Homeostasis of Joy.

From Google: Homeostasis is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in external conditions. It's a dynamic equilibrium where the body regulates various factors like temperature, pH, and glucose levels to ensure optimal functioning. This regulation is achieved through feedback mechanisms, which detect changes and trigger responses to counteract them.

So, that's the way the term homeostasis is used in the physical world, but I have a secondary use for homeo (same) stasis (staying still) and that is about the homeostasis of joy. 

I think I am, for the most part, a happy person. In the realm of Maslow's Hierarchy of Basic Needs I am fortunate. Physically, I live well and am privileged to live in a time of great affluence and "relative" peace. Even though the world seems to argue that relative measure. 

However,  the different but equal need, based not on physiology but on psychology and happiness, is to maintain an overall homeostasis of joy as well. Not every day or week or month will be perfect and filled with things that reinforce our feelings of wellbeing and satisfaction but taking life as a "long game" I find that there is very much, in people disposed to happiness, a stasis or baseline of joy to which they seem to return to as surely as the body regulates temperature or blood pressure. 

The last couple of weeks were bumpy for me. But that's so relative. My overall health is good and I'm secure in that all my physical and fiscal needs are well met, but things pop up. The air conditioner died and needed replaced. I needed to scrounge up nearly $20K to pay the bill. The installation took longer than I wanted. My dermatologist called with news of a biopsy. A malignant and somewhat aggressive skin cancer diagnosis. I sat through a four hour procedure and dozens of pokes with pain numbing injections. I wore a bandage the size of a Maxi-Pad to coffee out later with an old friend. I've been temporarily banned from the pool by my surgeon. My face looks icky under the bandage. I'm not allowed to exercise until the end of next week. I have to take antibiotics for seven days.... etc. etc. Oh, and America is stumbling into a  dictatorship...

But surprisingly, after being glum for a few days I woke this morning feeling a renewed surge of my usual, basic joy and satisfaction with life. When I experienced this I thought about it and realized that, to a certain extent, my resilient feelings of joy come from a life time of things and people that have made me happy and continue to make me happy.

It was then that I thought about there being a thing such as the "homeostasis of Joy." That our cumulative life experiences create a buffer that protects us from going too long with negative feelings --- if everything is working as it should. Meaning: If I keep interpreting my feelings about my life in a way that benefits me that's stasis. A mindset that fills me with a sense of gratitude. A sense that I can do anything. 

I have so much to be thankful for that sometimes I take the good stuff for granted. Sure, I was in a chair having my face carved up with scalpels for half the day on Tuesday. But what I really took away from it was that a beautiful and high energy Mohs Surgeon named Megan was chatting with me as though I was an old friend --- while she worked. That she was doing something that would, in the long run, extend my life and extend my enjoyment of life. And there were all the little things I always appreciate, like walking in for an 8:15 a.m. appointment and being greeted warmly and offered coffee. That my nurse, Bree, came out to find me in the waiting area exactly at 8:15 a.m., and with a big, welcoming smile. That Bree is a magician with numbing injections which dissolved any anxiety I might have had about that part of the procedure. That my surgeon never seemed rushed or in a hurry to move on with some schedule. The kindness both showed me at every step of the way.

The Haagen-Daz rum raisin ice cream my wonderful spouse left for me in the freezer. The DVDs of my favorite sitcom she gifted me so I could chill and not get too bored. The endless stream of texts from my swimmer friends and photographer friends either wishing me well or demanding to be brought up to speed. And all questioning how soon I could be back in the pool. 

I constantly hear about how bad medicine is as practiced in the USA but when I told my team of medical experts that I was squeamish about taking off the big, pressure bandage today and cleaning and redressing the site myself they instantly invited me back to the practice at 9:00 a.m. today so they could do it for me. The surgeon was waiting for me when I arrived and removed the huge and dramatic looking bandage and spent time examining her handiwork. Asking me about my antibiotic compliance, telling me how great I looked. Her nurse, Bree, redressed the wound and put on a smaller, less imposing bandage and then spent time showing me how to do it myself going forward. But, as I was checking out, she said that any time I didn't feel up to it I should come by and they would continue redressing it.

My out of pocket expenses so far? For everything? A $40 copay. 

Since every appointment was warmly and professionally conducted, started right on time and ended with sincere fist bumps and satisfaction, I couldn't imagine in the moment getting better care anywhere. Which, of course, adds to my store of good feelings, which keeps my homeostasis of Joy clicking right along. 

On my way home I dropped by my locally owned and wonderfully managed coffee shop where I ordered a large coffee and a piece of banana bread. The owner noticed (how could he not?) the bandage and wanted to know what the deal was and, more importantly, how I was doing. The coffee and banana bread were on the house.... Amazingly, people do care. 

There was the gift bag from my long time friend, Debbie, (our former CFO) at my front door when I got back home. It had a plush, stuffed puppy that you can stick in the microwave for a minute and warm up. Or stick in the freezer and provide a chilly compress for swollen tissues. And a note that was so dear it made me tear up just a bit...

At 69 I've never felt more loved by more people than ever before in my life. That bolsters my homeostasis of Joy. And these are feelings you can bank against the rough spots in life. 

When I got home I had this phrase, "The Homeostasis of Joy" in my head. Don't know where it came from but when I sat down to write this I looked through a gallery of images to pull out some examples that exemplify for me just basic happiness. I'm blessed to have an archive just brimming with happy, alive and wonderful images. It's like having your own Louvre Museum of Personalized Happiness right there on one's screen. 

Damn. That banana bread and coffee is a wonderful combination!!! It's 79° outside and raining again. Joy! A break in the Summer heat. 

Listening to "Happiness" by Pharrell Williams. Waiting for the next great thing.

Here's some happy photos: 

 

Is the Leica SL2 still relevant in 2025? Was it ever relevant?

The Leica SL2 camera out in late 2019 at a price of around $5600 and I bought one early on. Late last year (2024) I bought a second one. Why? Well, I can blame the second purchase on my previous experiences with my first SL2, and mostly a drop in price on that camera to about $2200-2400 in the used markets. And those prices were for pristine, barely used specimens. The perfect back up camera to the first.  But why did I buy the first one? And why do I still keep it today?

The first SL2 adventure was a follow on from my purchase of an original model (digital) SL. I found that camera to be really fun to shoot and more or less indestructible. Sure, it ate batteries like Homer Simpson eating shrimp at an all you can eat restaurant but the  handling was fun, the viewfinder was state of the art and  the overall design was gorgeous. So when the SL2 came out with about twice the resolution, some design changes that made the body even more gorgeous, and a simplification and more elegant design of the user interface, I thought they (Leica) presented me with a compelling camera lust equation. 

From my perspective and my use cases the camera market overall hasn't introduced anything that's appreciably better, image quality-wise since 2019. The difference in resolution between 47 megapixels and 60 megapixels is really marginal and there's no savings when it comes to noise reduction. So even though Leica came out with the SL3 as a replacement the only reason to switch, for a stills photographer, is if one really, really needs phase detection auto focus. And I'd venture to say that most people really don't. But so as not to speak for everyone I'll just say that I never felt the need for PD-AF.

And I still don't. 

While the SL2 was a comfortable and high quality image maker at the time of its launch the company has done a number of firmware updates which have consistently improved the speed and handling of the camera. The biggest improvement for those of us who already owned the cameras was the company making the SCL-6 battery, which was introduced in the Q3, compatible with both older generations of the SL cameras. It adds about 25% more power reserve and that's important for a high data throughput camera that's battery sensitive. 

The SL2 was the first Leica I owned that could also be charged via the USB-C port and that gives zany working photographers a healthy dose of confidence that long running shoots that might draw down a couple of batteries can still be handled with the addition of external power. Nice.

My first SL2 has been in service now for about five years (wow! time flies). I would estimate that between work use and personal imaging use that body has seen about 200,000 exposures. It has yet to freeze up, lock up or fail in any way. In heat or cold. Or in rainy weather. It's built to be more or less impervious to weather. And I love the handling.

Late last year I picked up an SL2-S which is basically the same camera body and shutter mechanism but which uses a 24 megapixel BSI sensor instead of the 47 megapixel one. I bought it for the smaller raw files but I also found that its high ISO files were as noise free as anything on the market from Sony, Canon or Nikon. It's a great companion for the other cameras.

What we started with was a camera (the SL2) that still is highly competitive for resolution. Class leading for image quality. Has an EVF that makes manual focusing easier and more accurate. Has a thin sensor glass construction which makes it a perfect companion for M lenses. Does very good video. The camera has gotten better and better as firmware gets tweaked. All of this certainly speaks to its relevance at the time of launch. And since no one has made any meaningful and substantial improvements in the format and market segment the answer to its current relevance is.... very much so. 

Several of my friends who work professionally and had been firmly in the Sony and Nikon camps started buying SL2 cameras when the prices dropped below what they would pay for a Sony or Nikon body with a commensurate pixel count. They were universally blown away by the difference in operational philosophy. Happy to jettison so many useless and cluttered feature sets. And very happy to have a camera body that could make the highest and best use of their collections of rangefinder lenses; all at a higher level of quality than when they are used with competing brands of camera bodies. All for under $2500. 

If I get the urge to upgrade camera bodies it will most likely occur in the Leica Q family, in the form of a Q3 and then a Q3-43. And I can now get away with this because without specific needs of certain clients there's not a heck of a lot of imaging that can't be done with one of those two cameras. 

Would I get rid of the SL2s? Likely not since I perceive that their used pricing has bottomed out far ahead of my perceptions of their continued usefulness. In other words, the price drop seems too aggressive given the value the cameras still bring to nearly every shoot. 

In the past everything was changing quickly. Now we've hit a stasis in the camera industry wherein we can actually slow down and the enjoy cameras. And get a useable life of maybe five years to a decade before hints of obsolescence appear. Cameras from the best makers have become more comparable to the reliability of Toyota and Lexus cars that are well maintained. They are meant to be used for a long time and not recycle because to incremental steps forward. Witness my parallel use of the M240 cameras which were introduced in 2013. I love em. 

Keep those batteries coming....

All images from the SL2