Beginning to turn into a "Meander-thal (tm)". Also, the big gear purge, part 3 (of more to come).

If you are a long time, or even medium time reader of the VSL blog you probably read that I officially retired from the business of commercial photography way back in August of 2025. I haven't touched a camera to make money in three quarters of a year, giving pause to the many friends and acquaintances who predicted that I wouldn't last more than a month before accepting yet another $$$ project. I have proven them wrong...

One of my early strategies to reinforce retirement was to switch from a utilitarian SUV to a sedan for my basic transportation. With an SUV there is always the potential of being able to load tons of photography gear into the back which makes it somewhat easier to rationalize taking on another project. With a sporty sedan, with limited trunk space, the allure of packing for a shoot drops down by a number of levels. Plus, if I needed to put photo gear in the trunk then where oh where would I put the overpacked swim bag? And the extra kickboards? And the seven different brands of sunscreen? Oh, and the overflowing collection of sun defeating hats?

That worked well as a first step but I needed to do more. One day I was in a shop and a young person walked up to me and asked me specifically about the Leica M240 I was carrying, slung over one shoulder. We chatted for a while and I discovered that she was aiming for a career in video production. In fact, she was already working on video crews, having resigned from a teaching career. I asked if she needed some video lights and some accessory gear and she said she did. I loaded three big panel LED lights into the car, along with light stands and some other useful accessories and met up with her later at a coffee shop we both frequented. It was a bitter cold day and the coffee was good. We loaded all the gear into her car and shook hands. I let her know that it was a straight forward donation of excess gear with no strings attached. It felt good to let go of excess stuff and it took out one of the mental subroutines I used to run when packing for shoots. "What to pack? And how much of it? Removing the potential removed the relentless momentum toward choice paralysis. At least in part.

A week ago I was walking down S. Congress Ave. and came across a very graceful young woman who was juggling a tattered photo backpack, two or three very sorry and undersized light stands and a tripod that was totally inappropriate/inadequte as a tripod. I asked her what she was shooting and she mentioned a small project she had just finished down the street. At the moment she found out that the Uber she'd been waiting for had cancelled and I left her then to administer alternate transportation. But as I walked on about 20 feet on I realized that this person could probably make much better use of some of my light stands that were sitting idle, as well as one of my "overflow" tripods. I turned around and asked if she'd like some better gear. She demurred, thinking I was trying to sell her gear she couldn't afford. I explained, briefly, my need to get rid of stuff and that any gift to her was free and with no strings attached. 

We continued chatting and I found out that her primary flash was a Godox AD200. I happened to have two of the AD 200Pro lights in the "get rid of this" box at the studio. We agreed to meet up at my studio at the end of the week and she left my place then with two perfect and almost unused lightstands, some umbrellas, a couple of AD200Pros. A bunch of Godox accessories. A Sirui tripod. A light stand bag. A Manfrotto rolling light  case filled with two Nanlite professional LED lights and other accessories, and a copy of Commercial Photographer's Handbook book. 

The office felt light and more airy still. It was fun to see the look on the young photographer's face as we put all of the gear in her car. A big smile. Payment enough for me. 

This is an ongoing project; to give away all the photo stuff I don't need or want anymore. I have my eye's out for the next person walking around with the "wrong" equipment. We can fix that....

Meander = to walk around without an agenda or plan. The bends of a brook or river. Thal = a beautiful valley. An early humanoid creation story. Etc. Guy with a camera and no perceivable road map: Meanderthal (tm). 

I am becoming a Meander-thal. Instead of spending my time in the studio, or glued to my chair and my keyboard, I've been spending more and more time walking around looking, investigating and onboarding the visual pleasures of the world. Could be mannequins in a shop window. A beautiful woman stopping to adjust her sunglasses. An interesting building with a shaft of sunlight blazing across old bricks. A couple sitting outdoors, having lunch. The bouncy small ripple of water in a deep pool. The traffic jam in front of me. A hat in a hat store which looked like it was merchandized just right.

I meandered and became...enthralled with all there is to see. It doesn't matter which camera I'm carrying and there is no agenda or schedule to follow. But there is amazing stuff to see everywhere. I'd rather meander with a camera than do just about anything else (excluding swimming, of course). 

The wonderful thing about being a photo meanderthal is that no other equipment is required. Just a camera and a lens. No tripods, no light stands, no lights, no entourage, no assignment sheet, no shot list and no hurry. Can't think the it gets much better.

 

A Quick, Long Overdue, Review of the Leica 18-56mm Aspheric Lens for the CL System.

 

So, to do the picture justice just open it up on your 30 inch Apple Studio Monitor and enlarge to

100%. I'm betting you'll think it's pretty darn good. On your phone? Really?

Not so much.

I've owned a Leica CL (digital) for about three years now. It's a great, small, discreet, black camera that's easy to carry around and use. The menus are in the same family as those of the SL2 and SL2-S cameras I shoot with all the time so there's very little wasted start up time when I switch from the big cameras to the smaller one. In short, I like the camera very much and the new A.I. noise reduction capabilities in Adobe Lightroom give the little camera an updated,  elevated value. Now, instead of wishing for image stabilization in camera I can just set a higher shutter speed in the auto-ISO menu and process files that need to be a bit "cleaner" in that application.

The reason I hadn't been getting enough value out of the system is that I initially bought the wrong lenses to go with the camera. I was dismissive of the Leica "normal" zoom lens for the system because it was expensive and had smaller apertures, both at the wide and end and, more egregiously, at the long end --- where it's 85mm equivalent focal length had to make due with a "paltry" f5.6. Instead, I bought the Sigma version (18-50mm) which is a constant f2.8 max aperture all the way from wide to tele. But here's the rub; I didn't get along with that lens. It seemed to vignette pretty much all the way through its range, when used wide open. And it felt incredibly plasticky. It's serviceable, for sure, but not by me.

Instead of biting the bullet and buying the other, prime Leica lenses for the camera I bought the Sigma Contemporary lenses that were designed for APS-C format cameras, including those in the L mount systems. I bought and still have the 16mm f1.4, the 30mm f1.4 and the 56mm f1.4. All fast, and all good performers. But the basic problem is that their size (bigger) and weight (more) was in conflict with the small size of the camera. And, for a walk around system the idea of bringing all three lenses and changing them every time I saw something that needed a tighter crop or more magnification, or a wider view, seemed overly complicated and fiddly. And too many lenses to mind juggle.

The camera languished in a drawer for a while...

Then, out of the blue, one of my favorite Leica dealers got in one of the Leica 18-56mm lenses, used, and offered it at a price I could stomach. It was a couple hundred dollars less expensive than another one they got in around the same time. I called to find out what the differences might be. It's the old Leica thing: If the unit is accompanied by all the original packing and paperwork the price goes up. The camera in its naked state? The price is adjusted downward. 

I bought it immediately. No hesitation. In the time since I sold off the Sigma lens I'd read up on just what makes the Leica 18-56mm an interesting lens. In a nutshell, it's the high optical performance. You lose f-stop/speed but you gain correction and Leica lens coatings, etc. It's been so well reviewed across so many user forums that I thought I could not go wrong. But, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan's famous quote ("Trust, but verify!") I routinely trust but test every lens I get --- just to make sure. 

The lens arrived yesterday and today, after breakfast and the ritual reading of the news sites, I grabbed a couple extra batteries from the Sigma fp battery stockpile and headed over to S. Congress Ave.

I shot some black and white images yesterday evening when B. and I went to the gigantic, Affordable Art Fair. If you think $8900 is "affordable" for a mediocre painting that just screams, very derivative but without the talent, then you exist in a different tax bracket than I.  The image just below is from the show. The original is in color, and while I love the movie, "The Wizard of Oz" I know I wouldn't be able to live day-to-day with a cartoonish "homage." But I do like the way the camera and lens handled the lighting and tones....

Now, let me emphasize that I was not over on S. Congress with a new lens and the intention to shoot important images that would go directly into my (non-existent) portfolio. No. These are all test shots. Photographs made to show off features or flaws of the new lens --- and nothing more!!! So before you get your panties in a bunch and tell me that you've seen my cowboy boot photos or my Jo's Coffee photos before and "meh", just calm down and see them for what they are: Images that show how the lens, and the lens + camera, work in real world situations with apertures near wide open. All images are handheld and shot at either 1/125th of a second or 1/250th of a second. 

Since you're likely looking at a screen of some sort I could just go ahead and tell you that I think this little lens punches well above its weight class. (Kind of a pun since it's very light compared to the other Leica lenses I use....). But if you aren't trying to quality check them on your phone screen, through the plastic screen protector, in a bouncing Uber, then go ahead and take a peek on a decent monitor and see what you think. In my mind the lens is a definite keeper. It makes the system work as intended.  A small, light and highly capable camera for carrying around while looking at stuff. That's it.

Not a mannequin but an actual dog!!!

Lightroom Selenium filter.

Not a dog but an actual mannequin.

Fun with cameras and lenses. 

Twenty-One Millimeters. Okay. Now I get it.

erstwhile photographer tormenting the mirrored doors at Crew Café.

I must be a slow learner. I spent a career as a commercial photographer trying to avoid using any lenses shorter than 35mm. I felt like it was almost impossible to control the composition of very wide angle lenses and I always struggled with the idea that I'd end up, always, with too much foreground and a tiny background. But I made one more effort before giving up. 

I bought a Thypoch 21mm f3.5 lens, coupled with it with a Leica optical finder that gives me settings of 28, 24 and 21mms and started trying to incorporate the lens into more and more of my shoots, my walks and my vacation time. Three of the images here were shot with the 21mm lens, which came with an M mount, adapted to a Leica mirrorless body. Finally! It worked great for me. 

There are times when overwhelming context is called for. Times when you can't back up just that little bit more that you need to. But it's a focal length that rewards a photographer for being careful. To take their time finding a composition that works with the wide view. A situation in which you can make the foreground a real part of the picture instead of just a bunch of dead space at the bottom of the frame. 

I'd love to have a coffee house here in Texas with ceilings like this.... (Crew Café, Montreal). 

Someone's garage, just of Mont Royale. Montreal.

these are the day lilies in my backyard. They can be glorious. 

I got in as close as I could with the 21mm lens mounted on a rangefinder camera and 

shots some frames this morning. Just before swim practice. 

I really like them. 

Now... go wider? I'm too apprehensive right now.

Give me time.