OT: My car review. How is it doing one year+ in?

 That's my car. It's a 2022 Subaru Forester. It may be the most practical and boring car you can buy. But I love it. In fact, it's my second identical one in just four years (previous was a 2019). I have to special order them because I want all the premium driving and safety features but I have a dread/hatred/engineering bias against sun roofs, moon roofs or any other spurious hole cut into the middle of a car's roof. I've been told by BMW mechanics, Toyota mechanics and Independent mechanics that the one long term flaw of every car with an open-able rooftop is the inevitable potential for water leakage. In most cars they also cut down on available headroom by about an inch. They are just a bad idea all around. You don't need to be staring up at clouds while piloting your vehicle.

So far, in about 11,000 miles, two trips to Santa Fe, NM. and lots of hauling gear around this particular car has had zero defects. Nothing. No rattles or mysterious noises. No electronic failures. It even connects with my iPhone with zero issues. Go CarPlay. 

The ground clearance is great. I can drive over parking lot blocks with impunity. I've never bottomed out. 

The interior trim is utilitarian and I like it that way. If I wanted a big, padded Barca-Lounger for a seat I'd buy one for the house and be done with it. But in a car I think I want only two things from the driver's seat: the right driving position and good back support. The Forester has both. 

Car "enthusiasts" (AKA people from a certain generation....) go on and on about the Forester being "underpowered." It's not a heavy car by any means and the engine that's in it generates something like 185 horsepower. There were no other optional engines when I bought it. I have never felt that the car doesn't accelerate quickly enough. It's perfectly quick. In fact, when I look back at a six cylinder BMW 5 series I owned for the second half of the 1990s I am reminded that it weighed about 1,000 pounds more than the Subaru and had about 10-12% more horsepower. It also sucked down premium gasoline and started falling to pieces the day after the warranty ran out... It wasn't really much faster on initial launches from stop lights than the Forester. But in today's dollars probably cost at least twice as much money to purchase.

One benefit of the flat, "pancake" engine is a lower center of gravity than a V-type engine or Inline engine. That effectively offsets any potential handling problems that might have arisen based on the ground clearance of the car. 

On my giant, two-days-out, two-days-back trip to Santa Fe in April I consistently drove over the Texas and New Mexico highways at speeds averaging 75-80 mph and was able to get over 30 mpg. Considering the constant use of air conditioning during the expedition I consider that fuel economy very good. Not as good as my European friends might want but much, much better than those folks passing me at 110 mph in giant, dually pick-up trucks with confederate flags flying furiously from their antennae. 

The real value to a working photographer of any vehicle is the ability to load it up with everything you might need for a job without killing the interior or blocking your field of view. With the back seats folded down I can bring it all. It's not as spacious as my old Honda Element was but my load out is smaller these days too. And, most important, a long roll of seamless background paper fits in nicely. You put one end in the passenger footwell and the other end has a comfortable ten inches or so of space to the rear window. 

The two Subaru Foresters are the first cars I have owned that come with four wheel drive. It actually works well. I've driven through mud and  sand and never lost control of the car, or gotten stuck. It's much better in that regard than the front wheel drive Honda CR-V I owned previous to these. The Element was also a front wheel drive version and I remember getting stuck on a muddy incline with an art director who was scouting locations with me. We had to be towed out of the ditch. It was embarrassing. 

After having lived through some pretty nasty Summers since 2008 I will never own another car that is not white. And I will never own a car with very dark, or black, seats. When it's 115° from time to time you learn to always use a sunshade on the windshield while parked and I augment that by putting a white shop towel over the top of the black steering wheel. I'm not quite ready to get my fingerprints cauterized off by a sun-charged steering wheel....

I drove my previous (almost identical) Forester during the giant freeze that gripped Texas in 2021 and it did well on all the snow and some of the ice. Without snow tires or chains I'd say all bets are off on really nasty ice or in areas with steep inclines but that's what coffee at home is for...

I paid about $27,000 for the most recent Forester and I consider that a screaming bargain. I have two close friends who made different choices. One splashed out on a new Range Rover and a year later is still taking it back to the dealer regularly for annoying things like not being able to sync her phone. A total shutdown of the app screen in the center. A couple of times when the vehicle just would not start. She's pretty adamant that she'll be moving on from the Range Rover long before the warranty expires. Another friend is a BMW adherent who bought an X3 used. He's already, in the last year and a half, spent about one third of my car's purchase price on non-warrantied repairs. I'm certainly not saying Subarus are perfect. Far from it, I'm sure. But B. and I both drive Subarus now and our experiences have been nothing but good on our current cars. The idea of spending $50K or $75K or more on a "luxury" car is just crazy to me. 

Not when you can get a highly functional, comfortable and reliable car for about half the spend and you can invest the rest for the future. 

So.....no moon or sun roofs. Always white paint. Never black seats!!! In Texas, no heated seats. Get the all weather floor mats and you are done for at least a few years. Next time I'm sure I'll start looking at electric cars. I'm pretty sure we're at a good inflection point for the average car buyer/income demographic. 

But till then I'll be the guy driving that white Subaru Forester and trying to avoid all the people driving fast on Austin roads while texting their friends or watching videos on their phones. 

Just thought about this as I drove home from the pool and enjoyed the drive.

“Beauty is the courage to be oneself. … It should be the responsibility of modern photographers to free women, and ultimately everyone, from the tyranny of youth and perfection,” Peter Lindbergh, Photographer.

 Peter Lindbergh is one of my very favorite photographers. He passed away recently. His death moved me to buy all of his available books. His black and white work, while very different from mine, is "emotionally" the standard to which I constantly aspire but will probably never reach. 

There is an online photo magazine called, Blind that just posted a nice article about him

and his place in the fashion world. 

It's well worth reading: 

https://www.blind-magazine.com/news/peter-lindbergh-the-authentic/

When I wrote about mirrorless cameras with EVFs back in 2010......

 

...the typical response from legions of photographers was something like: "I'll stop using DSLRs when you pry my cold, dead hands off my Nikon (or Canon, or Pentax or.....). A few years ago I was told it would take a decade or more before mirrorless cameras outsold DSLRs.

I was also told by a huge number of working photographers that: "Real Pros will never stop using optical finders!!!" 

Imagine how surprised I was when I walked into my local camera store. They finally organized all of their used cameras. These are cases filled with almost nothing but DLSR cameras. All used. All looking for new homes. All hoping to escape recycling or salvage. 

Seems like a whole lot of dyed-in-the-wool DSLR adherents died all at once. Or maybe they just had their minds changed by progress. I guess that could happen. I just don't see it very often...

From February 2010: https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-would-i-design-perfect-camera-for.html

(Yeah. That was twelve+ years ago...)

When I asked the staff about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Nikon and Canon and third place finisher DSLR cameras bodies and lenses they had on their shelves they told me that very few people even consider buying a DSLR these days and the store had been  buying the used ones up for peanuts, or on trade, with the idea that a barely used, professional DSLR would sell well to people who still liked the moving mirror/optical finder technology. 

The follow up? They've actually stopped buying used DSLRs  because --- no one seems to want them anymore. They don't actually sell these days. But Sony A7s, Panasonic GH cameras and Olympus OM-1s, even Leicas, are flying off the shelves.

I got bored photographing the DSLR surplus with my phone and asked to see the case with the used L mount system stuff, or the used Leica SL/CL stuff. It didn't exist. Seems people don't trade them in very often. Like, almost never. Maybe it's because of all that stuff I wrote about in 2010. The tectonic shift finally arrived in spades and now it's on track to be the decade of mirrorless cameras. In whatever form/brand you like. Suprisingly people finally figured out the advantages of mirrorless cameras and EVF finders. Better late than never.

The Ebb and Flow of Work. Now preparing for a minor uptick.

Central Texas Wine Harvest. Early morning start.

I've given up listening to advice about the 'inevitable' winding down of a career on the account of age. My clients don't seem to notice. The gear still works. Both photographic and human. And it's really nice to work with people who are willing to pay well for what you like to do.

Everyone tells me that if I retire I can spend my days doing whatever I want. Hmmm. What would that look like? I could get up early and go to swim practice! But I already do that. I could pick and choose the projects I'd like to work on! But I already do that. I'd be master of my own schedule.....and if you don't think I already do that you don't know me well... 

Last month I did three jobs. Or assignments. One was to take portraits of advertising people against a white background and then drop them into a nice, believable composite with various industrial backgrounds I'd also photographed. The portraits took the better part of a Monday morning. The industrial scapes took a "mixed" day which I describe as a choppy salad of photographing mostly when the mood struck me but almost always while out for a walk with a camera and lens. You know, something I regularly do without the crutch of an assignment. The post processing took a day. The payoff matches or exceeds our domestic "burn rate" for a month.

The second assignment, also for a local advertising agency was a bit of a rush job for an art director with whom I've worked for over thirty years. We met at a seafood wholesaler and photographed various arrangements of fresh gulf jumbo shrimp on crushed ice. We were in and out of the location in three hours time. There was a bit of post production in the afternoon and the payoff was somewhat about having fun goofing around with my friend, but also a quick payment that would easily finance another (contraindicated) used Leica CL.

The third assignment was a half day spent photographing attorneys in front of a white background in a comfy, large conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel. After the photo selections were made I also composited each image with a corporate looking background. I spent two days doing post production. The payoff is another month and a half of burn rate for the domestic operation we call "home life." 

If you have the ability to meet your financial obligations by working three or four days a month I would have to say that 'official' retirement really wouldn't gain me a meaningful amount of spare time or time to play. I think I have that pretty well wired right now. 

When I finish a project I always have the thought that, because of the markets, or the recession, or the plague, or my age, or something, this will be the last time I ever get booked. The last email from a client. The last phone call. The last request for a bid. It's sheer paranoia but there it is. 

And so I delivered my "last" two jobs on Monday and sent out bills to the clients on Tuesday. And then I steeled myself for the eventuality that this was it. The gray hair (white, actually) would serve as work repellent and age-ism would take care of the rest. I'd never work again. Never be able to justify buying new cameras based on actual mission critical need. My work life would be over and I'd resign myself to an attempted relevance by volunteering for something. Anything. 

It's horrifying being an extrovert and needing to have frequent (and fun) human contact. 

But then, after a rousing swim practice in hot water, surrounded by long term aquatic friends I came home to make coffee and read my email. And there it was.... a booking to photograph a doctor on Monday. Then a second email from the same very large medical practice letting me know that they had eight other doctors who needed to be photographed in the studio this month. The doctors would each be getting in touch to set up individual appointments. 

No negotiations. No wrangling over details. No requests for budget reductions.  Just solid, fun portrait work on my own home turf --- with me making the schedules. Yay. Something fun to do. 

On Monday I'm going to try pressing that odd assemblage of the Sigma fp and the 35-135mm Zeiss lens into service. It's probably a really bad idea and I should just default to the easy solution and use the Leica SL2 and a portrait lens. But there it is. It's really the play that makes all this fun. 

For now the biggest task in front of me between now and Monday is to clean and straighten. Clean and file. Clean and set up lighting. Not a bad way to spend another couple of days in the Texas oven. 

 

Big, fat lens goes away. Replaced by a newer, smaller lens that's just as good. Or better. The tale of two thirty-five millimeter primes.

 This is the new lens. It replaced an older lens. The older lens was traded in. It was a good idea...

When I first starting playing around with the L mount system I bought a bunch of big-ass primes. There were few lens at the beginning for the Panasonic S1(x) cameras and at the time Sigma was making big headlines with the image quality of their Art series lenses. One of the Art series lenses I bought was the first generation 35mm f1.4 in the L mount. It was enormous. It was incredibly sharp; even wide open. But it was incredibly heavy. But it was nicely contrasty and had great nano acuity(tm). But it was long and ponderous.... etc. etc. At the time the only choice for a nice 35mm was either the Art lens or some sort of adapted lens from another system. Either that or the $5K Leica 35mm Summicron. But I wasn't ready to go there yet. (or...still). 

I quickly decided that the Art lens was fine for all the corporate work I was doing and it seemed to find a place in the case on every paid assignment. But just as quickly I decided that it just wasn't a great choice for walking around on my own dime and shooting "found" art in the streets. While the image quality was unimpeachable it just stuck out like a hippopotamus in a Miata. So, lately, after all the permutations my L system as gone through the lens mostly has been languishing in a drawer. Neglected and ignored. 

Especially so after buying the Leica 24-90mm zoom lens. At the 35mm setting the lens handily outperforms a who bunch of prime lenses at the focal length --- but it should considering the marketing hype and the asking price.  

In the same time frame I started  discovering the i-Series Contemporary lenses from Sigma. These were quirky and interesting lenses that have wonderful industrial design, great performance for imaging and feature less than half the weight and half the volume of their "Art" siblings, in the same focal length range. The trade offs? Slower apertures and ...... not much else. 

I have two L mount systems running side by side here. One is the full frame (35mm frame size) cameras from Leica and Panasonic and the second is the APS-C sized Leica CL and TL2 cameras. Both have their place and in both systems I've been more and more attracted to 35mm lenses for different reasons. 

For the full frame stuff the 35mm represents what most people consider the universal option for most quick, on the street and in the moment styles of photography. I'm just getting comfortable (after 45 some years of trying) with the focal length and find myself using it more and more. When I go out with one camera and a lens I find myself wishing I had just the right 35mm lens for the format. I wanted smaller, fast, sharp and stylistically comfortable design in one reliable package. And I wanted it at an "efficient" price point. 

I've also be hankering after a "normal" "standard" 50mm equivalent for the APS-C system which would be a 35mm focal length. In the best of all possible worlds I would be able to buy a lens that fit both of the L mount cameras and provided me the two different use case I was looking for in one product. But I do live in the best of all possible worlds (or blissfully unaware of my actual circumstances?) so the smaller Sigma 35mm presented itself. 

I saw a review on YouTube by a fellow named, Hugh Brownstone. His channel is "Three Blind Men and an Elephant." He shoots with a lot of Leica stuff and gets invited to Leica in Germany for the big product reveals. He is prejudiced toward the Leica universe of cameras and lenses and owns quick a bit of their product. But he did a review of sorts comparing the Sigma 35mm i-Series lens with the more expensive Sigma 35mm (newest version) Art lens. It was pretty much of a draw across the board, at equivalent apertures. He also mentioned that he compared the inexpensive i-Series 35mm f2.0 to the $5K Leica Summicron 35mm and basically said that if you aren't pixel peeping files from both at more than 200% magnification one would never be able to see a difference. 

Yes. I would like to save 9 times as much cash on a lens. 

I took the big Art lens up to my (now second) favorite camera store and traded it in on the i-Series lens, which was also on sale. Might still be. I got home from the store late in the afternoon yesterday and had domestic chores to complete so no test of the new optic was possible then. But after a routine Saturday morning and the ritual family lunch I headed out with the new lens on the front of a Leica SL and went to look for a new mural, a series of commissioned art, that was over in the Govalle Neighborhood of east Austin. And that's where I did my preliminary tests of the system and the new arrival. 

It's a single subject test done on a 103° afternoon and mostly at a single aperture but it is a start. And I do have about 24 sample images for you to look at. 

My initial impression is that it's a very good lens and will work well for my mixed uses. Before I left the house I took one photograph of a blue-ish pillow sitting on a leather chair. The rest of the images are from the Govalle Neighborhood Mural on Bolm Rd. If you live in Austin it's pretty easy to find and will reward you with a half hour of fun looking. Click through my images below.  Let me know what you think!  

Mural by Catie Lewis who I photographed in my studio last Fall. 

Detail from image above. 

Detail from image above. 

Sharp, snappy, filled with luxurious nano-contrast....

Alternate shot taken when the sun went behind a cloud.

I'm amassing collection of i-Series single focal length lenses. 

It's my answer to the Leica SL primes. We'll see how that all works out.

Three more samples from this morning's photographic adventure in heat management. G9+25mm Summilux.

 

I really like this dilapidated iron works building on the edge of downtown. I think it's still functional but I rarely see anyone there. Today was unusual in that there was a car parked out front. A bright red car that made a nice contrast with the ample green tree and the melodic blue sky. I approve of the color I get out of the G9 and I feel like the lens adds something special to the mix as well. 

Being a nerdy photographer I've read all the review of the lens and looked the MTF curves too often. I have surmised that f4.0 or maybe in between 4.0 and 5.6 is the aperture setting that yields the highest quality files. Well, highest quality in terms of resolution and contrast. 

Today I just set the lens at f4.0 and the camera in both Auto-ISO and aperture priority and spent my time looking at stuff. And I really worked on just looking at stuff. Downtown is in constant flux. People response to emergencies like overwhelming heat in a totally different way. Shops are opening. Older businesses are closing. And I try to really look at all these things as I stroll through downtown. The accession of the images into my own brain's memory bank comes in handy when I decide on projects that require a certain environmental feel. 

It's interesting that walking with one's eyes wide open is almost like reading a stream of consciousness novel. A surprise in every chapter. With lots of texture and plenty of the universe's fine writing. 

And red cars. 

Revisiting a very powerful pair. The Panasonic G9 and the Leica Summilux 25mm f1.4 type 2. Wow! Sharp and color rich.

By some measures (mostly calendar centric) the Panasonic G9 micro four-thirds camera is getting long in the tooth having been announced in 2016. But a raft of meaningful firmware updates have kept this camera as up to date as anything else in the market today. It's a powerful photographic tool and it's also an extremely effective video camera. I used two of them on two major projects in 2018 and pressed them into good service for plenty of gimbal-powered video in 2020. The camera features a 20 megapixel sensor, fast focusing (with the right lenses), a robust and weather resistant build quality and a great viewfinder. I love the color that I get straight out of the camera in Jpeg. If I have to mess with raw files they are great too!

The lens is a 25mm, speedy, Leica-designed but Panasonic built, fast aperture lens. The one I currently own is the second generation (the most current) and while the optical design is reported to be the same as the first one many improvements were made to the AF capability of the lens when used with DFD capable m4:3 cameras. My only idea for improvements to the lens would be to cut down on the size of the supplied lens hood. It's pretty big. But then again --- no flare from glancing light. 

The lens is a perfect match for the G9. Together they are reasonably light, easy to handle, fast to focus and capable of very high color discrimination, which might just be more valuable to the image quality of a file than many other parameters that get more press. In a way, it's the classic "good camera/standard lens" combo that most of us started with in the days when Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax film cameras came in "kits" along with a 50mm, standard lens. This is the micro four-thirds variation. And it works perfectly if that's the way you first got into photography. Except, perhaps, the lens is better...

I went out this morning, after swim practice, because I could feel the cabin fever induced by the wretched heat and I wanted to be outside playing with a camera. The G9+25mm combo made a lot of sense since it is small and light to carry compared to a full frame camera and a big, standard zoom. The battery life is really good and the camera seems indifferent to the heat. 

For some strange reason everywhere I looked I saw architectural and urban-scape stuff today. So that's what I photographed. My first impulse was to go completely black and white but that fell apart after the first block walked because the sky was actually beautiful this morning and I couldn't resist the color dynamics. I did shoot some stuff in black and white but I really think I should stick to color or at least shoot raw+Jpeg with the Jpegs being black and white. Then, after I get back to the studio, I can make up my mind at my leisure....

Lead in to a question: 

I know a lot of my readers came to the blog because of our early reporting on all things micro four thirds but I'm curious how many who are still here are continuing to resist the lure of full frame and APS-C camera and still enjoy shooting with the smaller sensor format (and the delicious assortment of lenses).

?????  It would be interesting to know since the internet makes it seem as though everyone throughout the world has rushed to grab hold of big sensor cameras. I get sidetracked by the promise of a performance difference but when I go out and shoot with a favorite camera like the G9, along with a really great lens, I just don't see much room for meaningful improvements. 

Hey! Look! We still have trains in America. 

I wonder if we could somehow learn to transport people with them?

Wouldn't that be a great idea? 

 We're 42 days in a row over 100° and the power is still on. It's a miracle.

I guess our governor knows that he's toast if the power goes out this Summer. 

So, I walked and looked at stuff. I shot with that absolutely fun camera. It made me re-think everything I've bought and sold over the past three years. What an interesting series of odd decisions. Probably should have paused in 2018 and just enjoyed this happy format. It seems more "futuristic" than other formats. Not so much like a revised relic from the film age. Don't tell Leica I wrote that.....