Playing around with the "Dynamic Monochrome" setting in the S5's "filter" menu. It's nice and contrasty. Just the way I usually like black and white...

 

It was a beautiful afternoon. I spent the earlier part of the day finishing reading Sally Mann's new book, "Art Work: On the Creative Life." I have mixed feelings about the book but it's a decent read for people who want direction about existing as a creative photographer. At least "how to" from Sally Mann's rather eccentric point of view. I'll have more to say about the book after I've processed it for a while. Might take some therapy... If one thought Mann's personal life was all an easy road one would be mistaken. She's been through, and to some extent, put herself through the wringer. But there is the thought that for artists to do their best work suffering is part of the recipe.

One thing I did admire about Mann is her take on physical fitness. She and Richard Misrach stayed up drinking gin and tonic one evening. She described him as a lightweight after he stumbled off to bed. She stayed up and loaded her 8x10 film holders in order to be prepared for the possibility of shooting something good the next day. She woke up, looked out the window at the mist and the gravitas of an ancient tree, got her camera and meter and got to work. Afterwards, she says, she got in her daily three mile run in the oppressive Louisiana heat. Priorities, priorities...

At any rate, with my "homework" done and the day beckoning I thought it would be silly to waste a perfect afternoon hanging around inside. I looked at the stack of books people sent along for my birthday and decided they could all wait there turns until after dark. I grabbed that S5 I've been writing about. The one with the 50mm lens on the front. I also stuffed the 75mm f2 in a small bag, along with an extra camera battery, and a lens cleaning cloth, and headed out of the house and into fresh sunlight.

While I mostly used the filter setting I described in the blog title I did, occasionally switch to color for situations in which color was the real reason I was interested in a subject. It's okay to be flexible. It's not a weakness it's a strength. I walked my usual route and snapped whatever caught my eye. Not every image has a caption but one in particular does...

I have no idea whatsoever this thing that was sticking out of a massive, high rise residential tower actually does. It seems.... like the designers had no clue either.

Looks good in color; better in black and white. 

Go Team Birkenstock. 

Self inflicted identity theft facilitating machines. 

Enter this shop at your own (massive) risk. 

And maybe don't give anyone your DNA either...

Necessary caption: I have no patience whatsoever for ASSHOLES who stop right in the middle of pedestrian crosswalks, at red lights. It's so discourteous. And dangerous. And thoughtless. 

For egregious perpetrators there should be harsh penalties. Like making them walk

instead of being able to drive for a month. Or maybe just pulling them from their cars and quietly explaining Texas traffic laws to them. Over and over again. It's become commonplace to ignore pedestrian right of way since a lot of new people moved in to Austin from out of state. Some day someone might accidentally get a DSLR through the windshield. 

That's all. 

Other than two bad drivers and their disregard for other members of

society it was a very pleasant walk. 

How did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?

Looking up the driveway after the rain.

 

We've been stuck in an extreme drought for the last month or so but it finally rained, and rained a lot this weekend. I was heading out to run an errand and I looked at the street, freshly wet, and decided I needed to snap a few pics. 

The trees have deep roots. They are surviving pretty well. It's the lawns and the ornamental stuff that has taken a beating.

We're happy for any discernible amount of precipitation we can get. This is just a good start.

Discovery in a desk drawer. Not a bad camera. Not a bad lens. And the five batteries hold full charges. Nice.

Every once in a while reality comes back around to bite you on the butt and remind you that you ain't so smart after all.  I bought a camera about six years ago that worked very well for me. It was after my initial foray into the new Panasonic mirrorless full frame system. I'd been using three big S1 variants; the original S1, the S1R (higher resolution) and the S1H (video leaning) and had a nice selection of Panasonic's best, full frame lenses. The only thing I didn't have was a smaller, lighter camera; the kind one likes to drag around everywhere. 

When we worked commercially with film cameras the first choice at that time was a Hasseblad body its matching lenses. Big, heavy workhorse cameras, for sure. But when we headed out to shoot for fun, in the streets, in new cities, we generally had a Leica rangefinder camera or a Contax G2, or one of the small Contax SLRs, like an Aria or an S2 over one shoulder. 

When I worked for three weeks in St. Petersburg, Russia back in 1995, in the dead of a particularly cold winter I arrived with three Hasseblads, including an SWC/M, a bunch of big, heavy Hasselblad lenses, a case full of tungsten lights, stands and modifiers, lots of cable and one hell of a heavy tripod. All needed for the long days we spent photographing at the Catherine Palace and the Alexander Palace in Pushkin.

But in the evenings, and during the rare days off, the last system I wanted to carry as I explored the streets and shops, and hotels, was a big, heavy, very obvious medium format camera and lens. And while 12 exposures was part of the routine for the workdays it was hardly what a "street" photographer wants to deal with in a strange new place, with temperatures well below zero. 

My camera of choice for casual, personal work on that trip was a Contax S2 which was a fully manual, mechanical camera. It paired nicely with a Zeiss 50mm lens and I kept both a 25mm and 85mm in a coat pocket. Both came in handy when photographing the Kirov Ballet from the Czar's box seat at the Mariensky Theater. But the 50mm was my "go-to" lens for day-to-day "city browsing." 

Hopping ahead about 20+ years and I was looking for a small, light but powerful camera along the same lines as the S2. I found it in the Panasonic S5. I bought it when I realized that it was half the weight of one of the S1 cameras and much smaller to boot. But, amazingly, its sensor actually outperformed the sensor in the bulkier S1. It was one of the first cameras to use a 24 megapixel BSI sensor and the first Panasonic camera to earn a 94 score on DXO Mark. It also features high color depth of 25.1 bits and a measured dynamic range of 14.5. Sure, Panasonic cut some corners compared to the bigger S1 cameras: no Compact  ExpressCF card slot, a much lower res EVF and a new, smaller battery. But the image quality was actually quite superior to the original 24 megapixel S1. And wow! The lower weight and smaller size were just what I wanted for a walk around camera. 

Until I did a search for the S5 in my Adobe Lightroom catalog of a half million or so images I never realized just how much use I got out of that one S5 over the last six years. Entire events in multiple locations, tons of portraits, and recently as a "scanning" camera for my digitization of medium format, black and white negatives. 

I used the S5 in conjunction with LED lighting for portraits because the high ISO was superior to my other cameras. It's on par with the performance of the Sigma fp and, as regards ISO performance, superior to any of the Leicas I bought until the SL2-S which also has a 24 megapixel BSI sensor.

Through thick and thin I've kept the S5 because in my mind it's fully depreciated, financially, but fully and currently competent when it comes to image quality. And it works well with every single Leica lens and third party lens I throw at it. It's the ultimate back-up to a much more expensive system. 

When I took the S5 off the copy stand and appraised it yesterday I came away smiling. It's still a wonderful tool and still seems to hold a large portion of its initial value on the used market. I topped up the five batteries I have for the camera and set it to shoot in one of the filter black and white modes. It's called, "Dynamic Monochrome" and the setting results remind me of the contrasty images we used to make with Tri-X film and #3 contrast Ilfobrom paper. 

Paired with the Panasonic 50mm f1.8 S lens the whole package can be acquired used for around $1K. Maybe a bit less if you are willing to look around for a while. A far cry from the Leica Q3-43 I thought I might want....

It's fun to reacquire a taste for a camera you already own. One that fits almost seamlessly into an existing system of other branded cameras. But there it is. 

The one regret I have about the buying and selling I've done while owning the S5 is selling the 24-105mm f4.0 Panasonic S lens. In retrospect it was near perfect. It was relatively lightweight but its optical performance was/is spectacular. It cost me about $1,000 at the time of purchase. I abandoned it to buy the Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4 lens. The Leica lens is the better optical performer ---- but only by a small measure. And it's currently about $6,000 brand new. 

If I could go back in time I'd convince my younger self to keep my money in my pocket and wring the best performance I could out of the Panasonic 24-105. It would have resulted in the same quality of images, less stress on the shoulder and an additional $5,000 to invest. But knowledge comes from hard experience and it then become a "chicken and egg" thing. Ah well. I can always buy another 24-105 if I want to badly enough, but for now I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of the cheap, plastic 50mm. It's actually great! And being made "not totally of metal" makes it a lot lighter to carry around. Stop it down to f4 and you'll never see the difference between it and one of my 50mm APO lenses. Just not there. 

Abandoning the Panasonic system was probably not the smartest move on my part. I like the Leica cameras and have a blast using them but....would I be happy shooting the current Panasonic crop of S1-II and S5 variants and lenses? You bet. Funny how that works.

I got sidetracked by video. Now I'm back on track. Upcoming road trip. Starts Wednesday. Details upcoming. 

Cool and sunny in Austin. Time for swim practice.