits into various backgrounds to see what works. 

I like photographing happy people. 

medical note: Had my follow up visit with the Mohs surgeon/dermatologist this morning. Everything looks great. No stressful revelations. No waiting in the "waiting room" and no budget surprises. In fact, the business side of this whole procedure has been pretty much flawless. And that's a stress reducer in and of itself. 

She did such a good job on my face that.... I know this sounds unbelievable.... I'm even more handsome than before! (For the linear thinkers in the audience: I was kidding. It's a joke...).

Changing of the guard for in house coffee.... Something new and very much off topic. At least it's OT if you were looking for imaging content...

 

When I last visited Montreal I stayed in a wonderful hotel in the middle of the old town. It is called, the Hotel Gault. There were many things I liked about this small and out of the way hotel. The proximity to a lot of interesting areas of Montreal in which to photograph. The modern finish out and amenities of the rooms. The fact that a Leica store is within easy walking distance. But for this post I have to call out that there was a Nespresso coffee machine in my room. While I have always been enamored of pour overs and drip coffee my week of solo photographing there, and the close proximity to a wide range of espresso based coffees which could be brewed in minutes, caused me to at least appreciate the dark roast culture that so many Europeans swear by. A good espresso shot can be quite a nice thing upon waking and prepping for a day of walking around with a camera and a couple of lenses. 

I forgot about my good experiences with the hotel's Nespresso machine and the little coffee capsules until this past week when I was suddenly and unexpectedly gifted my very own Nespresso Vertuo machine and an assortment of different types of coffee capsules for the same. Now I'm having a sea change about espresso-based coffees and am currently having as much fun experimenting with different types, roasts, sizes and flavors as I would have on taking delivery of Leica lenses. The machine is simple to use and so far, quite reliable. 

Today I took delivery of 20 "Double Espresso Dolce" Vertuo capsules directly from Nespresso. The capsules are constructed of aluminum which the company claims keeps the coffee fresher. The capsules are edge coded and tell the machine exactly what they are and how they need to be brewed. They also sent along several pre-labeled and pre-paid bags that I can put the used capsules into and send them back to the company. According to the website all I have to do is drop off the sealed bags at any UPS store and they'll take care of the rest. The company will recycle the aluminum and compost the spent coffee grounds. That means there is no cost to me on the backend. And hopefully some relief for the landfills.

Right now I'm in the honeymoon stage with the new machine and the new universe of coffees. Who knows when or if the thrill will wear off?

At first I thought the capsules were expensive at around $1.25 to $1.50 per but I started thinking about how much I currently pay for a basic cup of coffee or cappuccino at a local shop. The "base" cost is about $4.50 to $5.00 per cup but I have to add to that the expected tip for the barista which is usually a dollar on top of the base price. So, averaging it out I've been paying about $5.50 for a cup of coffee. And the quality can be a bit variable. So each time I brew via the machine at home I'm "saving" about four dollars. Seems like a good thing. 

But frankly, since I was already paying for coffee and didn't mind doing so it's not the dollar savings that appeals to me the most; it's really the combination of a good quality cup of coffee and the three minute convenience of the machine. Add to that is the charm of being able to select exactly what kind of coffee you want in the moment. 

None of this is earthshaking news. Not relevant to most people's lives. But I had that fun, close-up image of a hand holding a coffee cup and I thought it would be nice to use it here. 

That's all I know about my new Vertuo machine. I don't intend to learn anything else about the machines, the company or the nuts and bolts of it all. I'm happy when machines work and I'm even happier when coffee tastes good. I've already discovered a breakfast coffee capsule I like that brews a 7.7 ounce coffee as well as the aforementioned Double Espresso Dolce that's a fun booster of energy in the afternoons. 

thanks. 

One of the best ways to find and take fun photographs. And get good exercise. And lose weight. And see stuff.....

 

A brief romance with the Panasonic GH6. 

Blogger's Lament.

After so many years of writing a blog I've come to realize that on the days I don't post something I feel a bit let down. A bit lazy. So there's almost always a certain feeling of duty to come up with a subject that's photographically relevant and still fun for me to write. As an adjunct to that, any time I post something about a lighting or photographic technique and don't accompany the copy with a photograph illustrating what I've written about, I feel like a fraud or a poseur. Sure, I could say that this post or that post is really about the writing but in truth it always seems to me that the photograph(s) and the written content should exist together as a symbiotic pairing.

I often read stuff written by others in which the writer trots out his or her qualifications or personal history, delivers some re-warmed stories about their prowess in the good old days and recounts his or her zealous hard work at the time, but comes up short on the photography which would have given credibility to the range of their experience and their expertise. The text is there. The bravado is in attendance. But the images which would constitute the proof have gone walkabout. At that point the copy requires many leaps of faith. And one wonders if each leap is worth the time and energy.

This is an image of Fadya. I like it because, a. I like Fadya. b. I like the way I got Fadya to look straight into the camera, which equals straight out to the viewer. c. The image works well in the square format. d. The skin tone in the black and white rendering looks exactly what I think the black and white should look like. And e. When I first posted it the image helped to visually explain a lighting technique that I wrote about in the same blog. The image was the proof of concept. The proof that we'd taken a step past theoretical to practical. To practice. 

Nearly every blogger I read suggests strongly that what they really care about is the art. The final photograph. The artful interpretation. But in many cases the only evidence of their process are nuts and bolts images of gear, the affiliate selling of which is their underlying goal. Close ups of USB-C connectors. Comparison shots of the sizes of two different cameras. A sexy shot of a lens. But no finished work. Nothing that one could remotely describe as the art they profess to want to talk about. 

Yeah, the closest most come is to show a book cover from a mainstream art photographer coupled with a shopping link. And therein lies my lament. With the exception of Andrew Molitor's blog (which is far too infrequently added to...) very few of my peers actually get beyond describing how they will choose their gear. They certain don't address why they photographed something or what compelled them to do it in the way that they said they did. And that's the disappointing aspect for me. 

I already know which lens to use, which camera works best, how to light a subject, how to set exposure but...I keep waiting to read about the "why." And that is the failing of most photo blogs for me. YMMV. 

Writers such as Thom Hogan are honest in their presentation. They let us know up front that the subject will be gear. That's helpful. And he's good at it. The majority seem to think we're here to enjoy the story of their existence. And most of them have....a pretty boring existence. Maybe that's why no photos are forthcoming...

Sharing the mundane for dollars.... 

 

It's the dog days of Summer. Better spent indoors. A chance to revisit old photos.

 

This is Ben early in the teen years. We're having dinner at our favorite restaurant, Asti Trattoria. 

I had a camera with me. A Leica M9 with a 35mm Summilux. While we were waiting for our first course I snapped a photo of the kid. The light was beautiful because while it was indirect sunlight it was flowing through a window just to the right of the frame. A nice time to live in Austin. 

This is one of my favorite combinations for photographing slow work. Situations in which you can take your time and play around. So, a Leica SL2 mostly for the 47 megapixels and the nice color but a Voigtlander 50mm APO to match the high res potential and give me sharp detail. It's on my desk right now. It will be over my shoulder and out the door in an hour or so.

On the other side of the entrance door for Crew Café in Montreal. Traveling light that morning. Just a Leica Q2 over one shoulder. What more did I need? Well....coffee, of course. 

Waiting for my dermatologist to drop by, check out my epidermis and maybe burn some unwanted stuff off with liquid nitrogen. Reflecting on all those times I neglected sun screen at the noon swim workouts. Eventually paying the piper. Leica M-240 with 28mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss ZM lens. 

I asked if I could keep the cool, long shirt but....no.

Not really practical as it fastens in the back.

An additional favorite combo. That same 50mm APO from above married to an M240 body.

The APO can resolve the 24 megapixels on that sensor in its sleep. 

Intermission. Samsung Galaxy NX camera with Samsung long macro lens.

Getting some use out of that EVF-2 finder. Perfect for those times when the 28mm seems okay.

Why is this photographer so squinty? 

Love the cheap, leather straps from Small Rig. Less than $20. 

It's fun to look at myself in self portraits so I can see how the world sees me when I am out photographing. Always seem to need a haircut. Reasonably good shape otherwise. 

I don't have the patience for Apple versus Android, ICE versus Battery cars, programmable keyboards and discount pens, but I did restore all 6,115 blog posts about....photography. (With a little swimming tossed in to sweeten the pot).

 

Man makes snap decision to buy camera. Has fun actually using the camera to make 

photographs for his own enjoyment. 

It's so easy to get fixated on one small aspect of modern life and turn it into a neurosis. Research is word repurposed now to mean "pathological obsession." When we look to products to give foundational meaning to our lives we have begun to mentally color outside the lines. 

The bandaged photographer above is shooting a self-portrait with a Leica D-Lux8. Rather than fixate on whether it is a re-badged something else, whether a m4:3 sensor is enough, whether it is too heavy or too light, if being made in China is really a consideration, how the price compares, etc. the photographer looked at the product, decided it might be fun and practical and so bought one. That's the last time he had to decide anything about the product other than when and where to use it. Done. 

I get that people have budgets. I get that "researching" seems like you are doing practical work even if you are just reading other peoples' opinions, sometimes bereft of actual facts or statistics. But enough is enough. 

Having trouble deciding? Get a sheet of blank paper. Draw a line down the middle, from top to bottom. Put all the reasons you want to buy X product on one side then put all the reasons you don't want to buy the product on the other side and use the weight of your own preferences to make a choice. And like a "y"  in the road in front of you there isn't always a right choice or a wrong choice because none of us is adept at predicting the future. Once acquired your real preference should be engendering your maximum enjoyment from your purchase. End of story.

Boys race cars for fun. Sometimes to the next traffic light and sometimes in Formula One.

photographer uses a camera, now long since discarded, to make a fun and happy photograph of a model at one of the fashion shows in Paris. Behind the scenes. The camera worked. No research was done in the acquisition of the camera. It was a same day replacement for a different camera that decided to stop working at an inopportune time. Grab what you can get your hands on!

I had a small camera and a small zoom lens. I had a choice. I could have been in my hotel room "researching" what camera might be best for street photography or I could be out on the street with any camera taking fun images. Seemed like a very straightforward choice. 

 I did not research anything about taking this particular photograph of actor, Renee Zellweger.

We were playing around in the studio and she struck a pose. They pose and you push the shutter button. Research means sitting motionless in front of a computer or with a photo magazine in your hands doing essentially nothing to really move your game forward. 

Ah. The huddle. Going out to see stuff instead of making minute by minute plans. 

Bic pens or Pentel? 

Paper or plastic?

Nikon or Canon or Sony?

Mac or PC?

Gas or Battery?

Choose quickly and get on with the important stuff in the life of an artist....

Making the art.

After Action Report on My Portrait Sessions at the Seminary. One camera, one lens and some lights. And some black and white photos from Rome.

 

Via Condotti. 

I meant to say, "no." But I didn't. I have no other excuse than that I was bored on the day I got an emailed request from my contact at the Seminary of the Southwest. And, that I have always enjoyed the laid back, easy going nature of this particular client. So I said, "Yes. Sure." So much for sticking to my guns about retirement.

The project was straightforward; I would make portraits in a small video studio in the library. The people we were photographing would be faculty and staff members of a small theological college that exists in the shadow of one of the country's largest Universities. The contrasts between the two facilities are obvious. UT is huge and well funded. SSW is much, much smaller and feels not poor but never extravagant. We'd be photographing 12-15 people during a long morning and into the short side of the afternoon. Later, after people got to choose their favorite pose/expression I'd circle back, retouch their selection and then choose a background in which to place them. 

The backgrounds exist in a catalog that I created a year ago for the same client. They consist of out of focus scenes around the SSW campus; buildings, walkways, stands of trees, and little manicured plazas. It was also my job to match the feel of the exterior background shots with the color and feel of the interior studio shots. As much as possible. 

My contact and I scheduled a morning arrival by nine for load-in and lighting set up and then a start time for the first portrait at 9:30. I was up early on the shoot day and arrived around 8:30. I pulled the gear from the trunk of the car and loaded it onto my trusty cart. Called the art director who would be hanging out with me for the day and arranged to meet her at the library loading dock. 

The small studio we worked in had a cyc wall that was painted white. The place had programmable lighting fixtures suspended from ceiling tracks and my first task was to call up the lighting app on the control desk computer and turn off their lights. Once I figured that out I set up my basic lighting design for the day. I used three 16 by 24 inch Nanlite LED panels and one small Nanlite LED panel. One of the bigger three was a main light to the left of the camera and always set with the bottom of the fixture above the subject's chin level. I wanted shadows to fall under the chin to give people a fighting chance at hiding any double chin action. The fill light was the same kind of LED panel used on the opposite side of the camera and also elevated high enough to keep reflections out of even the least anti-reflection coated eyeglasses. Both of these panels were used with fabric grids to help eradicate spill light.

I  used a third panel from the back of the set on the opposite side of the main light to emulate sunlight outdoors sweeping across the subjects from behind. This panel features color control so I warmed it up to emulate late afternoon sun. Finally, a small Nanlite panel was used directly on the background cyc to raise its value and make the background a very light, soft gray. That seems to work well when separating an image from the background in order to drop it into a new background. So, four panels all set and ready to go. 

Why am I using these panel lights? Mostly because it's so darn easy. You put a light on a light stand and turn it on. The front of the panel is a permanent, neutral white diffusion panel. No need to rig a soft box or an umbrella. And you can use them close in to good effect. They are so fast to set up and use it's almost embarrassing. Same with the small light on the background. Set it up on a stand, turn it on, and aim it in the right direction. Done. 

I vacillated a bit on lenses but I was certain that I wanted to use the Leica SL2-S as my camera. The files are big enough but not too big. The camera's low noise at higher ISOs meant I could use ISO 800 or ISO 1600 without any worry at all about grain/noise and ... the colors out of the camera's raw files are super easy to manipulate and fine tune. The SL's 47 MP raw files would have been too big for this use case. 

I thought of using a zoom lens like the Leica 24-90mm but I ended up using the TTArtisan 75mm f2.0 for every one of the portraits. It's a beautiful lens for portraits. Sharp and detailed but in a "rounded" non-clinical way. So, f5.6 and be there. 

All of that is secondary to what should be the only challenge for an experienced photographer. That challenge is the ability to develop a quick and very positive rapport with the subject. Both sides of the camera have to be engaged. I have to be curious and a good listener. The sitter has to be engaged and relaxed about the process. 

I spent about 15 minutes with each person and we started each conversation with me asking: "Tell me what it is you do here. What's your role?" And while it's pretty much cliché my next question is usually along the lines of, "Tell me what are the challenges you find when doing your work?" I try to get a conversation going and letting the sitter talk about things they are keenly experienced with is the best way to start.

The art director was good at scheduling in flexible breaks so we could go on a hard target search for coffee first and then maybe cookies, and finally a well catered lunch. 

At one point in the morning we had a 45 minute gap between sessions and since I hate to sit around doing nothing we decided to go and do interior photos of various guest quarters the school maintains for visiting scholars, clergy, etc. I brought along a 28mm lens just in case and it was the perfect match for some interior architecture. We made a contest of moving fast and did three apartments and change before rushing back to our temporary studio. Just minutes ahead of our next appointment. 

The social engineer for the school had lunch catered for us by a favorite Austin restaurant and by 2:45 I had finished the photography, filled my stomach and loaded the car for the trip home. 

It was our first really, really hot day of the Summer. My car was like a mutant toaster oven when I got in. With the A/C blowing hard I drove over to my favorite car wash, halfway to home, pulled into a shade covered stall and gave my car a long, luxurious wash. It also helped to cool it down and make driving home more pleasant. Which was the important part of my plan. 

The architecture files have been post processed and sent. Client liked them very much. The people stuff has been edited down to 25 poses each and I've done a round of preliminary A.I. retouching to them all. The files were uploaded yesterday to Smugmug and I'm hopeful that we'll see final portrait selections by mid-week. Everything is going to plan. 

All the gear choices were just right. Maybe we were being watched over by a divine power but really, I think it's just my Boy Scout training mixed with a bit of anxious hyper-vigilance. More to come. But I do have to admit in getting no pleasure from unloading a bunch of heavy stuff from the trunk of the car in the middle of a heat torrent sort of day. No fun breaking a sweat on the way into the office. 

But here are some images from Rome. 

As you can see, the Spanish Steps were packed with tourists....

Keeping up with the Joneses. The mindless pursuit of stuff. And experiences.

 

B. CFO. 

The topic of phone upgrades came up on the  web today and I was inspired to explain my take on buying new phones every year. Or not. My readers sometimes think of me as a person who spends money at the drop of a hat and makes outrageous impulse purchases and, where cameras and lenses are concerned, that's somewhat fair. But in every other regard I am quite the financial conservative. 

We're hardly early adopters of most trends. I'm using a perfectly good Apple iPhone that I bought years and years ago. It's the XR, a model that was introduced and purchased in 2018. Apple is on record offering support for the product through 2025. Seven years. After that some upgrades in firmware and software will not be relevant to my model. I paid something like $899 USD for the phone. If I keep it for the rest of this year I will have "invested" about a little over $10 per month to own and use the phone. It's still highly functional. Since I understand batteries pretty well I'm happy to say that the battery life indicator shows that the original battery is still at 92% of its delivered spec. Not bad after 6.5 years of daily use and near daily charging.

I use the phone mostly for its Map function, texting, mobile email and actual voice conversations. I do have a number of apps that are useful to me but very, very few of them have anything to do with photography. I have two banking apps, the Whole Foods/Prime app, the weather app, the stock market app and the calculator app. All the apps work really, really well. I use the camera feature mostly to deposit checks into one of the two banks. I also use the camera feature to record documents to send to various requestors. I don't use the phone camera for photography, per se, because I have so many other cameras, the operation of which I prefer. 

I can't recall using Siri for anything at the moment but I do use it when my iPhone seamlessly connects with my internal combustion engine car via the ever reliable, CarPlay. The product, the phone, has done and continues to do EXACTLY what I bought it to do. And I'm quite happy with that. 

I have missed the following upgrade cycles: iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14, iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. That's six upgrade cycles. At an average of $1,000 per upgrade I have saved about $6,000 since my purchase of the XR. That's a lot of money. If you factor in the same lifecycle discipline for my spouse, whose phone I also bought, it's a family savings of about $12,000. Half the purchase price of an acceptable, used electric car. Wow. Until this moment I never thought about it that way...

My CFO always tells me, re: Apple, "If you love the company and think the products are good then buy the stock, not the toys." 

Had one followed my phone buying pattern and used the savings to buy Apple stock instead of continually changing phones you would have seen a basis return of nearly 140%. About 20% per year since 2018. But even more appealing would have been the stock split of four shares for one in 2020. And those 4x shares grew faster after the economic recovery, post Covid. But wait! One has to also factor in that during the entire time I've clung to the XR Apple has paid quarterly dividends on its stock. By not reflexively buying phones before they cease completely to be supported one could conceivably have saved, across two phones and two users, and re-invested at least $18,000 --- when factoring in the stock appreciation. Three quarters the price of a used and quickly depreciating, used electric car.

We don't really use our phones as mini-computers or entertainment centers, we have products we use that are optimized for those uses. But the thing we value most in the iPhones is not the camera or the apps, or the kindly but sometimes confused voice of Siri, instead it's the advanced security offered by Apple's products and systems. It's possible that we could save money and get more features from a phone not running Apple's software but almost certainly we'd be giving up layers of security. More so as we opted to use more and more Android based apps. That could be a hefty penalty to pay for a bit of novelty disguised as technology. 

I'll replace me XR iPhone when security updates and patches are no longer available and when I do I will understand that I've gotten great value from my phone while saving prodigious amounts of money at the same time. Funny how that works...

While Apple's products have gotten better and better over time, and their new processors are light years ahead of those in the competing products (which should give me tremendous potential benefits over their competitors) the real secret to "keeping up with the Joneses" has been to also buy the company's stock. The phones are good but the stock is better and has grown by 159, 281% since 1984. An investment of $1,000 USD in 1985 would be worth over $250,000 today. Not a bad return at all. And a return like that would allow one to upgrade phones as often as they'd like without breaking a sweat or eating Ramen. Imagine if you had invested ten thousand dollars in 1985.... As some people did. And then were smart enough to hold onto your investment over time.... As some people have.

Funny that when some people concentrate really hard on one product category the tunnel vision created by that focus makes each small "pro or con" become magnified all out of proportion. Product features seem to become existential. But really? All the phones are just appliances and most of them do a decent job. Some with more security and some with less. Buying them frequently mostly boils down to consumerism and personal choice. Great if you can afford it but not mandatory for continued, successful existence.

Just sayin.