Ah. The ancient Nikon 20mm f2.8 D wide angle lens. Maybe it was the adapter.... Maybe it was the operator.... A bad shooting day?

A friend gave me a lens. It's the Nikon 20mm I mentioned yesterday. After a long day of accounting and chasing down vendors so I could pay them in a timely manner --- I decided to put the lens on an adapter I have and to walk around the downtown area taking random photographs. I came back with nothing spectacular or even very good. But I did come back with some thoughts about the lens and maybe an appreciation of how far lens design has come since the 1990s. At least where wide angle lenses are concerned. 

I used the lens, with adapter, on a Leica SL. It's a camera famous for the thin glass stack on the imaging sensor which is supposed to give better edge performance with Leica's huge selection of legacy lenses that were designed to work best on the more forgiving medium of film. Seems light rays hitting film emulsions tangentially aren't degraded in the same way they are when interfacing with the pixel wells in digital cameras. The thin stack wasn't enough though to bring this lens into the excellent or stellar category.

Like most lenses of just about any in the modern, multi-coated era of lens design the 20mm has a sharp central area and only really falls apart near the corners. At f2.8 the performance overall is mediocre to just good. At f5.6 and f8.0 it sharpens up, increases its contrast and looks decent. On all the images I took there was vignetting in the corners. In the very far corners the vignetting was massive and dense. Sure, you could crop but why not just start with a fully corrected 24mm lens in the first place?

One thing the lens has in quantity is distortion. And the distortion is not the easy to correct barrel distortion but the more pernicious mustache distortion. With a lot of patience and some talent in post production one could go a long way toward correcting it but..... again....there are better options at hand. 

At f8.0 the lens is capable of high sharpness in most quadrants of a frame and the trick is to use a camera with a good manual focus magnification feature. If you punch in as far as you can you can make images come alive with detail. But careful focusing is critical even when considering the vast depth of field the lens and aperture provide. 

The pros of the lens are: that it can be found for not much money. Samples are rampant at around $200. The lens is very light and very small compared to more modern (and more corrected) lenses. The focusing ring on my samples was smooth and had a short focus throw which is really neither a plus or a minus.

The negatives include that the focusing ring is hardly damped at all and feels different than most manual focusing and AF lenses with nice focusing rings which provide some tactile feedback. MF was definitely an afterthought on these lenses. But the flip side is that a short focus through and a very light MF construction probably increases the autofocusing speed a lot. The "cons' also include the fixed vignetting and the geometric distortion. Which largely disqualifies this lens as a choice for serious architectural photography. 

In a side-by-side, quick test I have to say that the Panasonic 20-60mm kit lens is better when used with any L mount camera because both vignetting and distortion are corrected in camera, via software. If I needed good technical performance at 20mm I'd grab the zoom first. But really, if you hang out at 20mm a lot then something like the Sigma 20mm f2.0 Contemporary might be the best choice for overall optical performance in the system. I owned the 20mm Art f1.4 Art lens from Sigma for a while and at most of the wider apertures the vignetting is bad enough to show through even with in-camera corrections. I'd rather have a better corrected lens with a more modest aperture. I could never really divine the value of the f1.4 aperture on a such a wide lens...

On the other hand this lens does have a lot of character. If you have an editorial use for the lens it could be fun. I'm withholding final judgement on this lens until I have the opportunity to shoot it on a sunny day and until I have more experience with it on the various L mount cameras. 

some might suggest that the lens adapter may be responsible for the vignetting but it's not a hard, mechanical edge as a physical blocking would cause and there is photographic detail if you take the time to correct for the vignetting in post. 

It was a fun distraction from an otherwise busy and fussy day. 

f5.6 at ISO 12500. 

ISO 12500. 

 I am looking forward to using this lens in good light.

I think the color rendering can be quite nice. Some of that is 

down to the camera....

New lens (to me) arrives suddenly and unexpectedly.

 

Again...it was cold, damp and the day featured endless, plodding rain. The little heater in my office barely kept up with the falling temps. I put on my boots to keep my toes warm. I worried about seasonal affective disorder until I remembered that I live in central Texas and that next week it might be in the 90s with bright sun. Not time to cover up that air conditioner just yet...

I'd just wrapped up the first stage of accounting on last week's three projects. The first stage being the payment of all the vendors, the talent agency, assist, make-up, etc., etc. The fun billing happens today when I send the clients the final bills. But it's always anticlimactic when shoots are over. 

My friend, Paul called to see what I was up to and to suggest an afternoon coffee at our usual joint, Trianon Coffee. It's just up the street from my place. I usually walk but not in a chilly downpour.

Paul is also a professional photographer so we sat with hot beverages and groused about the state of the industry, the inevitable changes in commercial work, the scarcity --- post Covid --- of assistants and support crew, the continuing ascendency of video, health insurance and retirement planning. And, of course, most of the conversation centered around cameras and lenses. We just about had everything figured out....

Near the end of our coffee conversation he pulled a plastic bag out and slide it across the table to me. "Here..." he said, "You might want to play around with this. If you want it it's yours." I opened the ZipLoc bag and pulled out a Nikon 20mm f2.8D lens, complete with caps and and a hood. Also a Nikon filter. 

I just happened to have a Nikon to L mount adapter in the studio so I mounted up the lens as soon as I got home. I remember owning one of these lenses back in the days of film, using it to good effect shooting interiors when the jobs called for it. I also owned the Canon version and liked it equally well. 

I didn't remember that the Nikon 20mm was so small. And lightweight. The focusing ring is almost completely undamped but that's typical for "D" lenses from that time. AF was becoming so popular I'm sure few people ever bothered to use their lenses in a manual focus mode. And in the early days of digital focusing medium speed wide angle lenses through smaller, lower res viewfinders was a complete game of hit or miss with "miss" nearly always winning. 

Since I recently gave away my TTArtisan 20mm lens and kept my Panasonic 20-60mm lens for occasional wide shots I was happy to have, once again, a prime lens for those times when you just want to distill your shooting experience down to the absolute fundamentals. And limit yourself to one focal length.

If the weather breaks and my work life slackens I'll head out this afternoon to give this lens a tour of downtown Austin. I hope it's as nice an optic as I remember. Nikon sold a huge number of these so they couldn't be that bad. 

Thanks Paul! Always fun to play with something new even if it's old.

The Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens is wonderful. All the right stuff in one package. And affordable.

 

 I finished re-reading a favorite novel this afternoon (Ada. By Vladimir Nabokov) and decided to get out of the house and get some fresh air. I grabbed the Leica SL2 and the Sigma 65mm lens and headed over to the UT campus. I wanted to see Laura Wilson's show of Writers' Portraits one more time before the holidays kick in and schedules get crowded. Once again I was the only guest in a large gallery space on the first floor of the UT Humanities Research Center. I took a quick glance at their copy of the Gutenberg Bible, took a gander once again at the "first" photograph by Niepce and then headed in to really examine my favorite portraits from Wilson's show.

I'm drawn to classic portraits like the one of Carlos Fuentes just below. I wanted to look at about a dozen that I really like and since no one else was there I could get close enough even to examine the grain structure of the prints and make some observations about where we are in the state of art of large, exhibition printing. The images from digital were interspersed with images from traditional film and the printing technique was so polished that all of the prints fit together. Unless you looked to the grain --- and you'd have to have your nose nearly on the print to see it clearly, you couldn't tell which came from what medium. 

There is a freedom in seeing a show by one's self. You can criss cross the gallery from favorite to favorite, circle back again and never have to wait for someone to get out from in front of a print. You also don't have to listen to any inane mobile phone conversations.

Again, I strongly suggest that photographers in Austin make an effort to see the Laura Wilson show at the HRC before it comes down in January 2023.

After I soaked up what I came to look for I headed across Guadalupe street to Medici Coffee which is just opposite the UT campus on what used to be the main drag. I guess it's still considered the main drag but it has none of the foot traffic and vibrance that it did when I attended UT as a student or when I taught there shortly after. Many of the older building on the street have been shuttered and are awaiting demolition so they can be replaced by much bigger buildings with much less character.

I walked into the coffee shop and immediately felt my chronological age. Every person in the shop was so much younger. The young woman at the ordering station was soooo patient with me. I got the sense that she felt I might have never ordered (non-drip) coffee before. She was walking me through the process like someone explaining a concept to a person with a limited vocabulary or hampered cognition. She seemed amazed that I knew how to tap my credit card on the sensor to pay for my drink. Or that I could sign for the charge on an iPad screen with my finger. 

I also ordered a scone. In a kind and quiet way she let me know that since it was after 3 pm and since I was also buying a coffee the scone would be half price. She looked at my unshaven face and my clunky, ancient camera with sympathy bordering on pity. I'm presuming she jumped to the conclusion that someone my age, alone on a cold, gray and rainy day, was.... down on my luck. It's okay. I get it. I have white hair. I guess I can't hide my battle with imminent mortality from the youth of today. But, on the other hand, it was nice to see a display of kindness and compassion. Even if I don't necessarily deserve it.

Moving on.

I used to change camera systems more quickly than many in our audience might change their underwear. But I've held onto the Leica SL2 since the Autumn of 2020 so that makes my tenure with this particular camera and the surrounding infrastructure a little over two years and there's no sign yet of me tiring of shooting with it. I do like to add a few lenses from time to time just to keep the credit cards well greased but I've yet to come across a camera or a system I'd prefer to shoot with now. That bodes poorly for my local retailer but it does help me focus on working with the camera more intently.

The L mount system in general has been a lovely platform for shooting with a wide variety of lenses.

Today I pulled the 65mm Sigma out of the drawer and took it out for a spin. It's a solid lens and a bit heavy but it's a good and comfortable match for the SL2. The finder image is really good for two reasons: the first is that the camera's EVF is nearly 6 million dots and uses Leica glass in the viewing path. Secondly, the lens itself is very sharp and contrasty all the way to f2.0 so the performance of the lens enhances the look of the image in the finder compared to lenses that provide less performance. 

The lens is built with 12 elements in 9 groups. One element is an SLD (super low dispersion) and two others are ashpericals. The diaphragm has 9 blades and they are rounded to enhance bokeh. The closest focusing distance is 55cm (which, I think, it just over 20 inches). The lens has an extremely nice, external aperture ring which will also click into "A" at one end and the focusing ring is very workable for manual focusing. This is a lens that can be shot wide open with no real optical compromise. It may be the sharpest lens I own in the normal focal length range. For anything really close up the nod would have to go to the Sigma Art Series 70mm Macro. 

The color rendering of the lens, even when using Jpeg format, is right on the money. And the AF is quick as a bunny on speed being chased by zombie coyotes. In all it's about as perfect as a "long normal" lens gets and the whipped cream on the top is the very sensible price of $700. Pretty much Leica performance at a very non-Leica price. I should buy an extra in case they stop making this model.....

Which brings me to my one wish/request/plea to Sigma: 

Please, please, please make us a 50mm f2.0 lens with the same cosmetics and eye-watering performance as that of the 65mm. It would fly off the shelf. Well, I could guarantee that at least two of them would fly off the shelves because I'd snap them up fast. 

After my geriatric coffee drinker meets benevolent barista I set out to walk the streets somewhat fearful that someone at the coffee shop might be calling in a "silver alert" and put out an A.P.B. for a "lost senior." I'd hate to have been snatched off the street and delivered home before I got a few frames off. But, of course, nothing of the sort happened. I was free to wander unfettered. 

And in the process I found some really nice color images in front of my camera. Lots of colors for a gray and chilly day. 

Above: A Bob Dylan graphic on the wall of The Hole in the Wall. A night club we used to go to in the 1970's. It's still there, still open and still banging out tons of live music. Right on Guadalupe St. right where it's been since 1974.

And, in case you were worried, I was able to find my car at the end of my photo walk and find my way home. I even remembered to bring the camera back with me...

Hope your Sunday was eventful in good ways and non-eventful in potentially unpleasant ways. 

OT: Cold and rainy swim practice this morning. Bracing trip from the warm pool through the Arctic blast to the relative safely of the locker room.

 We're not burdened by weather that brings life to a complete halt. At least not yet. 

I woke up early today. I guess the combination of vitamin K2 and the recent time change are changing my sleep pattern. I read the news, drank fine coffee and ate a piece of toast.

Then I got in the car and headed over to swim practice. There was a thick head of steam coming off the pool. The difference between the 80° water and the 38° outside temperature made the scene look like a Hollywood set that was completely overwhelmed by a Mole Richardson fog machine. 

Our highly weather resistant coach, Kristen, came bundled for the weather and didn't miss a beat even when a cold rain started ramping up like buckshot. Her workout was written up on two white boards and I'm sure she wrote it on them in the dry refuge of the guard office since writing on wet white boards is....difficult.

We did a thousand yard warmup and then headed into the main sets which were a series 50 yard sprints on a descending interval followed by fast 100s. Over and over again. 

It's kinda fun to swim a workout in the cold with the added sensation of freezing rain hitting every exposed part of your body and head. We seemed, as a group, to be working a lot harder on our underwater streamlines (the push off the way at the turn and the underwater dolphin kick that goes with it) so we could stay submerged longer in the warmer water. 

It was easier to cheat by occasionally pulling on the lane line during backstroke today. Why? Because the pool fog coming up off the water made it hard for the coach to witness my transgressions at the other end of the pool. 

The most exciting part of the workout came at the end when we had to pull ourselves out of the comfortably warm water onto the near freezing deck and walk briskly through the wind gusts to the locker rooms. It is on days like this that the hot showers afterwards are so rewarding.

In a break from my usually healthy diet I stopped  at a local McDonald's drive thru and ordered a biscuit, egg, cheese and bacon breakfast sandwich and a large coffee. Not the best nutrition but insanely fun comfort food after 3,000 yards in mixed atmospheric conditions. I'll try to walk it off later in the day...

Feeling mildly virtuous today. 

It seems like it's going to be one of those days with steady, mild rain, ever dropping temperatures and generally gray skies. The perfect day for an afternoon nap.

R&R after a busy week. 

A gallery of black and white images from the 50mm f 0.95 while out walking.

Wide open at the closest focusing distance.

See the cool vignetting?

The 2nd St. mannequins get risqué.

And, alternately prudish.

It can be sharp enough at f2.0. But maybe never in the corners....

Abandon all hope ye who enter here...

 

Strange Lens arrives.

 

All of you who guessed that I purchased some esoteric, high speed Leica lens were incorrect. I throw money around carelessly sometimes but it's usually buying something like a large latté instead of a small one. Or filling the gas tank all the way up...

I was curious so I bought another TTArtisan lens. It's the 50mm f 0.95 lens that's made for APS-C crop cameras. I would never have bought it but I read a user report from a decent blogger who was "surprised" when he tried the lens on a full frame camera. He found ample vignetting around the edges but (importantly) it wasn't mechanical vignetting, rather it was just optical vignetting which looks better and, with a bit of elbow grease, might be somewhat mitigated in post. But there are no hard edges. The lens, when used wide open or near wide open is also very soft in most places outside the center third of the frame. I like weird stuff and I always like to try super-fast lenses. And it was firmly embedded in the cheap side of the B&H lens collection. I took the reviewer at his word and ordered one. 

It came quickly. But it came on the day of maximum work schedule intensity and I only just got the opportunity to play with it this afternoon. 

The lens is all metal, has a click stop aperture ring, was purchased in the L mount configuration, has eight elements in six groups and two of the elements are claimed to be "high index" elements. 

It's very small for such a fast lens but I guess it makes sense since it's only intended to cover the smaller frame size. It's also kind of strange looking as the focusing ring and aperture ring are deeply engraved with a grip worthy design.

You probably know that most of these Chinese lenses are completely manual focus, have no electronic linkage to the L mount cameras, don't record exif info, etc. You actually have to use your hand to focus the lens by turning the ring. The L mount cameras will work in aperture priority as well as manual exposure modes. Enable focus peaking if you'd like. 

The metal filter ring is a 58mm one. The lens cap is one of those screw in metal ones that seems to annoy everyone. You can source a plastic pinch cap just about anywhere for about $8 if your frustration with the two or three seconds it takes to screw or unscrew the cap boils over....

So, what do I think? This is not a lens to buy if you are in the camp of needing/wanting and insisting on a flawless, sharp across the frame performance level --- especially when used at its two widest apertures. It's just a non-starter for that. 

Me? I'm happy with the lens. I like the heavy vignetting wide open. I like the almost non-existent plane of focus when used at its big apertures. But I do have a consistent goal to become eccentric. This lens is a helpful push in that direction. 

The top image (self-portrait) as shot into mirrored glass at f 0.95 and is a pretty accurate reflection of the overall performance wide open. The lens actually sharpens up at the middle apertures and becomes like most other lenses; except for the remaining high level of vignetting. 

More of an Artsy Found Object lens than a Street Shooters Tool. You've been warned. And really, for the $200+ you could instead get yourself a really nice pair of shoes or a good, restaurant dinner for two. 

Can't wait to shoot some portraits with it.

It's been a long and busy week. Everything worked out pretty well. Lots of photographs were taken. No one was harmed. And I did step outside the safety net and use the weird new flashes...

 

Good Apple honoree at the Texas Appleseed Gala last night.

Having fun at the Four Seasons Hotel for the 22nd year in a row.

The honoree: A. Shonn Brown

When last I blogged I had just wrapped up a day of photographing small products and cables with a camera tethered to a computer, in my studio. We lit stuff, wrangled the camera, shared images on a laptop screen with two people from the client side, made clever adjustments and then committed the products to short term "memory" with the push of a virtual shutter button on the laptop screen. It was all very calm and mellow. After the clients left I backed up the images from our engagement in a zillion places, broke down the set and started packing for the next day's shoot. All part of the same assignment. 

On Wednesday I had a stack of photographic gear in a collection of cases sitting in the studio awaiting the 7:45 a.m. arrival of my assistant for the day. He was right on time and we got straight into loading the amazing Subaru Forester while talking over which gear we were going to use and what the run of the day looked like. The client's new H.Q. is about five miles from my location and, wonderfully, it's in the opposite direction from the morning traffic flow into downtown. We arrived 15 minutes early. Nice. 

I'd met the security officer for the building two days before, during the scouting, so we were waved right through and hopped into an elevator with a (severely) overloaded cart. The marketing people we were working with had commandeered a beautiful 6000 square foot meeting room with high ceilings to use as our working studio for the day. Since we had already decided on the location my assistant, Perry, and I started setting up lights. 

I used a nine foot wide, bright white muslin backdrop in the background lit by two Godox SL150Wii LED lights. The main light, thirty feet in front of the background, was a Nanlite FS300 LED fixture aimed into a 60 inch white umbrella with black backing (to control spill). The overall fill light was a Nanlite FS200 LED fixture firing into a 60 inch, white, shoot thru umbrella on the other side. 

Since every shot we did on Wednesday would include a person or people I chose to tether to an Atomos Ninja monitor instead of going the slower route of tethering to my laptop. The monitor was connected to a tripod mounted Leica SL2 and, for the most part we used the Leica 24-90mm zoom, supplementing when absolutely necessary, with the Sigma 70mm Macro Art lens.  Sometimes you just have to get in a little closer...

The SL2 provides the monitor with a live view image via the HDMI output so the client can watch the shot build in real time. In many situations the models had to hold small products in a very specific way and in a very specific area. After some trial and error with the spoken language we all realized that it would be easier and quicker just to turn the on set monitor around so the talent could see exactly where they needed to be, or where their hands needed to be to get the shot right. I highly recommend, at least on fast paced shoots with lots of moving parts, that commercial photographers reconsider their reliance on computer tethering if they don't need to deliver finished files on set at the time of the shoot. The HDMI monitors are capable of keeping up with the recycle rate of the camera without issue and the connection, at least with the Leica, is rock solid. Not always my experience with computer tethering....

Our make-up person, Jessica, was right on time and grabbed a corner of the room to set up her station. 

The client arrived right on the dot at 8:30 with a cart full of products and props and a sixteen page, color catalog of the images she needed us to create during the day. Super organized and with comps of the set-ups. Photographer's paradise!

The talent arrived and all three were exactly what we needed for this medical product shoot. We were able to get our first talent into make-up by around 9:15 and started photographing in earnest. With a great monitor solution on deck, a well organized client, super-professional talent and a great roadmap we were able to get the bulk of our model+product shots on white done in time to break for a late lunch. 

The client had tacos from an Austin favorite, TacoDeli, delivered (in quantity) and even had gluten free and nut free options for one member of the crew who has some allergies. We talked about our progress over lunch and mapped out our next steps. 

We moved our lighting and camera to a surgical operating theater that was set up as a catheter lab, complete with a lifelike dummy on the imaging table. This side of the shoot involved more interaction between the models who were portraying a doctor, a medical imaging tech and a patient. Our biggest task, beyond constructing authentic looking scenarios was to keep reflections from our multiple light sources off a large, reflective wall in the background. With some deft seat of the pants geometry my assistant was able to work the lights into position perfectly. 

We finished our last shot around 4:30 p,m. and started breaking down the gear, re-packing and doing our administrative paperwork with the talent. I spent a few minutes talking to the client about file delivery and post production, the assist and I packed up the car and headed back on the arduous 7 minute drive to the Visual Science Lab world H.Q. 

During the course of our shoot day we shot 1285 full resolution raw files which took up about 116 GBs of card space. The camera was configured to write to both card slots for simultaneous back-up. Nice to have an option to do that when the model costs were $$$$ and any reshoots for file-fuck-ups would come out of my pocket. We are now backed up across about six hard drives and I've temporarily stuck a set of compressed DNG files up on my WeTransfer.com account pending final client delivery. Can't be too safe. 

After I downloaded back up copies of the files I realized it was my turn (Wednesday is a designated day on the family calendar) to cook dinner. I punted. Headed over to Trader Joe's to get a bag salad and a chicken pot pie. Comfort food to make me happy during our damp cold snap, and my fatigue from two days of commercial shooting. 

After I got the dishes squared away I headed back out to the office to pack for two different shoots we had on tap for yesterday. The first was easy. One portrait on location (exterior) at a law firm.  I packed a Leica SL with the Panasonic 24-105mm zoom. Why not the Leica zoom? Because I wanted the extra 15mm in order to compress the background a bit more and I didn't feel like cropping after the fact. 

The lighting was one of the Godox AD200 Pro lights (flash) firing into a Westcott Rapid Box Octa. A nice and fast to set up 32 inch octa-box. I shot a bunch of raw images of a very nice attorney, repacked the car and headed home to start work on the post processing from the day before ( I also post processed the attorney shots and made a nifty online gallery for her....) and to re-pack yet again for the Thursday night gala for Texas Appleseed at the Four Seasons. 

This is a shoot that's the polar opposite of the controlled and high budget shoots we did earlier in the week. I show up in a suit and tie and weaved through the crowd of 400+ attorneys photographing couples, small groups and bigger groups during an hour long reception. We had an honoree and all of her friends and family to photograph as well as organization staff, board members, contributors, big dollar patrons and various law firm partners from Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. I even met the judge who was presiding over the Alex Jones case. Wild. 

Lots of people, lots of loud conversations punctuated by clinking glassware and a constant flow of young, well-dressed legal associates and various non-profit staff. My "job" during the reception is to get as many of these "social" shots as possible. I've done this event, mostly pro bono, for 22 years in a row. I was originally talked into it by a nice friend who helped start the organization and she's corralled me in ever since. 

So, I flow through asking and gesturing for people to stop their conversations for a moment and turn their small groups toward the camera. I fire two quick frames to give me a better chance at getting a frame in which everyones' eyes are open and I smile warmly and thank them. Over and over and over again. 

I've used every imaginable camera, lens and flash combination you can think of over the decades. On the very first event, according to the brief account I wrote into a notebook back in 2000, I was using a couple of Leica M6 rangefinder cameras, a 35mm and a 50mm lens along with a Vivitar 285 flash on an off camera cord. I was shooting the event with Kodak's Ektapress 800 film and praying that the lab not screw it up.

Last night I took a Panasonic S5 and the 24-105mm lens, along with a dedicated TTL flash but I also took along the eccentric Leica SL, the Sigma 35mm f2.0 i-Series lens, and one of those delightfully retro looking Godox Lux Senior flashes. In fact, I brought two since the internal batteries are not interchangeable and I did know how long the flashes would go on one charge. I still don't know. 

Here's the flash:

There is no TTL automation and the auto flash is primitive and limited to one value. You can shoot automatically within a 12 foot limit at ISO 100 and f2.8, ISO 200 and f4.0, ISO 400 and f5.6, ISO 800 and f8.0, etc. 

I had wanted to find a current "automatic" flash for a couple of years. Not a used one from the 1970's and 1980's but a brand new product that "featured" a more limited feature set than other contemporary flashes. I might use the manual flash mode with power settings from time to time but I wanted a flash that I could use in that old automatic mode with various Leica cameras; which provide a very, very limited choice of good flash options. 

I selected ISO 800 and f8.0 for my automatic setting and gave the camera and flash a spin just before the reception opened. It seemed to work well so I defaulted to that combination for all of the social photos I took before we entered the main ballroom and started our program. The flash pattern vignettes a bit. With a 35mm lens it's not at all bad but on a wider lens you'd really see the corners go dark, dark, dark. 

I enabled the AF illuminator on the Leica and I was pretty shocked that, when coupled with a fast lens, the AF was fast, accurate and pretty much foolproof. The flash was accurate for the most part. If it erred it did so on the dark side and since I was shooting Leica raw files at a mild ISO being able to lift the exposures in post or to open shadows in post was a piece of cake. There were no irredeemable files in the mix. Nothing that was unsalvageable and, for the most part, the exposures were right in the half stop on either side safety zone. 

And, since we were working pretty close, 5 to 10 feet, the recycle was mostly spontaneous and the flash went on forever. A big win in my mind. I originally bought two of these. I thought they looked funny and whimsical and would be a conversation starter at events. Sadly, no one cares anymore about any permutation of camera gear. Nobody gave these odd little flash creatures a second look. 

As I stated up above I bought two because you can't switch out batteries. They take a while to charge (a couple hours at least). I figured that if I liked using them and wanted to use them for the entire event I should have a second copy to sub in if the battery in the first died. I also had a more traditional flash that takes double "A" batteries in the bag --- just in case. 

Just out of caution I switched out to the second flash when we moved into the on stage awards section of the program. Both worked flawlessly. Pretty amazing for $119 each. 

I got home after the event, kissed the spouse and headed out to the office to offload the memory cards. This morning I did a nose-to-the-grindstone post production session and sent last night's client an online gallery link from Smugmug.com and a full set of downloadable files from Wetransfer. It's all in the client's hands now. I hope it helps them with their marketing. 

After over two decades of this event I'm ready to hand the reins off to someone new. I'll let the client know and they can figure that part out. I don't want to become a referral site. 

Today? or what's left of it? A good, long walk with a camera, some unpacking and studio organization and mapping out an adventurous out-of-town trip over the upcoming holiday. Something that's just all about making photographs for myself.