Fun Sunday Morning. Great Swim and a cool walk (relatively speaking...) with a new (to me) lens. I posted some photos....

 

I usually go to our coached, masters swim practice at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays and then head out for a walk in the mid-afternoon but since we're currently experiencing a roaster of a heat wave I made a few good modifications to my leisurely schedule. I got up earlier and made it to the 8:00 a.m. workout. I figured I'd soak up a few less UV rays and also get ahead of the heat for the day. 

Practice was good and I swam with my friends Ed and Rich in my lane. We kept up a good pace and got through nearly 3,000 yards but we took it a bit easier today. It is Sunday after all. 

As soon as we finished I hit the showers, slathered myself with sunscreen, and I headed downtown to venture out on my usual route for camera and lens testing fun. I wore a wide brim hat and lightweight clothing and, amazingly, for most of my time out in the downtown area this morning there was a nice breeze and it actually felt pleasant. No sweat. Literally. 

On Friday I took possession of two really interesting fun lenses. I was disappointed not to have gotten out yesterday in the afternoon to play with one or the other of them so I was happy that today's schedule worked. 

The lens I took with me today on my bold but routine adventure was the Panasonic/Leica Nocticron 42.5mm f1.2 lens which is made for the micro-four-thirds systems. The lens is equivalent to an 85mm on a full frame camera.  It's heavy, wonderfully constructed, and now I can say that it's also a great performer. I used it in conjunction with the GH6 camera and I have to say that all the people who blather on about the GH6 being made just for video production are wrong. It's a very, very good still photography camera. And it works flawlessly with the Nocticron. 

I used the lens mostly around f2.0 but shot a good representative sample of images at f1.2 to judge that the lens is more than sharp enough even wide open. I think the sweet spot overall is f2.2 or around there but wide open is near perfect. I love having a portrait lens for the m4:3 systems that can easily throw backgrounds out of focus while maintaining high sharpness in the depth of field zones where things were  intended to be sharp. 

I've put captions to some of the photos but remember to click on the photos and make them bigger if you really want to see what the sharpness and colors look like. Thanks!

And to answer yesterday's post: I AM keeping both lenses. The 42.5 Nocticron and the Olympus 75mm f1.8. I'll find something fabulous to point the 75mm at. I'm sure of it.

Post swim selfie in the mirrored wall at Pulvo's Mexican food on 3rd St. 

This is the exterior of a new "healthy" restaurant on Second St.

It looks like its opening is imminent. People were inside today training. 

I like the blue trim. I like the rusted steel planters and the fresh plants.

I hope they keep up with their gardening. 

The restaurant is called, "Local." 

Loving the yellow booths offset by the blue trim. 

this is the little, independent Italian restaurant next door to "Local."

I wonder how they feel about the new competition. 

Today they had more hanging baskets filled with flowers than 

last week. Either a sign that things are going well or an 

answering salvo to their new neighbor's planter boxes.

The lens and camera handle reds well. 

Jo's Coffee on 2nd St.

Sunday morning rush hour traffic....?

the Sixth Street version of "Golden Arches". 

Along the side of "Wild Greg's Saloon."

Classy. 

Trash can art. Looking at the edges for myself. 

interested to see sharp and soft in one image. 

Full Frame image of pocket trash on the railroad tracks.

An enlarged portion from the image just above.

More pocket trash.

An enlarged portion from the image just above.

A series of Father's Day window display details. 

(I have already sent Ben a wish list of things he can get

his father from the Leica Store in Miami. Let's see if he gets the hint...).

the usual photo at the W Hotel and a heartfelt "thank you" for their ongoing 

and gracious hospitality. Someone even apologized to me for not getting

the front door quickly enough. Wow! 

Casio Eco-Drive Dive watch. Solar powered. Water Resistant to 300 meters.

A near daily swim watch. So far so great. 

A quiet detail from my usual bridge shots.

Outfitting the Sigma fp for a zany film project. 

The studio is now "All Fun All the Time." 

Stay tuned for the "notes from the field" concerning my appreciation or criticism of the 

Olympus 75mm lens. 

Chilling out on a Sunday. It's 74° in my 650 square foot office. I think I'll stay here for a while.

It's Summer and everything is slowing down. Motivation sapping away. The heat is scorching everything. Too hot to walk in the afternoon with black cameras and lenses. Thinking of painting my SL2 white...

I love cold weather. I love walking around with a thick hat that covers my ears and big fluffy gloves that can even keep an old man's hands warm. Cold and snow gives me an excuse to pull out that big pair of insulated hiking boots I bought years and years ago and to relish the fact that I can be ankle deep in wet snow but still keep my toes toasty. But the heat? Once it hits a certain temperature these days the raw yellow/red heat of Summer keeps me indoors. In the air conditioning. Glass of iced tea within reach. As I wile away the hours trying to find something about photography to read or watch on my computer. With very little success. 

Swim practice was fun this morning. The water was reasonably cool because of the aerators that run at the club pool all night long. After swim practice I had every intention of making a quick pit stop at home to eat something for breakfast and then rush out to walk the lake or camera stroll through downtown. But I lingered too long and lunch crept onto the schedule and by the time I got organized it was too late. The temperature outside had already hit 103° and with the humidity factored in the weather service said it would feel like 107 to 110°.  While I irrationally think I am still mostly bulletproof, in great shape and almost immortal I have to grudgingly concede that I am no longer 20 years old and that, statistically, older people are more susceptible to the effects of heat. And I've become aware that my endurance to that mean end of the temperature range has diminished just a bit.

Far be it from me to tempt fate when my own best interests are involved. Better to err on the side of caution.

Today I am mulling over the purchase of two more lenses for the m4:3 system. I had coffee with a friend yesterday and he brought along two lenses that he feels no longer meet his needs. No doubt he'll make me a good price on either one, or both. So I'm shooting them this weekend in order to make a final assessment of my own needs. ( Perhaps should read: "My own desire.")

"Needs" is a bit of a humorous concept for someone who already owns way too many lenses but that's how I like to couch the little gaps in the inventory of the secondary system in house. 

Both of the lenses are ones that I've been interested in for quite a while but never had the final motivation to push the buttons and make the purchases. One lens is the Panasonic/Leica 42.5mm f1.2 lens. It's gorgeous and my friend's copy looks like it just came new out of the box. I've already convinced myself (not a difficult task) that this lens is very much a keeper and one I'll own. I'm only hesitant about the second lens which is an Olympus 75mm f1.8 lens, in silver finish. I love the concept of the 75mm but it's so rare that I shoot with a really long prime lens and I have so many zooms already that cover the actual focal length so well. 

The 75mm is the lens I really need to put on the GH6 and get out and shoot with right after swim practice tomorrow morning; before the forecast temperature becomes a sweaty and real 106°.  I need to give it a chance to show off, to shine and attach itself to my acquisitive gland.

On these hot days one always imagines that we'll put together an amazingly well thought out photography kit that fits in a small backpack, buy some airline tickets to someplace still cool and not crowded, and crank out a worthy adventure based around taking....more photographs. But there's the magnetic pull of the rambling and cool at all times house. The lure of daily swim practice. The familiarity of the local coffee house with the perfect Columbian Supremo Organic blend; roasted medium. And all the toys in the studio. Not to mention the luxurious couch that just begs one to nap under the quiet currents of the two ceiling fans.

I'll end up calling one of my beautiful friends and invite them for a sitting in the studio instead. That might be the right solution...

The week coming up is filled with normal work stuff of the business. We're photographing the staff of a medium sized ad agency on Monday. One portrait at a time. Post processing and gallery construction following on Tuesday. A hedge fund CEO's portrait on location Wednesday. Portraits of 15 directors of a corporate board down at the Four Seasons Hotel on Thursday and more post production on Friday. All the while trying not to miss scheduled morning swim workouts at the pool or dinners with B. By the end of the week all that will remain to be done is final post production on everyone's selections. 

When I finish that I will have fully funded and freed up the rest of my Summer. Then the goal is to get out more and use some of this very nice gear for fun rather than profit. Which would represent a personal, non-fiduciary profit for me....or something like that.

If you own, or have owned the Panasonic/Leica 42.5mm f1.2 or the Olympus 75mm f1.8 and have opinions about them I'd sure like to hear from you. Drop a comment and tell me your experience with them. I'm afraid you'll be too late to dissuade me re: the 42.5mm but there's always hope for some modicum of restraint where the 75mm is involved.... will you be the one whole talks me off the GAS ledge?

Images from Santa Fe. The antidote for too many Austin photos.

I missed it by "that much"! I saw this camera in an announcement that went out from the Leica Store Miami earlier today....

 

The camera pictured here is the latest offering from Leica. It's a Leica M-A film camera. They call it a Leica M-A Titan. It comes in a limited edition kit with a matching 50mm APO Summicron ASPH lens. They call it a Titan because all the external parts are machined out of the ultimate "boy" metal; Titanium. 

I was out on business this morning and I saw this message on my phone. I just had to have one. I made a note in my calendar to head to the website with a handful of credit cards the minute I got back to the house. The asking price for this limited edition film camera was a little unsettling at $19,995 but knowing the LeicaStoreMiami I figured they'd throw in the shipping for free. 

My hands quivered with nervous energy as they hovered over the keyboard. I opened up the browser and navigated to the store's website. The earlier ad said the edition of this camera kit would be limited to 250 units, world wide. This would be the most expensive camera purchase I had ever made but it would all be worth it if the Tri-X I pulled out the freezer was somehow magically imbued with, well, more magic. 

My Birkenstocks clattered on the floor as my anticipation built. The site opened. The camera came right up on the splash page. I got ready to hit the "Buy" button. But then all the air left the balloon of impending happiness and fulfillment. I saw the note. Only three worlds but to me if felt like the collapse of a dream. 

"Edition Sold Out." 

Sure, we can argue all day that I can do something better with the money. We could have discussed the cold, hard fact that I no longer shoot film and have no interest in doing so. But....Titanium! My one or two friends who might know about this camera would have been so impressed. Sure, I would  probably have tried to hide the purchase price from my partner but since she handles the taxes and accounting it would have all come out in the wash... and that would not have gone as well as I might fantasize. 

My question to you is: Which one of my VSL readers got there in front of me? I hope you're happy....

(The camera, price and "sold out edition" are all real. What is not real is my having any intention at all of buying a camera like this. Or spending that kind of money on a camera that's more valuable not being used. I added this disclaimer at the end for the occasional preachy reader who flies into a rage when taking me literally on stuff like this. Not buying one. Not interested. Can't reliably spell Veblen but.....). 

I bet it comes with a really cool presentation case too.

Another hot day in Austin. Combining images left and right.

Chelsea on 3rd St.

I'm currently making a large library of images that will work as backgrounds. We're photographing 15 individuals next week and we're doing it on a neutral background. Once the keeper portraits are selected I'll be removing people from the backgrounds and dropping them into various cityscape backgrounds. 

The reason? Most of the portrait subjects are older, want to be wearing suits and ties, or other business dress, and since it's forecast on the one day when they are all in Austin for a board meeting to be over 100° with a "feels like" temperature of something like 107° the agency and I thought it better to photograph them in the cool comfort of a hotel ballroom and then pick and choose backgrounds in post.  Particularly appropriate since they've scheduled a slot for portraits between 1pm and 3pm...

It certainly makes sense to me. Outside is always a crap shoot for more formal portraits. And most people begin to shine or perspire within the first five minutes after they step into the heat bath. Add to that rogue gusts of wind making a mess of careful hair sculptures and the chance that there are no good backgrounds within a few steps of the hotel and you start to wonder why we haven't been piecing together our environmental portraits all along...

I don't really mind the heat but I do like the control of an interior shoot with great lights and catering just a phone call away.

 

A Campaign Done for A Leading Maker of Diagnostic Instruments.

 

A good, old fashioned, daylong photo shoot. I hired the assistant and the make up artist while the client team worked with several talent agencies to get our models. These ads are three of the dozen that we created on the shoot day. We used a large meeting room (about 5,000 square feet) as our temporary studio and set up a light gray seamless background to shoot against. Since we were looking for movement and action my assistant and I lit the set with six electronic flashes; some in umbrellas, some through grids and a main light in a big soft box. 

The in-house design team put together a bunch of examples of the energy they were trying to convey and we tried to maintain some high energy throughout the day. 

I used a Panasonic S1R along with the 24-105mm f4.0 S zoom lens for all of the shots. Some people like to shoot tethered to laptops but I think that's too slow so I tether my camera to Ninja V monitors and set several up around the shooting area on lightstands so the crew and the marketing team can watch the progress and make sure we're shooting with enough space to crop in, etc. 

When we finished with the shoot I made a web gallery with about 1200 images in it and the client narrowed down their take to about 50 images. I color corrected and retouched each of them and then made selections with masks on new layers for final delivery. We worked with big files because it's easier to do the post accurately; especially when your intention is to drop out the backgrounds and put the people on a constructed graphic background. The images were used on the web but also in very large prints as trade show graphics. 

It was a fun and successful campaign for everyone but as is typical these days nearly all of the original creative team on the client side has either been promoted or moved on to "new opportunities." 

Just thought I'd share one of the fun projects I put together recently. Yay! Commercial photography still exists!!!