The Blanton Museum Goes Yellow.

After swim practice and calculating and paying the state sales tax for the biz I got a tiny bit motivated to leave the house and see something new. Something beyond the pools and the walls of the office. I drove over to the University of Texas at Austin campus to visit the Blanton Museum (of Art). I presumed that going on an outrageously hot Tuesday afternoon would mean a nearly empty space but I was surprised at how many people were visiting the Art today. Families, solo appreciators, feckless tourists in Texas Summer clothing, etc. 

I was going to bring the new camera along for fun but after walking a few steps to the car at home I realized what a burden a big camera and big lens would be when out walking from my favorite parking to the museum a quarter mile away. I ducked back in the house and traded the big Fuji for the much smaller Leica Q2. In retrospect it was the perfect choice.

There were lots of things to photograph but one thing that struck me over and over again was the repeating use of yellow as part of the museum's branding. So I started looking for yellow stuff. 

I'm happy to have seen the main show one more time. Happier still to get out of the house and to use a camera. Happiest to weather the heat and arrive back at home unscathed. 

I hope your home town is cooler than mine today. If you live somewhere that is currently "suffering" through 60 or 70° "heat" please go out and photograph a bit for me. Just to do it. Just to appreciate the photographic potential provided by....comfort.

 

Waiting for a new lens. Testing out black and white profiles. Staying out of the heat.

1:1 aspect ratio. Fuji 50Sii. Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 (nikon mount/adapted). 

Handsome male model; a stranger passing by.... naw. just me... Acros with G filter.

Loving the Jpegs...

Don't know about you but when I first get my hands on a very new to me camera there's a bit of fussing around, shopping and adapting that goes on. A process of getting a feel for the camera and the lenses and then deciding what's needed in the short term to really make the camera useful and ready to work the way you'd like it to. 

My first move is usually to buy a couple extra batteries but the camera came with three. There are buckets of fast, big SD cards sitting around the studio so, again, not a priority. 

The 50mm f3.5 lens is very nice and the adapted 58mm f1.4 Voigtlander lens is interesting and full of personality but I really wanted something just a bit longer. And a bit wider.

Almost everyone who has chimed in to comment on their experiences with this camera system has advised me to acquire the 35-70mm f4.5-5.6 Fuji zoom lens. Especially now while it's offered new for $500. The retail price is $1,000. When used in conjunction with the square format the lens is just long enough to make good portraits. And, when used in 4:3, it's just wide enough to do fun urban architecture shots. 

I ordered one from B&H and it should be here sometime mid-week. I can't wait to try it out. The only fault that gets mentioned about the "kit" lens is the slow speed of its maximum aperture. But outside during this Summer in Texas? Not an issue. Inside the studio for portraits? Also not an issue.

The camera is really nice. I'm happy with everything it does now that I've figured out how to magnify a frame when previewing -- while using a (non-Fuji) manual focusing lens. Once I learned that, and how to shoot without a Fuji lens attached, I starting feeling more and more at home with the whole kit. 

I'm resisting getting the lens I'd really like. That would be the 110mm f2.0 Fuji lens. It's kinda pricey at $2200 (on sale - new) but coming from Leica World it actually seems like a bargain. I think I'll spend some time with the current inventory until I feel a strong, pressing need for the ultimate portrait lens and then see where we are. 

There are some older, 35mm legacy lenses still kicking around that I'd like to try first. Like the Carl Zeiss 135mm f2.0 APO Sonnar ZF.2 lens. Which on the full frame of the 50Sii would be the equivalent angle of view as a 106mm on a 24x36mm sensor. Now, that would make for a really nice portrait lens...

I am also interested to find out how well the two Zeiss M series lenses (28mm and 35mm) I recently got work on this camera. Oh, and the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron (nikon F mount); since I have already acquired the needed lens adapter....

Most prospective buyers who talk about wanting to use these cameras with some of their Nikon, Canon or Pentax lenses, designed for the 35mm format, seem to worry about whether or not the lenses will show a hard, mechanical vignette, and even if the lenses will fully cover the 33x44mm sensor. I have fewer concerns since I keep coming back to the idea of using the camera as a square format machine. Still, it's nice to know that some lenses made for the smaller format actually do a decent job in covering the sensor without a hard mechanical vignette. A soft, optical vignette being much easier to correct. 

A different topic: I've been so conscientious about getting to swim practice all month, in spite of the heat-inspired lack of any possible motivation. But I felt the need to give my brain a break from the pool today. I got up early and ran a three mile loop through the neighborhood. There's a long grade, about a quarter mile, up a hill that will really make one break a sweat. It was chilly when I laced up the shoes and headed out. A happy 80 degrees. Bearable in comparison to recent mornings. My time was not fast and it really wasn't meant to be. But running is different from walking and I don't want that rhythm to slip away from my muscle memory. 

After the run and a cup of nice, Columbian Supremo coffee (drip, of course....) I felt warmed up and still had some excess energy so I headed to the gym to work through my usual 45 minutes of strength training. I'll never be ripped, chiseled and all puffed up but I sure am working hard at keeping sarcopenia at bay. Three times a week seems to be my limit. Anything more and I'm too stiff and sore to sleep comfortably.  And then my flexibility falls apart...which is detrimental to effortless swimming. It's all interconnected. 

Finally: Rounding up talent to photograph for portraits is harder than I remember. As Austin gets hotter and at the same time more affluent more and more of the beautiful people decamp during the Summer months and go elsewhere. The selection of people that I want to photograph, but who also have open schedules and a desire to be immortalized, wanes with the heat. I'll keep trying. I'd like to get back into practice....

One more program note: someone chided me offline (email) about the silliness of "changing systems yet again after just recently pronouncing my everlasting love for the Leica cameras." The implication being that grabbing a new Fuji MF camera to use must mean that I will rush to abandon all the other cameras and concentrate for the moment on obsessing only about the Fujis. I just don't see that happening. The Fuji 50Sxxx seems like a much more niche camera. And I still have a crush on the Leica SLs (the original). The SL2 is still the prime choice for work and I pressed it into service recently for a healthcare client. One that required all the cool stuff Leica offers as well as needing macro lenses, wide lenses and longer lenses. It worked beautifully. And the extra depth of field was mission critical...

Let me enjoy a fun camera without making it into a drama about the futility and neurosis of system changes. At least until you see me snap up a GFX 100S and a box full of Fuji primes..... Just sayin. 

It's okay to have both. Really. I even asked my spouse. She said it would be fine. "As long as it's fun."

I wanted to see how the Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 Nokton looked when I used it on the Fuji 50Sii. I had the camera set to record in a 1:1 aspect ratio and took this image at f2.8 with the lens adapted for use on the camera with a Novoflex adapter. The focus was set onto the spine of the cinematography book near the left side of the stack. That's a somewhat out of focus photo of a photo of my dad in his old University office. Most of the books on the shelf are mine. Even the one in Chinese....

And look!!! No vignetting in the square!