Enjoying the color rendition of an older sensor and the Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens.

There's something about the color rendering of the sensor in the Leica SL that's different from the images I used to get from Sony sensors. Maybe it's just a different way of interpreting color. I'm not really sure. But I like it. A lot. And the 65mm focal length is such a joy to work with. It's a nice pair. 

Nice light. ISO 50. 

 

A first attempt to make commercial portraits again in the studio. How did I like using the Leica SL2 as a studio camera?

This photo is not related to the article below. It's just for fun.

 This is just a short post to talk about how well the SL2 works as a portrait camera. I photographed two business people in the studio today. I set up on Godox SL150ii in a 48 inch octagonal soft box and used it as close in toward my subject as I could manage. The second light was also a Godox SL150ii (LED light) aimed at the background and delivered through a small soft box. I used a 50 inch bounce reflector opposite the main light. 

I set up the camera on a tripod and set it do shoot in the 1:1 or square format. I also set the camera to shoot DNG+Medium Jpeg. With the camera set to preview and also deliver squares I could use it in the horizontal configuration which is most comfortable. The camera shows the square with the edges masked off. 

Here's what I liked about shooting that way: The sensor resolution is high enough that I can easily crop either horizontal or vertical. With many cameras when you shoot in a different format and choose to shoot in raw you end up seeing the whole frame in most post production software but with a white set of lines (a box?) showing you what the crop to format looks like. But with the Leica SL2 when I imported the files into Lightroom they resolve exactly as the squares I shot in camera. No extra work required. 

When I selected frames to upload to Smugmug from this morning's shoot I was able to convert all the selected raw files to Jpegs and all of them matched the square crop I saw from the raw files. No extra steps had to be taken. 

People have critiqued the AF of the SL2 for lack of speed or hesitant lock-on but I had zero AF performance issues. I selected face detect AF and the camera and lens did a great job at locking in on the faces. The eyes in every shot were perfectly focused and wildly sharp. Well...not too sharp but as sharp as they were supposed to be. (sorry for the nudge toward hyperbole...).

Since I used a custom white balance the flesh tones in the resulting files were absolutely perfect. The dynamic range also assisted in providing good highlight and shadow detail on the people. That makes for easy file correction down the road. 

I used two lenses today. The primary lens was the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens (version 2). It's wonderful. Just the right thing for portraits cropped to square in this set up. The second lens was one I used to get a little wider frame so I'd have room to cut out the person in the frame if the client decides they want to composite an exterior landscape as a background (like the ones I shot yesterday...); it's the Sigma i series 65mm f2.0. It keeps up with the 85mm ART very well. Both are crispy and laden with details. I stuck to just a third stop further open than f5.6 as my working aperture and it was a good combination for getting enough depth of field but also giving me a good blur on the background. 

I shot from 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. and the files were globally color corrected and online in a gallery by 1pm. 

No hiccups from the camera or lenses. And I'd forgotten just how nice big bright LEDs look in voluminous soft box modifiers. It was nice. 

We're about 90 posts away from having produced 5,000. That's the goal I set for myself when I started this blogging adventure oh so long ago. I'm betting that we will end up getting there in less than 3 months. I'm not sure what will happen then.  I might choose a place in the center of the country and invite all the vaccinated VSL readers to join me for some sort of event. Or I may just ignore the goal and keep on slamming out posts. 

Maybe I'll quit writing and try V-logging instead. It's all unknown. Just advising you that life might or might not change for me when I reach 5,000. Advice? Or not.

Lens of the day. The 65mm Sigma i series lens. On the Leica SL2.

It's a nice combo; the Leica SL2 camera and the Sigma Contemporary 65mm f2.8 lens. They work well together. The resulting files are crisp and detailed. The focal length is almost perfectly optimized for my personal preferences. 

The lens is part of Sigma's new Contemporary "I" line of lenses which also includes a 24mm f3.5, the 35mm f2.0, and the 45mm f2.8. I'm certain Sony's recent announcement of new, smaller, slower lenses is a concept directly and shamelessly derived from their keen observation of the Sigma 45mm lens's popularity on the market over the past year but, whatever it takes... It's just nice to see a bit of rational thought come back into the lens market. 

The Sigma "I" lenses are constructed of metal, are incredibly well finished, are weather resistant, have external aperture rings, and are one of the few lens options for L-mount users who might not want to start a new hobby in weightlifting in order to photograph more than a few feet away from their cars.

When the newest of the Sigma I lenses hit the market I took one look at the 65mm and ordered it from my local camera shop. I like normal lenses but I like longer normal lenses even more. This lens and the 70mm Sigma Art macro lens I bought this year are both right in the sweet spot for me as good compromises between portability and having a bit of distance between myself and my photographic subjects. Since portrait styles are changing, generationally, I'm also finding that I'm willing to put up with a bit more distortion in order to use a focal length that's shorter than what I used to be comfortable with. I cheat by using the 65mm f2.0 mostly on 47+ megapixel cameras when I shoot portraits because then I have the safety of shooting with some air around the subject and being able to crop the images quite a bit, if necessary, to gain back a modest degree of beneficial foreshortening. Viva compression!

The 65mm is an excellent performer. Check out the review on Lenstip.com and you'll find, that when it comes to resolution and sharpness it is currently one of the highest rated lenses on the entire site; regardless of price point. Even wide open, within the center 2/3rds of the entire frame, it's sharp and resolves well. 

The lens is designed with 12 elements in 9 groups and also utilizes 1 SLD element and 2 aspherical elements. It's amply engineered for a lens with a modest focal length and a less ambitious maximum aperture. It's one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used and its rendering of contrast and color are equally impressive. It's available in E mount as well as L mount and it's exactly the kind of lens that both Leica and Sony should be offering to the market.

When the L mount version is used with the Leica SL2 the camera makes use of software corrections for geometric corrections as well as vignetting control. One of the things I really like about the camera and lens combination is that Leica makes it easy to use their very well implemented focus peaking feature and it's a perfect complement to the Sigma's big, comfortable focusing ring. The combination makes manual focusing fun. And I like fun. 

I bought the lens and paid the full asking price of $699. No one flew me to Maui or Portofino to convince me to either try the lens, buy the lens, or sing it's myriad praises. My acquisition and use is based solely on the idea I have that this focal length, and the impressive performance of the optical system, are conducive to getting better images in my own style. It didn't hurt that I'm an avowed "lens nerd" and this lens also comes with a magnetic lens cap. The lens cap didn't push me over the edge to purchase it but it sure didn't hurt. 

Sigma continues to do some very interesting stuff. Maybe they think their mission is to show the bigger and more awkward camera and lens makers what the future looks like in order to guide them into a better tomorrow for the sake of the entire Japanese camera industry. Then again, maybe they are just a more creative company which is less afraid to dabble in a little bit of risk. 

The 65mm combined with the 35mm f2.0 would make a perfect match for travel and street photography. With the 35mm one could crop a bit and get a useable 50mm equivalent from that lens. With the 65mm and a high resolution camera one could crop to an 85mm equivalent without much image quality loss. Add in the 24mm f3.5 and you're ready for everything but sports and wildlife. But you wouldn't be buying middle focal range lenses for either of those pursuits, right?

All images below shot with the 65mm Sigma and the Leica SL2. I'm also pretty sure I shot them all at ISO 50 which is a native, not "extended" ISO option on this camera. Works for me.

cropped down to 25% of the original frame. 

I was on a kick when I shot this group of photographs of limiting myself to using the SL2's ISO of 50 for everything. I figured the in body I.S. would make everything okay. When I look at the full size files coming from the camera I am amazed at the purity of the colors and the amazing detail. Can't wait to try this out in the studio for portraits. ....nice reds and nice blues together in the same frame.

building with dorsal fin.

My recent obsession with yellow. And red. 

Again, 25% of the original frame...
 

Personal note: I'm so delighted with my friends and colleagues. Just about everyone I know (in the vaccine-able age groups) has gotten either their first dose or both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. I just got an invitation to meet for coffee with my favorite creative director. We'll get together next week and see what kinds of new projects we can collaborate on. Then I got a call, not ten minutes later, from a photographer friend who is having an outdoor BBQ on Sunday. He had a caveat. He could only invite me and could not extend an invitation to my spouse because she is still a couple weeks behind us on getting her second dose of vaccine. The BBQ party is strictly limited only to people who have been fully vaccinated and then put in their two weeks of immunity nurturing. I accepted in a heartbeat since my friend's version of BBQ ribs is life altering. Forget being inclusive --- the lure of ribs is powerful. 

All over our social media feeds friends are starting to check in to see where we are in the process and when we can all get together for coffees, lunches, dinners and happy hours. We're still shy about restaurants and indoor dining but it's prime time for outdoor dining in Austin. Finally, finally, finally seeing some social light at the end of a long and ominous tunnel...

Smoking on a bench.

 

I was out messing around with my camera last Friday afternoon. The weather had broken and we finally had sunshine and temperatures warm enough to start melting off the snow. We're all unaccustomed to walking on icy sidewalks here so I was moving slowly and carefully.

As I crossed Congress Avenue I saw this guy on a bench and we nodded at each other. Basically saying, "I see you and acknowledge you."  I was walking by and he said, "Hey. Take my picture." 

He liked the idea that he was smoking and continued to pose with his small cigar up to his mouth. I shot three frames and thanked him and walked on. It was fun. 

That was my day to shoot with the SL2 and the 65mm Sigma lens and this shot was done with the lens wide open at f2.0. The entire encounter took 10 seconds but, in retrospect, I really like the image. 

Thawing out. Feeling spunky after my first dose of vaccine. Counting the days till the second dose...

Relatively new lens. Very new camera. The Leica SL2 paired up with the Sigma 65mm f2.0. Does that work?

I know you're probably waiting for me to write a gushy review about the brand new Leica SL2 I picked up on Thursday, and to show you amazing photographs that could not be taken by any other camera, but I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. While the camera's color is tweaked in a certain way and the filter pack in front of the sensor is thinner than the one on the S1R I find that there's not a heck of a lot of difference between the two cameras. And I didn't think there really would be. It's pretty obvious that Leica and Panasonic are working hand-in-hand on these big, high res, mirrorless cameras and I actually would have been a bit shocked if there had been a big difference in image quality in either direction.

The Leica is, visually, a much nicer bit of industrial design but none of the spreadsheet jockeys here or on the WWW will take the value of better industrial design too seriously; not when two otherwise very similar performing cameras have a $2,000+ gap in price. 

So, what is the logic in buying such an expensive camera? Especially when it so obviously duplicates the capabilities of a camera I already own (Lumix S1R) and doesn't bring any radically new and different features to the mix? I could mention the clean look that having fewer buttons and knobs confers but, again, it's just industrial design differences which are, themselves, too subjective to measure. 

I think it mostly boils down to how the SL2 feels when you hold it in your hand or bring it up to your eye. 

For me it purchase was a symbolic capper to a long career during which I owned and used all generations of Leica cameras and became fond of most of them. Sentimental. Nostalgic.

I started shooting the interchangeable rangefinder models when all I could afford was a Leica IIIf, red dial screw mount camera, and an old 50mm Elmar f4.0 collapsible lens. You had to trim the leaders of your Tri-X film back then in order to load it into the camera, and the viewing window was tiny. Really, really tiny. But the overall camera package was small and discreet and I liked it so much that one day I put it in a small backpack, drove over to the airport and booked a ticket to Mexico City to shoot for fun for a week and a half. I didn't bring any other camera. I didn't own any other lenses that would work with the camera. But it was fun to shoot, maybe because it took discipline and newly learned skills to do it right. 

Later I "graduated" to a Leica M3 and a 50mm dual range Summicron lens. It was such a revelation. Still probably the best camera I ever shot with. It was the first one I took up in a helicopter. We went up to shoot a shot from the north of the state capitol building looking south into downtown. I was shooting Kodachrome 64 and the shots were done just before sunset. They were amazing. Pure luck but still amazing.

That shoot also generated my first copyright infringement lawsuit. A magazine copied the image from the cover of a glossy, color brochure I'd shot for a commercial client and used on their own magazine cover. The infringing company decided it would be alright because they used the image in black and white. But everyone could see right away that it was the same image. I settled out of court for enough money to buy a few more M lenses and both a Leicaflex SL and Leicaflex SL2. Both "Flexes" were bullet proof, mechanical, SLR film cameras which took the new (at the time) Leica R mount lenses. 

I picked up an original Leicaflex just to have and then went down the line picking up the R3, the R4, the R4sp, the R5 and finally a couple of R8's, as they emerged. In the mid-1990s I started using more M series cameras and ended up with an M6 and an M6.85 (larger view magnification for use with slightly longer lenses). I used those for nearly weekly event work for the better part of 8 years before succumbing to the lure of digital. 

I wrote a long article about the M series Leicas for Photo.net in 2000 which, by the time they decided the article had become passé and took it down, had generated millions and millions of page views and earned me an honorary membership to the Leica Historical Society. It was at an LHSA meeting in San Antonio that I had drinks in the hotel bar with the famous photographer, Jim Marshall. We had some good laughs in between professing our common high regard for the cameras. 

For over a decade I watched Leica struggle and go through multiple ownerships and buyouts. For a while I didn't believe they were going to make it through, financially. Then the M series cameras went to full frame sensors again and a raft of new M lenses appeared followed by both a medium format camera, and the first Leica SL. By the time they fleshed out their SL line of lenses and started the L-mount venture with Sigma and Panasonic I started paying attention again. 

I'm sure it was the three "Leica Certified" Lumix S-Pro lenses I'd bought for the Panasonic S series cameras that started me down the path to owning this new Leica camera because the 24-70mm, the 50mm and the 70-200mm are all superb lenses that lack nothing; as far as I'm concerned. 

The final mercantile "kick to the seat of my pants" that pushed me to go forward and get a new Leica camera was my purchase of the Sigma 65mm f2.8 L-mount lens. It's nothing short of phenomenal. It's sinisterly sharp at f2.0 and then becomes futuristically capable as one stops down. I like the look, the feel and the rendering of it and it convinced me that it wasn't necessary to run out and buy my favorite focal lengths in Leica SL models (at $5K to $10K a pop!!!) in order to put together a fun system around an SL2 body. I could buy the body I enjoyed looking at and handling and still get top quality imaging but at (compared to Leica) a discount price. 

I shot with the camera yesterday, together with the 65mm. It's not going to revolutionize my work or hoist me up into the photographic stratosphere of gifted artists. But it's fun, feels great and handles wonderfully. 

But I'll say it again: I never thought I'd pay $275 per battery for spares. That's just crazy. 

This blog post is peppered with random images from a long walk, both before and after seeing a new show of two artists at the Austin Contemporary Museum. One of the artists did work that was sublime and brilliant while the second gallery hosted a show of photographs that looked every bit like the haphazard portfolio of a clumsy, second year student in the commercial photography program at the local community college. It was a jarring juxtaposition but you go see what you can during a pandemic. The bad artist's manifesto (paraphrased): He eschews the ease of digital imaging with all of its post processing and manipulation and instead works in the "mythical" analog space, using film and chemicals and printing on photographic color paper. 

Making the case once again that some curators are blind. And that many artists are not self-aware.

the images here are 2200 pixels wide or about 1/4 of the camera's actual capabilities. click on them to make them bigger. But they still won't be big enough to make you catch your breath....

 

Walking over the bridge at night. Standing in a chilly breeze waiting for the LED lights to change colors.

There is a charming aspect to having more free time. When you are out walking with a camera and you see something that exists in changing light you feel as though you have a license to linger, to watch the evolution of what might be an interesting or fun image. You stand in the perfect spot and wait for the magic to unfold. For someone who spent years tightly scheduled having the opportunity to be in one spot, to breathe and to soak up the feeling of the place is a gift.

I've walked over this particular bridge a lot. Whoever designed it knew what they were doing when it came to making something that has its own particular visual quality. During the daylight hours the large spans on either side of the road arch up like butterfly wings. After the sun sets a series of lights project upwards and change color gradually; going from cool blue to warm red over the course of a minute or so. 

During that minutes the colored lights also bathe the structure in yellows, greens, magentas and purples.

Whenever I walk over the bridge when the lights are lit I am transfixed not only by the way my camera renders the differences between sky and span but also by the changes over time. The colors blend into each other slowly and steadily. 

Last night I was back out walking with a different camera. I brought along the Lumix S1R and set it to shoot Jpegs. My original intention was to see how well that camera does black and white. I had it set to a tweaked profile I've been experimenting with in L. Monochrome. But everywhere I looked I saw color yesterday. From the first hints of sunset to the last brush of blue color long after the sun had disappeared. When life gives you color it's perhaps wise to change your course and find a profile that accommodates those little visual gifts the universe seems to hand out; mostly unexpectedly.

I'm still breaking in the 65mm f2.0 Sigma lens. I like it very much. It's sharp but not clinically so. It's color rich but well behaved. It's definitely one to keep. 

 

Taking a first journey with the Sigma 65mm f2 DG DN, I-series, Contemporary lens. Love at first focus.

I've been waiting impatiently for this lens to arrive in the market. I've always liked shooting with the 50mm focal length but on occasions when I was able to photograph with a 58mm or even a 60 macro I almost always felt like I was getting closer to the sweet spot for my photography. I own a fast 85mm but it feels like a compromise to me. My portrait work feels better at longer focal lengths like 100 to 135mms. But my casual, walking around looking for found objects and casual people photography always felt like it needed to be shorter than the 85. I've been looking for the "Goldilocks" focal length that I was sure lived somewhere between 50mm and 85mm for a long time.

I mentioned 60mm lenses but the ones I found were always macro lenses like the Leica 60 Elmarit-Makro or the Nikon 60mm f2.8 Micro lens. Both of them had very long focusing helicoids and hunted like mad badgers. Both were also optimized for close-up work and were less convincing at longer focus distances. What I've been looking for is a lens that handles like a 50mm in terms of focusing speed, size, weight and speed but has more reach and the ability to isolate objects to a greater degree than a 50mm.

Last Fall Sigma announced three new additions to their line of L-mount lenses which cover full frame sensors. The lenses were: A 24mm f3.5, a 35mm f2.0 and a 65mm f2.0. The specs on the 65mm looked most promising. It's a thoroughly modern optical design that uses three different specialty glass elements. The overall design uses 12 elements in 9 groups, which represents a fairly complex and sophisticated design for a long, normal lens. And the other specs indicate that this lens is constructed completely out of metal; all the way down to the lens hood. 

Knowing how uncertain the product channels are these days I decided that I'd pre-order a copy. I did so at both B&H Photo and at my local dealer, Precision Camera. My sales associate at Precision texted me about four hours ahead of B&H's notice. I cancelled the B&H order and headed up to PC the next morning to grab the lens. That was yesterday. 

I had so many good intentions to get out of the neighborhood with a camera and this lens this morning and really put it through its paces but too many things came up. I'm the family I.T. director and there were network issues today. Still not totally resolved but there are workarounds in place that ensure basic productivity for all three of us here. There was a car issue that needed to be taken care of. Who knew that Toyota would launch a third recall for defective airbags in one model. It's the kid's car but he was engulfed in a work project and didn't have the bandwidth to mess with getting a car to service. That also fell to me. 

By four o'clock I was hellbent on getting out to get more fresh air (got tons this morning at swim practice) and to see if the lens was as good as I thought it might be. It was. 

The lens is solidly made and features a grippy, metal knurled focusing ring and the same for the aperture setting ring. The aperture can be set on a tactilely luxurious, external ring or you can set the ring to the "A" setting and use a camera dial to control the aperture.  The lens hood has the same design aesthetic as the 45mm f2.8 lens's hood. It's solid metal with a knurled finish that matches well with the focusing ring and the aperture ring. While the lens comes with a standard "pinch to remove" lens cap it also comes with a solid metal lens cap that is held on by magnets embedded under a felt ring. It's so lux. 

While the 65mm f2.0. isn't tiny and certainly isn't a pancake lens, neither is it like the newest generations of gargantuan 50mm lenses with enormous front elements and 82mm filter rings. The lens is about 1/2 the volume and weight of the 50mm S-Pro lens for the Lumix L-mount cameras. It feels just the way a long normal lens should feel, if you grew up in the days of film lenses and use those as a referent. 

While f2.0 isn't a super fast f-stop it's more than enough for current, full frame cameras  which seem to handle ISOs like 3200 and 6400 effortlessly. I've been veering away from my tired, old dogma of using the cameras at their base ISOs for highest quality and have started setting my ISO to Auto and letting my cameras head north; toward photon fulfillment. The S1 is happiest at 6400 and below. The S1R likes to settle in at 3200 and below, while the Sigma fp is perfectly happy all the way up to ISO 12,800.  It all seems like magic to me. But I'm happy to take advantage of it. Especially if I'm working in black and white. 

My first tests with the new lens were to see just how well it performed at f2.0 and I'm happy to report that it's nicely sharp wide open. Stopping down to f5.6 improves the performance incrementally but it's already so good wide open that the improvements are modest. This means I can use the widest apertures with impunity instead of dancing around with sloppy edges, and trying to valiantly get to f4.0 or slower. 

I used the lens to shoot about 200 images this afternoon. It was cold, bright and crisp outside in the late afternoon and I was happy to be mobile and moving. I should probably give the long suffering keyboard a rest and just let you browse the final images. 

I used the Sigma 65mm f2.0 DN DG lens on a Lumix/Panasonic S1R and it seemed like a great match when considering the overall look and integrity of the package. It also represented a perfectly balanced mix. The camera felt absolutely neutral and comfortable in my hands. My only issue so far was that the lens and camera had trouble focusing through a couple of dirty, glass windows but I switched to manual and had the focus nailed quickly. The manual ring, while fly by wire is very well damped and has a nice, predictable feel to it. In fact, it didn't just make manual focusing proficient or easy, it made manual focusing fun. 

I shot all the images presented below as fine Jpegs. Knowing I'd only be presenting this work on the web I chose to shoot in the medium size setting of just under 24 megapixels.

I found the lens a delight from two points of view. First, I liked the focal length and framing. Secondly, I loved the whole idea of a reasonably fast, perfectly sized and masterfully built lens on the front of my camera. I can't imagine even a Leica lens exceeding the build quality on display here. 

I am smitten which will probably signal the death knell for this whole blog enterprise since I can imagine that I'll never want to use anything else ever again and you will become bored in a five or six months after I write hundreds and hundreds of paeans to the 65mm lens's magnificence. A wonderful addition to any L-mount kit. And, for those lucky Sony A7x owners--- it's also available in e mount. 

A bargain at $699. (USD)

Click to go big.