Blog Note: I bought a lens from B&H on the 22nd. Now, a week and a day later I am still waiting for Federal Express to get their shit together and get the product to me...

Pyramid at the Louvre. Paris. 

I was intrigued by several reviews and lured by the affordable price of an M mount lens in a focal length that is almost foreign to me. The lens is the 21mm f3.5 Thypoch Ksana. I've had good success with three other lenses from Thypoch; the 75mm f1.4, the 50mm f1.4 and the 28mm f1.4. All for the M mount. The only other lens I have that is close to the 21mm focal length of the Ksana is the Sigma Contemporary 20mm f2.8. It's a fine lens but it's big and I can't use it on the rangefinder cameras. 

But this is not a review of the Thypoch 21mm. How could it be if I've never held the lens in my own hands? 

The day after I ordered the lens I got an email from Fedex telling me that they had received the order and had picked up the lens. The email stated that I'd get the package on Sunday the 25th. Of course we had horrible weather locally and there was no way they could deliver on the 25th unless they were willing to put tire chains on their central Texas delivery trucks. And that seemed pretty farfetched. 

I understand weather delays but here's where their customer service went profoundly down the drain, their notification on Sunday continued with the conceit that the lens would arrive on that day. It didn't and then, for the next five days Fedex ghosted me. No revised delivery schedule. No emails to update the progress of the package. No additional news. No forward motion at all. It was like the aftermath of a bad date but minus a nice dinner and drinks. Just the ghosting. The silence and the impenetrable wall of automatic response mechanisms with which they have used to replace human customer service people. 

But as always, my operational belief is that until the package is officially delivered to me, physically, it is still the responsibility of the seller. Of B&H. So, when all my efforts failed to elicit a Fedex response of any kind, today, I called B&H. They were perfect on the phone. They said they would attempt to track down the delivery and if they were not successful by the 3rd of February they would cancel the order and, if I desired, they would ship about another lens to me. The caveat being that Fedex is their only interstate shipper. 

Within a half hour of my pleasant and ultra well done conversation with B&H I got an email from our "friends" at Fedex. The delivery is now promised for tomorrow. I have no strong belief that this will pan out...

Now, before you cut Fedex too much slack because of weather issues just stop. My complaint wasn't about not getting the package on the promised day, or even in the promised week, it was about not being kept in the loop about the package's whereabouts or the progress toward getting it to me. When UPS has a delivery exception there is always an email letting me know something will be delayed and then supplying me with information about its expected arrival. Nice. Professional. Expected. 

But not with Fedex. If they had the good business manners to step up and tell me what was going on and suggested that they might not be able to get me the package for ten days or two weeks I would have understood. I'd be disappointed but I understand that lots of stuff is out of our control. But keeping customers updated and informed is within their control. Shame on them for bad customer service. I hope they credit back the cost of the delivery to B&H. And I hope B&H finds an alternate vendor to offer to customers who have been burned once too often by what used to be a reliable and able company. Maybe Fedex got bought out by a hedge fund and screwing up customer service is some money saving experiment. Whatever. 

Still looking forward to getting the lens. Even if I had to hop on a plane to NYC and pick one up in person....

Grrrrrrr.

OMG!!! Look at the crowds. Is the Louvre always this packed with tourists?

Oh, that's right. This photo series is from 1986. The Golden Age of Travel.

 

I really like the Voigtlander 50mm APO-Lanthar lens...but I now believe that the 35mm APO-Lanthar lens is even better.

The VM 35mm APO is making me come around to really liking the 35mm focal length.

I'd never been a big fan of the 35mm focal length for lenses used on full frame (35mm) cameras. In the early days I thought it was wider than my preferred length and it seemed difficult for me to compose within its frame. More recently, and after settling in for decades with a 50mm as my preference I came back to the 35mm only to think that it wasn't wide enough to provide a step away from the normal lens. Which led me to concentrate more, when I needed a wider look, on using the 28 and 24mm lenses. 

About three years ago I bought a VM 50mm APO to use (with an adapter) on my 47 megapixel SL2. Even on a day with blurry vision I could tell that lens was a step above the other 50mm lenses I had in my inventory. It was and is essentially a lens with no flaws. Not actually zero because at its widest aperture it does vignette a bit... But it quickly became a daily carry sort of lens. A jack of all trades. And when the tripod came out and the flashes flashed it showed off a resolution that is enviable. Its 35mm sibling wasn't even on my radar until very recently. I made due quite well with a Sigma Contemporary 35mm f2.0 and the same focal length on a Leica wide-to-short tele zoom lens. I thought my desire for additional 35mm lenses of medium aperture was totally resolved....

But then a friend called and wanted to know if I had any interest in the 35mm APO. He knew I had been happily shooting with the 50mm version for quite a while. Might I want to try out a shorter version? Sure, when have I ever said "no" to the possibility of tossing away more money on a redundant piece of gear?

We met for coffee and my friend handed over a boxed, like new VM 35APO lens. It looked gorgeous. The focusing ring was amazing. The aperture ring? Like clicked butter. I've been using it for a couple months now and I've come to the conclusion that this might be one of the three or four best lenses I have ever used. Ever. I called back and we settled on a reasonable price. I now own the lens. And my use of it is ever more frequent. 

While it certainly shines when used with a Leica M to L adapter on an SL series mirrorless camera my favorite way to use the lens is on an M240 body with a Zeiss 35mm bright line finder plugged into the hot shoe of that camera. While the lens is really exceptional at f2 it gets even better up to f4, which is also a more practical aperture for shooting scenes outside in the streets or at events. 

The lens came to me with a VM branded lens hood; one with the slots to allow for the widest view when using the rangefinder window on an M camera. The lens is the perfect fit and balance for the M240 camera and basically the use of everything configured this way makes the camera and lens very transparent. Very fluid. 

While I am not nearly as price conscious or spending averse as so many photographers seem to be I do understand what a bargain this $1100 lens is when compared to the Leica version of the same focal length and speed lens in their catalog. Who doesn't want to get as good a product for five or six thousand dollars less?

Few photographers will ever end up buying this lens. Older dudes will demure with the excuse that their eyes aren't what they used to be and manual focusing has become difficult. I get it. AF can be a nice advantage when our previously perfect vision ghosts us. Another segment will decline the thrill of ownership because they understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing. They will find a $195 Chinese lens of the same focal length and maybe even greater speed and count themselves lucky that they can be so frugal. And then there is the contingent that NEVER grew up with manual focusing lenses and who, for the life of them, can't understand why anyone would want a lens that couldn't focus itself. So, a couple thousand people in a world of eight billion will consider the lens to be a perfectly weighted value. An astute and reasonable compromise between price, performance and usability. I think I fall somewhere in that Venn diagram of users. 

Maybe you do too. 

This is the LBJ Library. I was there on Wednesday to hear Ed Kashi speak and show 

his photographic work. I've written about my take on modern photojournalism previous to this but I wanted to show what a lovely job the 35mm VM APO did with this building. And the sky.

Ioving that bright line finder in the hot shoe. Works well for a guy who wears glasses. 

Fence art. 

This is a business that is all in on the concept of beef being a good and important part of

everyone's diet. Don't know about that but love the graphics painted on their wall.

Naked women riding buffalos. As strained a marketing message as I could imagine.

 

January 30, 2026.

Anne with cookie and travel guide.

 

Scanning from old slides. Feeling the photo universe grapple with oncoming entropy.

 

I've finally hit the point where I am mostly bored with photography. Mostly bored with other people's photography. I sat and listened to VII photographer, Ed Kashi, speak at the Briscoe Center at UT yesterday evening. His work was technically good and he has spent the last 40 years traveling around the world making photographs of war zones and cultural upheavals. The reason for his presentation? The Briscoe Center (Adjacent to the LBJ Library) will be the recipient of Kashi's archive. Couched as a donation. 

But as I sat in the dark for the presentation I realized that while the images were connected with major world events they had nothing to them that made them specific to Kashi. Nor did any of the images have the power to make change in the world, no matter how hard current photojournalists try to make the case that their work can be a powerful motivator of public opinion. In the moment? Perhaps. In the long run? Not likely. 

Kashi was a good speaker and did a good job showing what he's spent the last few decades working on. But we no longer live in a culture or time in which even the most riveting images have the power that work done in the print era of the 20th century did. All the first world cultures have become too granulated, and too silo'd with micro-targets, for images to have the reach they once did when they didn't have to compete with endless video documentation, and news coverage, endless access to zillions of similar images from every corner of the internet. All arriving continuously.

They can't compete with the singular and huge markets of the 1950s and 1960s when photographic news and event coverage was presented exclusively by a very small handful of magazines that hit every market in the country, from coast to coast. Remember, back during most of the 20th century there were also ONLY three TV networks that broadcast nationally. Seven or eight nationally distributed weekly news magazines and only a handful of national newspapers. We, the people, were a much more homogenous market when it came to our news sources. And the media was much, much more consolidated.  It's a luxury no working photographer has today. And Kashi said as much during his presentation. 

I left the presentation happy that Kashi survived his long career with his marriage and family still lovingly intact. I'm happy the Briscoe Center moved to collect his work. But I am in no way convinced that, outside of academic circles, that kind of photographic work still has the power to move people; to sway opinions, to make change. It's now falling into rote documentation. Much to the chagrin of the "old guard" of photojournalism. (And, incidentally, the vast majority of the audience present for last night's event were well into their medicare years....even though the event was held on the border of a major university, and the program was not only free but also offered free catering and an open bar for any who would like to attend. Times have changed from my student days when an event like this would have been packed for no other reason than free wine and beer!). 

But this whole episode drove home to me, finally, the futility I have been feeling in my own approaches to photography. The same-ness of everyones' images. The failed idea that somehow, when surrounded and endlessly influenced, minute by minute, by a universal and powerful feedback loop, that any work created recently is "special" "different" or the work of masters. 

I pulled a camera out today and put it in the car with me when I went about my day. Nothing I saw seemed worth shooting. Nothing seemed in need of additional revelation or spotlighting. 

Then I had lunch with a fellow photographer from my own demographic. He was at the show as well last night. His take was that while the work was competent it was in a uniform style, a photojournalism template, a kind of work that was informational but not personalized in any meaningful way. I suggested that the historic role of a photojournalist was straight documentation, not interpretation but he was having none of my argument and insisted that the work should have some sort of twist or style to it to make it stand out. To make it accessible by photo elitists. To make it "important." 

I realized at that point that arguing was useless and the reality is that photography, while still fun to do, has lost its world stage status and importance. It just doesn't make sense any more as a vocation that's supposed to have some sort of power to effect societal change. And its power is further diminished daily by the remarkable ease with which reality and photographs can be constructed entirely in A.I. programs. No human need to click a shutter, dodge a bullet or catch the decisive moment. Media, non-journalists, and bad actors can construct their own interpretations of reality as they see fit with a mouse, a keyboard and a bit of time. Which means that all the photos we're endless sharing become more or less meaningless. Even suspect.

At some point perhaps a despotic leader will realize the power of completely homogenous media to sway his subjects and perhaps will resurrect a single government sponsored TV network,  universal news website or online newspaper that will be the only place to get news and to see images as they are related to "news". A thought monopoly controlled and enforced by the government. At that point we will have descended into hell and images will have lost the last bit of their power. 

So, tomorrow I guess I'll start boxing up extra cameras and lenses and sending them off to vendors who will buy them for sixty cents on the dollar and sell them to someone more motivated and optimistic. 

Me? I'll just keep photographing for myself.

Too cold and slick to go out. A perfect afternoon for scanning old slides from earlier life.

 From a Kodachrome slide taken back in 1981. Cropped square in post production. One of nearly 200 I got scanned today. A fun way to make a weather day productive.

B. on the Eiffel Tower on a very cool and rainy day in April, 1986. Getting ready to make another wonderful photograph with her Olympus FT half frame film camera and it's amazing 40mm f1.4 lens. The perfect camera for B. This photo also from a Kodachrome slide.