More images from Sunday's walk through SXSW...

There's something refreshing about being out in public, walking with a camera and only the vaguest agenda. If the population is dense enough you could just stand in one place, keep turning around and around and keep your finger on the shutter button of your camera. 

Something came to mind yesterday when one of my acquaintances asked me if it was "scary" to photograph "strangers" on the street. He then asked me if I got threatened or harassed. It made me remember something about my mom. 

We lived in Turkey for two years. A city called Adana. It's in the southeast of the country. My mom was always fascinated by different cultures, learned to speaking passing good Turkish and was more or less fearless. One day she heard about a very large encampment of "gypsies" who were about 10 miles from the edge of town. She wanted to go and see them and, oddly enough, take photographs of them. I say, "oddly enough" because my mother never showed much interest in taking photographs of anything other than family back then. She also was armed only with an older Argus A-3 camera. 

She hired a taxi cab in front of the America consulate, which was across a grassy field from our five story apartment building, and with her Turkish cab driver headed out to find the gypsy encampment. When they found it she asked the driver to wait for her and headed off to find one of the elders in order to make an introduction and ask permission to photograph. 

She found a group of older men who assured her that for a small contribution she would have their blessing to make pictures. She spent a half hour or so meeting people and photographing them and when she was ready to leave she found that the contribution she'd made to the elders had no bearing on the rest of the people she had been photographing. They all wanted to be paid. My mother had brought along some cash but not nearly enough to pay modeling fees to dozens and dozens of now aggressive people. 

She and the taxi driver made a hasty retreat to the cab. The driver asked her to give him all of her change. All of the coins she had with her. He added some of this coins to the collection and then strategically tossed the money out the window of the car in such a way as the path cleared out ahead. He jammed the car into gear and they effected a hasty retreat.

Years later I looked at the snapshots again as I was going through my late parent's house in San Antonio making it ready for sale. The photographs were not technically very good but my mother had one advantage over more technically proficient photographers. She was able to get close to her subjects. And she was able to develop an almost instant rapport. Even with gypsies armed and ready to press their advantage. 

To my mind my mother's intention was to just be there. The camera was an excuse; a reason to make the trip. An aside from the pleasure of being immersed in something different. 

When we returned to the USA she continued to photograph only sporadically. Birthdays, holidays, family trips and that sort of thing. I never thought consciously about this before but I wonder if my mother's interest in cultures different from hers was some sort of bread crumb trail for my own interests. Strange to dredge this up after so many decades have passed...

But here are a few more images from yesterday. Not clouds....

At SXSW companies are anxious to give their stuff away for free.

Sadly, it's mostly stuff you probably don't want. Like energy drinks filled with 

caffeine and sugar. Or phone screen cleaning clothes.

I had to take this because everyone in the photo looks, dour, pissed off or too serious by far.

See? No clouds...

Impromptu album cover shots everywhere.

I focused on the photographer, not the model.

She seemed more important....

"Wolverines ripped my trousers..."

Even the mannequins are decked out for SXSW.

Bokeh city...

My tip of the day. Never pass up red stuff. Especially deep red stuff.

so. I guess the point of the story about my mom is that we should, as photographers, try to be a bit more fearless than we might normally be. In most urban areas the worst thing that might happen (almost never) is that someone will try to forcefully try to steal your camera. Relax, the cameras are all insured. right?

But my mom's story from 1965 is still "archival positioned in the minds of her three children." 

 

I went downtown to photograph more stuff at SXSW yesterday but I ended up liking these clouds more....

 

One focused on infinity...

One focused on the edge of the building...

If you go out with the idea of shooting something very specific in mind you can sometimes limit yourself by constraining the intention of your outing too tightly. I went out looking for unusual people and scenes at SXSW (big music, film, tech conference. 10 days straight. right here in the middle of Austin) and the very last images of the day were a mile away and up in the air.

Yesterday's camera and lens of choice were the Panasonic S5 (original) and the Sigma 85mm art lens (DN DG). A very nice combination. 

Contrary to Saturday's mission all of the Sunday images were shot as Jpegs. I actually like the look better. 

I posted some questions for Mike over on theonlinephotographer blog site. The consensus is that I do not suffer from "low energy." But I really didn't get any of my pressing questions answered. Oh well. At least some of the readers seemed to really appreciate them.

Daylight savings time messed with my timing yesterday. Not much...but enough. 

Need a really, really great and cheap entry into the L system? The S5 is a wonderful and very capable camera. I recommend it highly. Sure, the new one focuses video faster. So what?

How do you become more "fluid" in taking photographs out in public? Practice, play, practice, play. And shoot, shoot, shoot.

 

I had time yesterday afternoon to take a camera downtown and make a bunch of photographs documenting the start of the week+ long spectacle of SXSW. Most of the events take place indoors and the music portion of the show doesn't start until tomorrow but it sure was refreshing to see people filling up the streets after a few years of sparse traffic downtown. 

I broke one of my "rules" in casual photography by taking along not just one camera but two, and not just one lens but two. And more extra batteries...

I'd photographed the day before with a Leica SL and a big, standard, 24-105mm zoom lens. I was bored carrying around such a big and obvious package of gear. I decided to go small yesterday and took out two Leica CL cameras. One sporting a Sigma 90mm f2.8 i-Series lens and the other with the small Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 zoom lens. I have to admit that I'm out of practice with 135mm equivalent lenses but I ventured on and used the 90mm lens for just about everything. I used it either at f4.0 or f2.8 but no apertures smaller than those two. 

I mostly just walked the streets and tried to will myself into anonymity and a super low profile. I don't shy away from meeting people's eyes but I also do like to pick people out of crowds with longer lenses. The two shooting days this week were less about coming home with "winners" that getting back into random shooting practice and to figure out where all the good shots are going to end up happening this time around. 

While the CL camera focuses quickly in S-AF it can be less performant in C-AF. I experiemented with C-AF but almost immediately defaulted back to my comfort zones of either using S-AF or just switching the lens to MF and using some focus peaking. The cameras were also set to .DNG format which is something I normally shy away from using in casual play. Jpeg makes the process more challenging (and fun) because you mostly have to get your files to be well behaved in camera instead of relying on the magic of post processing to save you from bad technique.

Above and below are samples that are all from the CL and the Sigma 90mm. I hope you'll click through to see them larger. 

Star Struck at SXSW. Rise of the latest "Transformer" movie. And Porsche?

A random SXSW attendee walks in front of a pillar of ads...

The first "big" event of SXSW, which started yesterday, was over at the Porsche pavilion on Congress Ave. They are doing a tie-in with the release of #7 in the family of "Transformer" movies. The movie features giant robot "Beasts" and I'm sure it will be an action movie to rival all action movies. To kick everything off the assembled crowd got to "meet" (from the other side of the rope and security...) the new stars. There is Dominique Fishback, just below and then, just below that she is standing next to the other new star, Anthony Ramos. It was the usual media crush but with HBO and their affiliates' photographers and videographers being the only people "inside" the ropes and the rest of the curious audience looking in from the other side. It was fun though. 

Dominique Fishback at the Porsche Pavilion. 

A "press" event. 

Dominique Fishback and Anthony Ramos stare, captivated, into the lens on my 

Leica SL camera. The real "star" of my afternoon downtown. 

The fella on the right with the beard is the director of "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts".

His name is Steven Caples, Jr. 

Here is the current condition of photography in our time. A horde of cellphones and a tiny handful of "real" cameras. And it's not for want of budget. Most of these folks have paid full pop for SXSW badges, hotel accommodations and pricey, downtown food.... they just prefer to shoot with....cellphones. 

This guy on the left is working for the film production company or their PR arm. His stationary camera was set up to record quick interviews with the actors and director as well as representatives from Porsche. 

I decided to take a walk downtown after meeting once again with my refrigerator repair person. He comes with the warranty...  Progress was made. He replaced a burned out light in the freezer compartment of my almost brand new $2500 fridge. He listened to the appliance for a few minutes and decided that it probably needs a new master control board so he ordered one. It comes to me via Fedex tomorrow. With any luck he'll be back on Monday to install this part and put an end to the drama and trauma of modern, 21st Century appliance ownership. If this doesn't work more drama and lawyers to follow.

But the walk is a great way to ignore the trials and tribulations of food preservation thermodynamics and get back in touch with "real life." I went with the "mixed grill" of gear yesterday. I wanted the cold, hard comfort of my favorite Leica SL but I wanted to some focal length wiggle room so I opted for a 24-105mm zoom from Panasonic on the front. I needed to take the lens out for a spin anyway since I just updated the lens firmware to 1.2 from 1.0 and wanted to see if it really did make the image stabilization more magic. 

It was a great combo for walking the streets and looking for fun SXSW vignettes. I broke with my odd tradition of using great cameras and lenses in conjunction with Jpeg files. I went full-on RAW yesterday and have to say that it really does look great when you take the time to squeeze more happiness out of the files in post. I'm planning to go back downtown this afternoon to shoot more but first I'm waiting for out yard guy/landscaper to show up so I can write him a check and show him a few things we need done to make our yard better after the ravages of the last ice storm. We also need to talk about having some stonework done in some of the terracing. But as soon as we've had our conference and $$ transfer I'm free and mobile for the rest of  the day.

What camera will I take today? I may end up sticking the big Leica zoom on a tiny Leica CL. That seems about right for this kind of day. Big and overkill combined with light and discreet for a package that's neither. 

On another note Michael Johnston writes that he came up short with topics to write about and would like some suggestions. I wrote him my usual 6000+ word recommendations but thought you might want to chime in and give him some new ideas/pick his brain. It's here: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2023/03/ask-mike.html

If you've always wanted to quiz Mike on something photographic here's an opportunity to help guide his site for at least a few posts.

Me, I'm deciding and packing. And dreaming about Tuesday when my refrigerator might once again serve me instead of the other way around. No dialog about swimming today. It was fine. Nothing earth shattering. Have fun out there. It's Spring Break 2023 !!!

Yeah. Optimus Prime doesn't look so big and tough in real life....

The "controversy" over whether it's a legitimate practice to design lenses that require software profiles for best performance.

 

when files come spilling out of the Leica Q2 they have already been profiled and corrected for various things. You don't get to see "under the hood" unless you want to. Is it wrong? Is it better?

There is always something to be contentious about in the world of photography. Who has the fastest AF? What cameras have the highest dynamic range? Why only dentists can afford Leicas (which seems like slight aimed at hedge fund managers, corporate CEOs and others....). Whose zoom lens is sharpest? And then there's the whole contentious issue of "who has the best color science?" which sounds a bit like "what's your favorite color?" "Oh! It's blue? Well that's just flat out wrong...." 

But one of the issues that tickles me to no end is the combat between people who unequivocally state that to achieve highest purity of purpose a lens must depend wholly on physical, optical design and construction for best results. Any thing else is "cheating" "a shortcut" "budget-driven" etc. and those who embrace the idea that a lens can be designed to correct for some things optically and other things via mathematical boosters. Firmware that tells the camera exactly how to correct for specific lens parameters such as vignetting and distortion. 

The biggest argument against electronically correcting something like geometric distortion in a lens has always been that the corners of the corrected frame suffer from lower resolution as a result of the need to interpolate up the corner resolution. Or the increased noise caused by boosting the corner exposure to compensate for optically uncorrected vignetting.

Like a lot of photo lore I think some of the anti-math arguments had their origin in the dark times of very low sensor resolution and very noisy CCD sensor performance. If one was photographing with a camera that had 6 megapixels and the corners needed augmentation then on a big print it's quite possible that the results could be a visual issue. And the lower res in the corners much more obvious. On a camera where ISO 80 was optimal and ISO 200 was an unholy mess of noise the results of a software driven solution for lens vignetting might also have been obvious. More speckle-y noise in the corners than in the center of the photographic frame. But oh how times have changed. 

While I'm certain many camera makers are using firmware and math corrections to make entry level lenses cheaper, smaller and lighter I'm equally certain that at the higher end of each maker's catalog of lenses the engineers are making careful design choices to wring the most performance out of a combination of software and hardware (actual lens design) implementations. 

Many parts of purely optical design are based, by necessity, on compromises. If you want a fast lens (big max. aperture) you'll need a big, curved front element. Physics demands that less light reaches the edges than the center of the lens while the curve of the lens means that the actual plane of focus is different at the center of the frame than at the edge or corner. You can correct each issue with added corrective glass elements or more expensive and esoteric glass types but this will change the visual character of the lens as each element adds its own compromise. Aspheric elements affect out of focus rendering (bokeh) and can make a lens look overly sharp. Additional correction elements; adding more air/glass interfaces require finer manufacturing tolerances and can also reduce overall contrast. 

As in most endeavors the best practice in lens design is to use as few elements as needed to preserve the contrast, resolution and acuity of the lens. Each added element can have both a positive and a negative effect on overall rendering. Each added element adds to the complexity of actually making the lens correctly. Some correction elements require complex mechanical movements separate from other lens elements and as you can imagine the movements have to be very, very precise which adds to the obligation to consider machine tolerances as part of lens design.

So, a simple Gaussian design 50mm lens might consist of six glass elements in five groups. It will have good sharpness and contrast from nearly wide open but it will manifest this performance in a broad swath of the center of the lens. The corners, because of the curvature of the elements, will have lower performance until the lens is stopped down. Your options for optical correction might be a more complex optical design (like the Sigma Art series 50mm f1.4) which adds much size, weight and cost. Also, moving heavy collections of dense glass reduces auto focus performance. With added correction elements the lens will now perform "better" even when used wide open. 

We like to chant that it's stupid to buy a "fast" lens and then use it at medium apertures and to an extent I agree. But most of use end up shooting our lenses at f4.0 or f5.6 and above, rarely do we use them in the low light that they are advertised to excel in. Which begs the question of why we are so focused on wringing out great performance at the margins rather than accepting a set of compromises that benefits most photographers more. 

Now, if we take a simpler lens design and maximize its overall performance for typical shooting we have a different path. We can have a lens with high and usable center sharpness at its widest aperture and really excellent performance across the frame at the middle apertures. All at a cost and at a size that works better for the vast majority of customers. If we want better performance of two critical issues: Geometric Distortion and Vignetting, then optical designers can exhaustively profile the issues involved and create models of correction that go a long way toward correcting these "faults" (if indeed we do perceive them as faults instead of just being the personality of the lens). Designers have become quite proficient at correcting both of these issues with corrections applied via lens firmware. The lens will likely never approach the nosebleed performance of a highly optically corrected lens in corner and edge sharpness because of uncorrected field curvature but the designers can get it darn close. 

By mapping the lens's personality and making interpolated corrections we can enjoy photography by using comfortably sized lenses with more than enough performance for most users. We can also meet the conundrum in the middle designing really good optical and mechanical systems and then augmenting and perfecting them with a dose of firmware finesse. I would contend that this is the course of action the designers of better lenses use all the time. 

I'm happy using older lenses on my new cameras. Even lenses with fewer elements and no software/firmware corrections. But I am equally happy, when trying to solve specific problems, to depend on the lens designer's solutions of mixing math and glass. No affordable lens is designed and built to deliver maximum performance at every f-stop and at every focusing distance. Some lenses give their best performance at infinity while a bunch are corrected for 10x to 50x their minimum focusing distance. Many world famous macro lenses are corrected for 1x life-size or 1/2x life-size but are middle of the road performers at longer distances and not that great an infinity focus.

The application of software/firmware corrections makes more lens universally usable. Not perfect and not always the compromise that everyone wants but better than using optical formulas alone. 

Do we need ultimate performance? Most of us don't. I'd love to have a Leica 50mm APO Summicron-SL for my SL2 camera but the lens is nearly $6,000 and it's heavy and big. It is quite good when used wide open. Probably the best thing around if you shoot at f2.0 and limit your focusing distance from about one meter to about five meters. But is it so much better than a lowly Panasonic or Nikon Z 50mm f1.8 when both are used at f5.6? Maybe you can see a difference......but maybe not. 

Finally, the old argument of image quality loss in the corners when using math correction is a bit passé. There might still be a small hit but the sensors have abundant resolution now and the ability to handle so much less exposure with so much less noise that it's largely becoming a non-issue for lens designers using math to fine tune. 

From my point of view the bottom line is that a mix of good optical design and equally good processing design in a lens yields benefits nearly everywhere and keeps the cost of really tremendously good optics lower.  A lens like the Sigma 85mm f1.4 DN DG gives incredibly good results when corrections are applied. Without them it has vignetting and geometric distortion. Lots and lots of barrel distortion. But it all goes away when the lens profiles are applied. If we depended solely on optical design to get the same performance then the front element and other elements in the lens would have to be much bigger and heavier. There would be more mechanical complexity in the mix. The AF performance might suffer as well. And in the end the price would be multiple times higher --- far out of the comfort zone of most users. 

I guess you can always argue in the other direction but I'm not sure you'll be on solid ground. 

I'll praise the mix of technologies. It works very well for the vast majority of us.

OT: The "first world problem" of refrigerator repairs... sigh.

 

Why can't we just spend the day at the pool?

Last year my favorite refrigerator ever died. We consulted three repair companies, all highly regarded, and the conclusion was the same: "the mother board is toast and they are no longer available..." so we started shopping for a new refrigerator. Any refrigerator that was really good and desirable (Braun, Miele, etc.) was out of reach because of supply issues. No availability.  Who can wait six to nine months to replace a fridge?

We bought a stainless steel, GE, french door refrigerator from Lowe's. It was in stock and deliverable within a week. The first delivery did not go well. The installers damaged my front door frame and the fridge and even cut the water line into the bargain. Back it went. The second delivery was carefully supervised by B. and went much better. The machine was installed in mid-November and worked reasonably well; until a couple of weeks ago. At that point I started to notice that the very top shelves of the refrigerator were not getting cold enough. As time went on the top half of the refrigerator space wasn't cooling down to the right temperatures. The freezer worked fine. 

The problem got progressively worse and we called GE's customer service. They arranged for a third party repair company to handle the in-warranty repair. A tech named David was able to come last week. He diagnosed the problem as being a faulty temperature sensor in the refrigerator (not freezer) compartment. He ordered a part which was delivered to the house yesterday. David came back today to install the part. 

The part has been installed and now I am waiting to see if the top section (the refrigerator compartment) is going to cool down. The refrigerator is running but I'm not feeling anything cold yet. When he was leaving David suggested that it might take up to 24 hours to cool down. I asked him what we should do if this wasn't the issue. He told me that I'd have to start all over again with GE. If I had to contact GE again they would get in touch with the repair company and then that company would send David out again to take another stab at diagnosing the issue.

I'm not particularly happy. Well, to be honest I am not happy at all. I had a vision of the repair not working and me taking an axe to the refrigerator, destroying it completely, boxing up all the parts and shipping the whole mess back to GE while videotaping every step of the destruction to put on Instagram Reels and on TikTok. Maybe even creating a channel on YouTube to show off the video and broadcast a warning for prospective refrigerator shoppers.

But, of course, I'll wait patiently until tomorrow and see what happens. If it doesn't work then I'll prepare myself for another week or so of refrigerator deprivation and the dramatic third visit of the GE warranty repair person. Before I stick a piece of C4 in the fridge and blow it up....

I have a call into my attorney to see about the "lemon laws" and if they apply to appliances... Next time I'll wait for the brand and model I really want and just eat every meal out until it arrives. But that will leave me less money for camera acquisitions. I guess modern life really is a series of compromises.

Shrugs shoulders. Now heading to the gym.