Too hot to photograph portraits outside? Composites to the rescue.

 

Chelsea in downtown Austin. Beat the heat.

A Chef. And tiny, ancient camera bokeh.

 I took this photo of my friend, Emmett with the ancient and primitive Panasonic G3. Of course, every expert on the planet told me it was impossible to put background sufficiently out of focus with the dainty and limited, teeny-tiny sensor in that camera. I tried anyway. 

I used the version one version of the Leica Summilux 25mm f1.4 with a working aperture of f2.5. The shutter speed was 1/125th of a second and the ISO was set at 640. I think we were able to make it work.

In a moment of incoherence I sold my first 25mm Summilux to another photo blogger. When I got back into the system this past year it was one of the very first lenses I replaced. But this time I bought the second generation. Works better with DfD and it's better weather sealed. Optics are reported to be the same. Those standard angle of view lenses are crucial for every format. At least I think so...

Bokeh-O-Rama in the service of advertising.

 

I was reminiscing about all the DSLR cameras I've used and I came across a lot of images we made while using one of the stars of the DSLR epoch; the Canon 5Dmk2. This image was a combination of available light at ISO 100, 1/13th of a second shutter speed and an aperture of f2.8 mixed with some soft electronic flash from the front. I was using an 85mm f1.8 lens.

It's a text book example of how we used to use the ability to render a background out of focus before the more recent trend of slivering the depth of field to the width of a gnat's whisker. In the days before micro slicing depth of field we tried to keep an image in focus enough to keep out main subject nicely sharp while putting the background into the "recognizable, but vague" category, which covers a myriad of styling sins...

By using a bit of aperture restraint we are still able to see that our subject has both ears and that his shirt is wrinkly instead of looking as soft as pudding.

Accidents and mishaps derail the quiet life. But we're not going to make this a new hobby...

From an emergency room in San Antonio. 

Photographed for an ad campaign.

Well, it's been a stressful week around here. A young family member had a sports related accident and broke his arm. We spent some time on Wednesday evening at a local hospital emergency room where he had a temporary cast applied. He'll need surgery to stabilize the radius and ulna which were both broken. That's scheduled for early this coming week. Not life threatening for him but clearly a set back and a pain in the ass arm....

I'm doing the doting dad thing and dropping by fresh coffee, picking up meds, driving him to doctor appointments, delivering groceries, sandwich and needed/desired supplies. He's staying at his place before the surgery; he really likes to guard his independence.... but I've pretty much insisted that he camp here for the few days after surgery to make sure there are no complications during recovery. He'll get round-the-clock care here. And there is tons more space... as well as an endless refresh to the goodies in the refrigerator.

I might be a little slower about getting blog posts out this week but that just goes with the territory. 

I think you guys can manage a day or two without my breathless prose about yet another life changing lens. 

I'm saving up to help with what will most likely be a multiple-Leica level $$$ invoice from the adventure. Ah well. I really didn't need anymore cameras....at least not until the Fall. Even with great health insurance things can get pricey. 

(not really looking for medical advice here. I swim with multiple doctors and nurses and I work with four different medical practices. Every professional I talk to is more than willing to share "much needed" advice. I think I've hit critical mass on advice... ). 

The kid is handling everything well. His father less so. No other details forthcoming. Google: HIPAA Compliance.
 

The Best Camera Sony ever made. Considering not just image quality but also handling, battery life, and great lens choice.

 

Of all the cameras I've used from Sony (a850, a77, a57, A7ii, A7rii, RX10, RX10iii, Nex-7, etc.) the one that always stands out by a wide margin from all the rest as an all-around winner has got to be the a99. It was a full framer, with the semi-transparent non-moving mirror, a super nice 24 megapixel sensor and a selection of really stellar glass. It also had a color science to it that ended with that model. 

I always thought of it as the last brilliant thrust of Minolta engineering before the photography department of Sony was totally overthrown by a new staff of boring camera engineers and equally lackluster marketing teams. 

The color out of that specific camera was beautiful and the lenses were amazing. The 70-200mm f2.8 was especially good. 

I was sad to let the system go but it was becoming quickly apparent that this would be an orphaned construct that would cease to be supported at all in very short order. 

This was a working shot from a video course I did back in 2013 for Craftsy.com. A fresh face. A nice lens and some playful lighting. 

Sad when new owners of technology homogenize out the secret sauce and move on. 

R.I.P. Sony a99. (Or should I say: Minolta a99?)

One of those times when the Universe tosses you a soft, slow pitch and you are ready for it.

 

Photograph for a private school in Austin. 

No Photoshop magic. No retouching. 

My new, standard, normal 50mm equivalent for the CL and TL2.

This image is an outlier. It was taken with the 17mm f1.4 TTArtisan lens.

One Stumbling block I've had in integrating the cropped frame Leicas into my operational comfort zone has been finding a very good, standard 50mm equivalent normal lens for the systems. I tried the TTArtisan 35mm f1.4 but while it's very, very good for the price one gives away all the niceties of modernity. You give up auto exposure in the modes other than "A". You give up in camera lens corrections for geometric distortion, vignetting and some other under the hood fixes. You give up exif info. You give up auto-focus and you also walk around in stark disbelief that a $75 lens can be so good...

I read a lot about a lens Leica sold especially for the CL/TL2 systems which was the 35mm f1.4 Summilux and just about everything I came across gushed about the outstanding optical performance of the lens. But of course it turned out to be big, heavy and painfully expensive. I thought $2,000K+ was a bit over the top for a lens I could only really use well on what is now a discontinued system family. 

After working with the Sigma i-Series 35mm f2.0 I was impressed by its performance on full frame cameras. It showed sharp chops and nice colors everywhere in the frame. But would it stand up to the increased pixel density of the cropped frame, 24 megapixel sensors of the mini-Leicas? That's what today's test was all about. 

I worked the lens at apertures from f2.0 to f11 and I was not disappointed at any part of the aperture range.  The sharpness didn't vary by much, only the depth of field. The lens is not too big on the camera and actually feels more compact and lighter than the "made for APS-C" Leica 35mm f1.4. The final plus for me is that I can use it on all of the L mount, full frame cameras as well as the cropped frame orphans.

Final verdict? Sure. It's absolutely fine. A very decent choice for a normal point of view on a couple of pixie sized cameras. And we already own it. Bonus.

Exhaustive and rigorous testing under treacherous conditions with a scary model.

 Bokeh anyone?