Why do I so often talk about how much I like using the original Pen-FT 60mm f1.5 lens?

This is a shot I did at a night time rehearsal of an "Austin Shakespeare" in the park rehearsal. The lighting on the outside stage was primitive and dim, the hour = late, and the weather hot and humid. I was playing around at the time (2010) with an Olympus EPL-1 body fitted with an EVF finder and, via an adapter, an ancient, manual focusing Olympus 60mm f1.5 lens. These were early days for mirrorless but I really liked the concept and had been having great fun with the EP-2 camera.

I discovered an interesting thing about the VF-2 finder when using manual lenses. When focusing the screen would shimmer at the point of sharp focus! This made accurate focusing with my ancient half frame lens not only possible but, in some cases, faster than autofocus. I was shooting as the rehearsal was in progress and, because of the sparse and aging stage lighting, was trying to hold the camera steady around 1/30th of a second while using an aperture near f2.0. Surprisingly, our hit rate that evening was not embarrassing!

I hadn't used this lens much for nearly a decade before that because, other than my collections of older Pen FT half frame cameras from the 1970's, there were no other cameras on which the lens would work. I'd forgotten, or perhaps never been aware, of just how great a performer this lens was and is.

You need only click on the image to enlarge and then check out the detail of the butterflies in the actor's hair. Oh heck, you could also check out the actor's hair, remembering that this was a 12 megapixel camera with an ample anti-aliasing filter over the sensor....

I use the lens quite frequently now. Most recently I used it for two black and white, 4K video interviews. When my son saw a still frame from one of the interviews he nearly fell off his chair. It looked as though I'd done a perfect still photograph of one interview subject and we might have been looking at that high res image of it on the screen.

The ancient lens is perfect for video. It's sharp when I need sharp and then the background falls off into a luscious banquet of bokeh. Nice, soft, rounded bouquet of bokeh. Would I take a thousand dollars for that old lens? Not on your life! Do you have a recent German car you'd like to trade? Then we'll talk.

New stuff? Not seeing anything out there that's as nice. Sharper? Maybe. As nice? Nope.

Shooting portraits for my LED book, ten years ago. This one with a Canon camera. But not a new Canon camera.

Back in 2010 Amherst Media published the first book about LED lighting for photographers. Ever. It had samples from famous wedding photographer, Neil van Niekirk, and lots of lesser samples from the author; me. It was early days for LED light sources aimed at photographers and most of the affordable fixtures were made in China and didn't have much street credit with people who were obsessed with specification sheets. Oh, I mean photographic numerology... Most people's experiences weren't based on actual, personal use but were conjecture based on glancing and dated reviews of an early generation of tiny, cheap plastic LED panels.

The feedback I got from everyone I mentioned the book project to was that "all" LEDs had really bad color, and a deadly green spike was almost always unavoidable, so the lights could "never" be used for portrait work. Ever.

I plodded on, doing experimental shoots and gathering really wonderful LED lit portraits from friends and professional associates across the country. My memory about that time is that it coincided with my flirtation with Canon digital cameras. I had three different models and liked them for three different reasons. But I used the 7D (APS-C) along with a 70-200mm f4.0 Canon zoom to make the image above. We were in the studio using some inexpensive Chinese fixtures that had 512 small LEDs on a rectangular panel. I don't remember the exact price but I think each panel was about $200.

I came across this image of my friend, Selena, recently while cleaning up old hard drives and preparing them for short term storage ( you know, put them in a vacuum chamber, suck out all the contaminated air, seal into a non-porous, anti-magnetic storage containers filled with pure helium....just the routine archival regimen...) and I remembered all the bluster from the ignorati about the inability of LED lights to render a pleasant skin tone. I think a quick custom white balance got us right into the ball park. Not too hard to do if you read your camera's owner's manual... Ah, nostalgia for the early days of what is now very, very popular tech.

It's pouring down rain. I'm waiting for the internet service person to come and upgrade my internet service. All hope is swirling down the storm drains.

I don't know why I didn't do something about my slow internet service before this week. I guess my use of big chunks of internet bandwidth to send things to clients was sporadic and unhurried enough that it was less arduous to just maintain the status quo and keep moving along with what I was used to. But the game plan changed when two clients, Dell and Ottobock Healthcare, booked me for photographic and video projects next week. Both events are tied to short deadlines and, after each event, there will be a small window of time in which to edit images, and b-roll video, and upload them (successfully) to a far off public relations company for near immediate distribution to various news media channels. I have no worries about editing down the images or creating the approximately 290 megabyte H.264 video component to send but I did start to worry about how long it would take to actually upload. I uploaded about 800 large files (approx. 20 megabytes apiece) about 16 Gb, on Saturday afternoon and it took the better part of eight hours to complete. I know that I'll be uploading a fraction of that amount next week but we have to make allowances for various technical setbacks and re-starts. And I'm always a bit leery where client deadlines are concerned. We haven't yet installed our back up broadband.......

(I do have a back up plan but it consists of sitting and having too much coffee at the local Starbucks while I steal their meek wi-fi....).

When I got my bill for my very meager, copper strand, broadband service yesterday I decided to act. Every recent arrival to our neighborhood had gotten hooked up to a fiber optic connection with at least 100 Megabits per second upload speed and most are paying about 33% less than I. It was time to join the crowd. ( I resisted previously mostly because my supplier, and the only other supplier to our neighborhood, used to take advantage of their near monopoly by insisting that we bundle any new internet service with television services and I am morally and constitutionally opposed to paying for something that comes through the air for free. Besides, who in their right mind wastes time watching television programming? Only compulsive sports addicts and news junkies... as far as I can tell....). 

I called the service center and used all my sense of long term customer privilege, and channeled my full sense of (unearned) entitlement, and negotiated for the new service, at the new, lower price, and resisted the push to have paid TV foisted upon me. I was successful in getting the order set up the way I want it. Now we need to get all the wiring and hookup done. 

As my two hour appointment window started to close, around one o'clock, I got a call from the technician. He was running late but would arrive within the half hour. He arrived along with the first wave of a downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Yes. He must climb the phone pole to effect the installation. The rest of the work can be done in the house.... But there is still the pole. And there's rain. And thunder. And lightning. He's busy wiring everything he can in the interior space and we're waiting out the rain. 

I am an eternal pessimist where new services are concerned and always expect the worst. But the optimist in me hopes to be very pleasantly surprised. I'll let you know when we have rejoined the modern world and have internet service that's at least as fast as the neighbors. Maybe, if we all wish together, we can have terabyte level service like most S. Koreans enjoy. Our dream of being a first world nation....hmm.

view from the studio.