Stuff photographers worry about that doesn't turn out to be very important after all. Warning: It's all TL:DR

I got a new lens yesterday. The Fedex driver pulled up, walked up the driveway and left the box by the front door of the house. I was reading a fun novel at the time. I got to the end of a chapter and headed down the long hall to the front door. It was the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron lens (with a Nikon F mount) that I ordered from B&H a few days earlier. It was just what I expected and just what I thought I wanted. 

I put it on an adapter and then on the Leica SL2 and drove over to downtown to take a walk and make a few photographs. It's always a good idea to try out new gear and make sure it's in good working order. I hate to send stuff back but it's still worse to put off trying a new lens or camera until it's too late for a conventional "return for refund." That generally means you have to default to warranty service and that's time consuming...

Anyway, as I was walking around with the photography machine  swinging from a strap on my left shoulder I started thinking about the episodes of futility that tend to strike us as photographers. Some of us read a lot and get sucked into the magnetic attraction of constantly addressing "need" in our craft. Only to find that most of the things we thought we needed turn out just to be either a waste of time or not nearly as important as we were led to believe. 

Here's my list of stuff I thought would be important but which never rose to the level of "need." This is my own list and probably not exactly transferrable to photographers whose specialties are different. For example, I don't do long adventures in remote areas to shoot landscapes. So, even though I have tried to "love" photographic backpacks --- and currently own three or four --- I've just never gotten along with them. Don't need them. And was surprised at how much I hated using them when I got around to buying several. For anything urban I just find them a waste of time and space. For work a wheeled case is so much better. For casual work the most I really ever need is a small shoulder bag. So, the thousand dollars spent on photo backpacks has mostly been a waste. Maybe if I was routinely hiking up 14,000 foot mountains to shoot spectacular landscapes I'd feel differently. But no. Not for me. 

The obsessive need to fill every millimeter between your widest focal length and your longest focal length. Often referred to a "coverage." Way back in the mists of time photographers made photographs with film camera and when they did they found that most zoom lenses sucked. They depended on prime lenses with fixed focal lengths to get the quality they needed. While some of the superstars of photography, working at the highest levels, ended up relying on only one or two focal lengths the vast majority of photographers felt the "need" to be able to cover everything from something like 18mm all way up to 300mm. But rather than figure out the real range in which the vast majority of their images were  made they decided that they needed the potential to cover anything. To be as prepared as a Boy Scout. 

These photographers carried around huge bags filled with heavy inventories of metal and glass prime lenses, spaced in angles of view as close to each other as possible. For those who really, really did work/photo-commerce with the full range of options this meant near continuous lens changes. For others, like photojournalists who needed to respond quickly to breaking situations it meant putting a range of lenses on three or four different camera bodies and wearing them all on straps at the same time. Each lens mated with its own body and ready for its specific mission. Little wonder that so many photographers from the mid-century film days were sidelined with bad backs and ruined shoulders. 

The current manifestation of this need to cover everything obsession is the idea that we need to cover the same kind of range with high quality zoom lenses. In every mid-level photographers bag I have had the opportunity to look into I find what has come to be referred to as "the holy trinity of zoom lenses." Which is becoming, these days, the "quad or trinity+1  of lenses." And since most photographers of a certain age remember the days when high ISOs sucked almost all of them reflexively opt for the fastest aperture zoom lenses possible. So a current, overloaded, camera bag usually features something like: a 12-24mm, a 16-35mm, a 24-70mm and a 70-200mm zoom. All with maximum apertures of f2.8. An amazing load of stuff to port around; especially if your goal is...fun.

It was always revelatory for me when photo magazines and websites used to publish the distribution of focal lengths used to make "award-winning" photos. The distribution was nearly a perfect Bell Curve with 28mm lenses anchoring one end, 135mm focal lengths anchoring the other end and a huge spike between 35mm and 85mm. Those exotic focal lengths we all craved? The ones at the far ends of the curve? Mostly "no shows." 

With very high resolution cameras at our disposal today the need to cover every millimeter is mostly pointless. We'd all mostly be well served with maybe a 24mm, a 35mm and a 90mm lens combo and we'd crop to meet the middle grounds. Even better? One standard zoom that covered 24-105. Or 24-120mm. That's pretty much it. We'd save our money, our backs and our time spent trying to choose what to use next. But I guess that would take the fun out of it all for some.

Here's one I am especially guilty of. The endless search for the perfect "high speed" standard lens. In the 1940s and 1950s when fast black and white film was generally locked at a maximum of ASA 200 (maximum!) many professionals and photo artists who wanted to photograph in low light, at night, in subways, etc. were constantly searching for a 50mm lens that let in more light. In a time when a well corrected 50mm lens was usually delivered with an f2.8 maximum aperture the guys on the cutting edge were searching out the f2.0 lenses at first and then moved on to a search for the ultimate 50mm f1.4 lenses that were just hitting the market. They paid a premium for these lenses because they could get images the likes of which their audiences had never seen before. 

In the 1960s and 1970s the race for lens speed continued partially for light gathering but also because a faster lens yielded a narrower depth of field when used wide open and that more limited depth of field was an aid to more accurate focusing with SLR cameras that had come to dominate the markets. Focusing screens in the cameras could be optimized to take advantage of fast lenses and the fast lenses in concert with a good focusing screen meant a much higher accuracy when nailing focus. 

Those were the reasons to look for fast lenses back then and the camera makers delivered. But mostly they only delivered the speed in the widely accepted 50mm range. The current obsession with super fast 28s, 20s and even faster wider lenses wasn't yet "a thing." 

Now our camera sensors can see in the dark, our camera's AF systems can work in light so low our eyes have trouble parsing subjects at all and the ability to get a lens focused no longer depends on our eyes being able to discriminate between sharp and unsharp on the focusing screens. Most screens now are optimized for bright viewing and not for actual focusing acuity. But we photographers are still on the hunt of "the fast glass." From a cost, handling and results point of view it makes no sense at all. Even if you are a fan of narrow depth of field the difference between an f1.4 or even f1.2 lens and an f2.0 lens is not that big of a deal in 99% of shooting situations.

Last year I bought the Sigma Art Series 85mm f1.4 DN DG lens. There's really no need, from an image quality perspective, to stop the lens down. It's sharp and usable at f1.4 but therein lies the real problem. It's usable, sure, but you'll have a hard time getting enough distribution of sharpness in the frame to make really good photographs. The fast aperture isn't appropriate for most of what you'll be photographing with the lens. I find myself stopping down to f4.0 or f5.6 in order to keep enough of a person in focus to make an acceptable portrait. I'd be just as well off with an 85mm lens that "featured" a maximum aperture of f2.8 or f4.0. And an 85 with an aperture of 4.0 could be made nearly as small and light as a nifty-fifty. With no real loss of usability. None. 

Fast 50s? The huge majority of us don't need em. We don't use them at their widest apertures except when desirous of bragging rights. I've been buying slower lenses lately --- with glee. Most of them make really good images. But...the search continues. (Bravo for Sigma for having the "courage" to make a "slow" new 50mm lens. Imagine, it just an f2.0).

The "need" to travel to all the tourist spots on earth to get "great" photographs (which, incidentally, look like everyone else's photographs...).  I get some push back from visitors to the blog about how "boring" Austin looks. The architecture is so "bland." The people so "generic." According to them I should be out on safari or sitting in a café in Paris or climbing the Himalayas or wind surfing a lava flow with my cameras. And I guess, if you are a landscape photographer there is a lot of validity to this point of view. But it's based on the idea that photography is strictly about documenting what is in front of the camera instead of interpreting what is in front of one's camera. I see plenty of pleasant but boring photos from Iceland, and the edges of glaciers from Alaska to Norway, and Antartica which are so cliché now that they are as boring to me as some stranger's wedding photographs. I think the new goal of photographers should be to use their craft to reveal things about their lives and their environments that are unique; or at least different. After all, one's own life is the one area of true expertise that most people have. 

When people look through my images they mostly respond to the portraits. Photographs of people I've taken in the studio, or on locations that are so anonymous that they could be anywhere. I bring that "look" with me. If I travel to exotic places I find that I'm mostly captivated by the people I meet. Those are the subjects I'd like to photograph.  If there is a famous building or a famous mountain range behind them it serves me only as a nice, slightly out of focus background. I love Rome, but it's the look of the people who live there that captivates me, not another chance to make an image of the Coliseum. I like London but only because the people act and look different from the people in Austin. Not because of the big buildings or the giant Ferris Wheel. But there are lots and lots of people that look interesting to me within a mile of my own home...

I know photographers who are constantly on the go, getting ready to go on the "trip of a lifetime" or coming back from a trip of a lifetime, ready to spend weeks or months cataloging their images, applying metadata, working and re-working an image we've all seen thousands of times before from thousands of sources. What makes the photograph their own? What makes a sunset shot of mountains so special that we can tag it directly back to the source? To the artist? But it takes a "real" artist to develop a style (one that  usually stems from a deep interest in a certain subject) which can make even the most boring and quiet home base seem mysterious and captivating. 

Documentary photography always seems to me to be a very external view of the world while portraits, found art and still life, at least the good ones, are very much about human interaction, human habitation and collaboration. The world outside is static. The portrait is alive. And interpretive photograph is less dependent on location; on the sites. How many images of the Eiffel Tower can you really digest without becoming immune to the charm? How many Metro signs can you see before they become invisible to you?

I think travel, and travel workshops, are things we thought we needed in order to make good photographs but it turns out that what we really need a lot more is just a deep interest in a subject. Something we want to show the world in a way that we don't think anyone has done before. It can be a scene from a local highway intersection, a high school dance, a diner, a truck stop, or a carnival. A beautiful face, a mysterious room, or even a worn pair of tennis shoes.  But the documentary landscape photograph captures only a slice of "what was there" while our tourist's eye takes in so much more. Better perhaps to be a camera-less tourist soaking up the experience than a travel photographer constantly trying to decide on the right lens, the right composition and the right moment to photograph a gelato stand --- instead of just ordering (and enjoying) some undocumented pistachio ice cream...

Do we need to have an almost demonic focus on archiving/saving/hoarding every shot we've ever taken? To tag it, metadata it, label it, catalog it and then archive it across a wide range of storage options? Really? Really?

You'd think we were building a skyscraper. A one hundred story building. And that brick after brick had to be geo-located, mapped and readily available at all times. Most of the stuff I shoot is crap. It's either technically boring or worse, it's of a boring subject handled in a boring way. All of that stuff is best dissolved back into the energy buckets of the universe. Except for a handful of super-star photographers most of us have maybe 100, if we're luckier, 200 great photographs to show after years of trying. Not great photos we shot today but the culmination of years of shooting.  At least they are great to us. The rest could go away and no one would notice. 

So much as been written about sorting, cataloging and archiving photos that you'd think we were back in 1985 selling stock photography into an endless market filled with big money. That train has sailed. That ship left the station years ago. And yet we tend to soldier on as if client YYY is going to call tomorrow and demand a copy of Bob Smith's 1993 headshot on a gray background. And that they might have a $10,000 purchase order to go along with the demand. Really?.... REALLY?

If your clients are paying for rights in perpetuity you might as well pack up their photos and send them along to the client for safe keeping. 95% of the stuff shot on assignment will never, ever be used again. Not by you and certainly not by anyone else. Exceptions? Famous actors, famous politicians and famous criminals (and in some cases you can "archive" the last two categories into one!). Those photos of have legs of their own. And, of course your personal portraits of family and friends are exempt from my general scorn. They probably have deep value to you and your loved ones.

Where did we get the (wretched) idea that all of our devices need to be connected to the internet? And why is sharing so vital that it has to be done immediately? Right now? 

Thom Hogan has told us over and over and over again that the reason camera sales have fallen is that camera makers have done a poor job getting our cameras instantly connected to the web. I want to take a moment to thank the camera makers for NOT subjecting me to more internet exposure. My day is full enough without feeling as though I have to endlessly upload and share everything that comes whistling through my digital cameras. If Thom truly cared about your success in photography as opposed to his need to make his own workflow more "efficient" he would encourage all of us to slow down, re-visit work we've been shooting, take time to digest what we've done, consider how to improve it, develop a good strategy for post processing and then give some thought to both how to best show off the work but also how to preserve your rights to the images. Your control over your work.

It's wonderful that cellphones can post your half naked, fully drunk vacation photos on Instagram before you sober up enough to consider the future damage you may be doing to your "brand" in the process. That's the nature of the "always on" cellphone. But expecting your camera to be your new "junior computer" and communication hub is like expecting your lawn mower to do double duty mixing cocktails. It just isn't what cameras are particularly and intentionally designed for. 

And an embarrassing reality for all the people of a certain "advanced age" about endlessly posting everything breathlessly on social media is that this kind of impulse to turn every tool into a bad "Swiss Army Knife" is like embracing CB Radio. Or wearing a dickie under your shirt. Shunning CDs for LPs. It's a bit absurd and misguided. Thom is super smart so I'm sure he has a clever rationale for wanting to post or transfer images right now! In the moment! But I'm equally sure that while he preaches it he's not the sort to throw stuff up willy-nilly on the web. It's like that offhand comment you made to your CEO which you instantly regretted. Once those photos are out there is hard to take them back.

I was part of a beta test team for the camera that caused Samsung to surrender and completely leave the camera market. It was called the Galaxy NX. It had a five inch rear screen. It "featured" bluetooth, wi-fi and cellular data capabilities. It ran on Android Jelly Bean OS. You could share images instantly on three different wireless protocols. It was a fucking disaster to shoot with. Just a train wreck of a camera. But sadly, one blessed with a really nice collection of lenses. It was so bad that it overwhelmed the next camera in the chute with it's wretchedness and convinced all the marketing/data people in the Samsung camera organization to run screaming out of the marketplace for interchangeable lens cameras for good.

The over-riding compulsion to make a camera that had as its lead feature the ability to share right now from anywhere was the very feature that brought their whole line of photographic tools to its knees. They never publicized their reason for leaving the market. I guess they hoped that Sony, Canon and Nikon would try to follow in their footsteps and it would bring them down too. Sharing the pain of a misguided product with their competitors. Misery loves company. 

I have thoughts of taking apart my Leica SL2 camera and cutting out the parts that enable bluetooth. Kind of like all the disgruntled camera buyers out there that want to excise video from their DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.... I don't want communications gear planted in my camera whose biggest effect is to suck a battery dry in no time. I can wait till I get home to transfer images. Maybe, if I wait to post, good taste or self-preservation will prevail in the meantime. You can rationalize the idea of immediate back up to the cloud but really, isn't that what you all fought so hard to get two memory card slots in your cameras for? Back up?

You'll never hate communications tools in your camera as much as I do until you've brought a Samsung Galaxy NX up to your eye to shoot a once in a life time shot only to have the camera lock up while it downloads the latest update to Candy Crush. Which, YES, came preloaded on that camera. Which summed the utility of the "feature" succinctly. 

It's all very chic to embrace film photography in 2023 but mostly because it's just a bit different. Kinda like platform shoes and Dingo boots making a comeback. Or black light posters. Or George Wallace (Oh wait....). Or Jello salads. Or Whoppers. Or rotary phones. Or carburetors. Or eyeglasses without anti-reflective coatings. Or Twinkies. Or Space Food sticks. Or big daisy decals for your car. Or over the counter stomach ulcer medicines. Or polyester shirts. Or Hawaiian shirts with graphics of giant plants on them. 

We didn't shoot film in the golden age because we thought it was great. We used it because that's all we had. And as we were standing in line at the store to buy more and more film and then standing in line at the lab to drop the film off and pay more and more money to make it "work" we dreamed of a time in the future when cameras could make even better photographs for free. But I guess in an age where people are actually making coal burning pick up trucks I shouldn't be surprised that a small but loud percentage of people are making a point of "going retro" and using film cameras once again. Only, back when we did it we were paying a couple bucks a roll and now the cool kids are paying upwards of $15 bucks a roll for mediocre re-spooled Russian surplus movie film. And salivating over artifacts they'd never tolerate from a digital camera. Embarrassing? Yes.

I think of all this the same way I do about LPs. Those are big, flat, 12 inch diameter records which we used to listen to as they spun around on a record player or, in fancy terminology: turntables. As needles gouged into the grooves and progressively wore them down until the "artifacts" made these vinyl dinosaurs unlistenable. I can hardly wait to see the final step in the misguided embrace of "vinyl" and that would be the creation of a turntable which can be used to play records in a moving car. Maybe they can use the same image stabilization tech found in cameras to stabilize the record players in some really cool, old car. Like your dad's old Pontiac. Or something chic from AMC. 

Using film when you can spend a lot less and get a better and more reliable image making machine is like using rough bark instead of toilet paper... Just sayin. Older doesn't make it better.

 

Reverting to film is one of those things that seems interesting in the first few moments of consideration and then, when you sober up you realize it's a stupid idea. Unless you never come to your senses but that would also be sad.

The best reason to collect old film cameras might be to rent them out as props for "period" movies about the last century. 

I know I'll hear push back on this particular point...

How incredibly vital is it to print a Zone System enhanced black and white print on "archival" paper if you want to be considered a "serious photographer"?

This one just won't die. Imagine an older guy who grew up marveling at the works of Ansel Adams, Brett and Cole Weston, John Sexton and any of the legion of photographers championed by John Szarkowski who printed and showed in black and white, as he putters around his comfortable home in his pressed Dockers, wearing his Bass Weejun boat shoes, an LL Bean dress shirt under a nifty cardigan sweater. He glances about at all the books about photographers from the last century. He stops to pet his dog and then pours a nice hot cup of Sanka with a splash of Coffee Mate before easing himself into his mid-century, padded desk chair and muses about his ability to stop time. He's chosen to stop it, as far as photography goes, at the moment when he enjoyed the art of camera work the most. Maybe around 1970. Or maybe it's around 1980. To his mind nothing of consequence has happened in the world of "Fine Art Photography" since then. He knows this to be a "fact" because he hasn't seen (or wanted to see) any large monographs of black and white landscapes by any contemporary (current) photographers and, more importantly, he isn't aware of any gallery showings of contemporary artists dedicated solely to the upper middle class ideal of the immortal and majestic American landscape since, well, a long time. And especially not presented as large black and white prints. 

This man is getting better and better at stopping time. He can do it with writing or music or photography.  Even food. Or anything having to do with new technology. He's stopping time as a photographer at the point which big printed portfolios of black and white images were what galleries most cherished; at least what they cherished getting from photographers. He and his cohorts feel threatened by the progress of art. Their comfort lies in their surety that the work made during their period of relevance will stand as the marker for the "high point" of photography. If one can't produce a series of "monochrome" prints then, in their view, you have not done ART. This point of view, of course, does two things: It devalues any photographs that deviate from his litmus test out of hand. Color work, digital presentations, and even non-landscapes are suspect and rejected. And secondly, if the person is influential he helps to enforce a rigid and institutional (read: academy) adherence to a set of aesthetic measures that are passé and which lock out contemporary creative artists. But then again --- it's so comforting to be so firmly anchored in one's formative beliefs. 

So, do you have to have a portfolio of majestic black and white prints on thick and luxurious double weight paper in order to be an "authentic" fine art photographer? I'm not buying it. Photograph has evolved. It continues to evolve. Most of it gets presented on screens. The issue of how to sell a photograph to a collector is a different issue altogether. Maybe the conservative gallery market  still demands a physical product to sell but that doesn't mean any other kind of imaged photograph is cancelled or diminished. 

Change is hard to accept. But giving up is a disservice to the art. If you are writing a book on the work of Andreas Fenninger I think it's valid to concentrate on his experiences, references and the period in which he worked. If your goal is to be conversant about photography as a living, growing medium I think it behooves one to aim a bit wider. A lot wider. An example I can think of would be our appreciation for work made by current fashion photographers. We (the general public) see this work in three (or more) ways. It's in industry focused magazines (both printed and electronic), it's shown in its commercial guise as poster and point of purchase graphics and, if the artist is significant enough or has a wide enough audience, it also exists in book form. We needn't collect the work as prints only to appreciate it and enjoy it and the artist doesn't need to make prints to sell in order to profit from their work.

Don't get me wrong. I'm taking a whole generation of photography "experts" to task, not one or two individuals. I am as guilty as anyone else in my reflexive appreciation of a nice black and white print. I have them scattered all over my office. But it's more a sign of my position in history than a demonstration of the power of the traditional print. And, I think you'll admit that the enjoyment of all kinds of current works underlays why we're scrolling through the image resources of the internet to begin with.

No, you don't need to work exclusively in the land of the big (or small) black and white print in order to be a serious photographer. You can go that way if you want to. We'll wave at your Buick Electra as you drive by. Wave "Hi!" to Fred Picker if you see him. Maybe we should all take a break from worshipping at the altar of the Zone System. Like a reset maybe.

Do I need a flash meter or light meter to be a real photographer? 

You sure don't need to buy a separate one as the ones in your cameras are just fine. I spent about $600 on my last light meter. I pull it out a couple times a year in order to measure flash when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the speed, complexity and stress of a shoot. It's comforting since I come from a time when a meter was crucial and our 4x5 inch view cameras didn't have them. Now? You can click a frame and review it along with a histogram (and in really cool cameras you could look at the resulting image with a waveform graph overlaid). You'll get the information you need. Especially if you aren't trying to match a white background to a subject exposure in a studio with five or six lights. 

Most of us are shooting available light or with some sort of simple lighting set up. We're hitting a time when getting a white background evenly lit is more or less meaningless. We can "select subject" in Lightroom or Photoshop and knock a background out to white with the click of a mouse. Gone are the days when tight exposure matching was absolutely critical in day to day work. 

My favorite meter for simple stuff like stage lighting is an app on my iPhone. It gives me a waveform and a histogram and it's also a color meter. About $29. But truthfully? I rarely use it either. The EVFs and LCDs on my cameras are more than adequate for judging good exposure. Why buy and carry around more stuff?

No. You don't need a light meter to be a "real" photographer. Unless none of your cameras has a built in light meter or the capability of an instant image review. And unless you left your iPhone at home. But even with large format cameras we depended on Polaroid test shots far more than on what our meters told us. 

I remember three or four photographers who got together for lunch back when we had time to get together for lunch. We were all shooting either non-metered Hasselblads or non-metered large format cameras. We started talking about meter accuracy. Everyone stopped and pulled their favorite meter out of their always with them camera bag and we all put them in the center of the table and metered. Not one of the fancy, top of the line meters agreed with any other meter. That was eye-opening. That's when Polaroid became my go to "preview." 

Is image stabilization vital for photographic success? 

This always makes me laugh. And I assume it brings a chuckle to owners of Leica M series rangefinders, large format photographers, Fuji X100V users, film users of medium format cameras, working professionals, etc. Cameras have been used effectively without built in image stabilization for about 170 years. Handheld cameras have made wonderful photos while bereft of (nanny) features like IBIS for as long as people have been shooting with handheld cameras. It can be a nice feature to have if you like to use long lenses handheld as the stabilization reduces movement in the viewfinder and makes composing easier. But vital? Hardly. 

Use a faster shutter speed. Use a tripod. Learn better hand holding techniques. Or just accept that most images don't really need the extra stabilization. You don't need to give up IBIS to be successful but in most cases not having it isn't holding you back either. It's easy to experiment and see how well you can hold a camera and lens steady. And isn't the inexorable rush toward better and better high ISO performance as good argument against the "need" for IBIS. After all, a clean high res file allows for the use of a good shutter speed. 

And most importantly, you understand the IBIS does nothing to stop subject movement/motion. Right? 

Turn it off and try it for yourself. A fun experiment for people who are starting to feel they might benefit from more challenges in their own photography. It's the friction of process that actually makes this all so fun.

Do we really need voluminous forums and review sites in order to succeed at photography?

Well, you can enjoy making photographs and you can enjoy reading other people's opinions about making photographs (and which gear to do it with) but you can't do both at the same time. I think a ton of energy and time gets wasted on the silliest of arguments at male dominated photo sites. And silly theories arise (have you heard the one about the fashion model and "equivalence"?) which don't move the craft forward, they just provide dry fuel for raging fires of argument. 

All the sites (except this one) are created and fanned for one purpose. That's to make money by selling opinions of advice and working as conduits for products being sold by camera makers, light makers and assorted gear makers. The forums exist to act like glue and keep potential (and highly targeted) customers coming back time and time again. It's all about building desire. 

You say you've met and made some good friends online, at the forums. Really? When was the last time you had coffee with them? Did they help you move? Did you do a photo walk with  them? 

Everyone seems crestfallen by the sudden eradication of the world's largest argument site, DP Review. Maybe the universe is trying to tell a big group of highly contentious people to get off their ever growing behinds and be active participants in the craft they profess to enjoy so much instead of just "talking" about it over and over again. 

And finally, Raw versus Jpeg. 

They both work well. Use the one you are most comfortable with. If you have super sloppy technical skills you might prefer Raw. If you can actually expose correctly and can eyeball general WB (is it cloudy outside? Is the sun shining?) then enjoy the leisure and comfort of Jpeg. It doesn't really matter. Unless you want it to.

That's all I have for this morning. I made the images below by way of making sure the Voigtlander 40mm lens I got from B&H this week works well. It does. I like it. No arguments here. 

Battling the malaise induced by recognition of the oncoming Robot Apocalypse. Or how I learned to be happy while generative A.I. disrupted white collar jobs.

 A quote from Greg IP's article about the ramifications of generative A.I.,  in the Wall Street Journal:

"To paraphrase the old saying about recessions and depressions, technological disruption is when your neighbor is automated out of a job; the robot apocalypse is when you are automated out of a job. Professionals, including people who write columns for a living, now know the fear of obsolescence that has stalked blue-collar workers for generations."

Just hanging out with a Leica CL waiting for the Terminators

"Help me Sarah Connors!"

Photographers are at an interesting spot in their collective history. We're either headed out the door of commerce or we're working at figuring out how to stay relevant in a quickly changing world. The disruptor this time is generative A.I. Software that can create written material such as blogs, reports, proposals, books, articles and reviews (I wonder when the first A.I. critic will disparage the first fully autonomous A.I. novelist). Powerful software that can aggregate immense amounts of data, digest it, and then present it with a high degree of accuracy and clarity will almost certain cut huge swaths through the ranks of our current white collar, college educated workforce. The ripple effects will be enormous.

But it's equally effective at creating photographic images from scratch. Or from suggestions. Or from source materials such as snapshots or drawings.

What I hear from people outside the tech industry and outside the photo industry is that this sort of rising autonomous ability on the part of machines is creating overblown news stories and that the sort of capabilities required to replace trained, human professionals is years and years, or decades away. But when I look at tech resources and even at the cutting edge of my own industry I can see that this will be like the "Kodak Delusion." 

The Kodak Delusion was the belief, supposedly supported by rich data, that the world's biggest imaging company would be able to rely on film sales for decades past the nascent introduction of digital cameras. Dozens of Kodak PhD, economists, on the payroll, assured the board of directors that progress would be slow and linear in the digital field and that the slow and steady progress Kodak was making toward sliding into the digital market was right on the pace. Right on the numbers. And then everything went to hell as the acceptance and demand for digital products skyrocketed and accelerated logarithmically and left Kodak in the dusty museum of once great companies, sidelined within a small handful of years. Film, for the most part, just vanished. So did labs. So did processing chemicals in nice yellow envelopes. So did support for hundreds and hundreds of college and vocational photo education programs. So did their valuable professional support programs.

I wrote earlier about how quickly I thought the new tech would disrupt the market for business portraits; headshots. I've now, at last count, had about 45 people email me links to a number of ads offering the following service: You take a group of selfies with your phone. You choose a style and a background you like. You upload these files to the service which puts your images into a source file which software deconstructs using standard face recognition techniques (space between eyes, height and structure of cheekbones, nose structure, mount structure, etc.) to build a "new you" from all the parts. The new you is enhanced, cleaned up, rid of scars, acne and rough skin. Stripped of your previous double chin. And output as a series of new "candidates" for you to choose from. All for about $29. Turnkey.

The slower thinkers among us reflexively say that there isn't enough "resolution" on the phone selfies to make great images and so current professional headshot creators needn't worry. They totally miss the point that the supplied photos only supply the framework or the overall facial grid coordinates for the final digital portrait construction and that the appearance (and reality) of detail, texture and overall resolution and sharpness are made when the program "skins" the "frame". The resolution of the source material is immaterial to the final quality of the images; as long as the source images (selfies) provide broad information (hair color, facial metrics, complexion tones). To put it simply, the A.I. programs are looking at your supplied selfies the way a painter might look at a model or source material when doing realistic painting. They get the broad strokes from the small photos and then paint large. As large as you might want. And with as much fabricated but apparently real detail as you might want. 

I have a few friends who understand this new technology very well and say to me that the sky is the limit, that we are at early days in the "takeover" and that this will free up mankind for more leisure. Neglecting to acknowledge that most of the off-boarded knowledge and creative content workers will need to find new sources of income to replace their existing salaries. I guess the counter argument is to not worry about it if you are a stockholder of a company that benefits from endless, free content creation by machines because the embrace of the robots will reduce operating costs and raise equity value... An argument that brings little solace to those made redundant....

So, the sky is falling. The robots are kicking down the doors. bullets bounce right off their titanium alloy armor. Why don't I care?

Hmmm. I guess it's because I am confident that most bright people who are temporarily displaced will find a new way to make money and thrive. I'm also of the belief that a certain percentage of the population doesn't read the news, doesn't understand the coming changes and the ramifications, and that they will continue on doing things the way they have been until forced to change. 

I did some work for a large, regional advertising agency last week. We made portraits. They have a burgeoning I.T. department filled with very bright young people. To a person they found the new tech "interesting." But, importantly, they weren't rushing to adopt it in their own work. The portraits I was shooting were for use on their website. If a progressive (in terms of development; not in the political sense), tech forward, young company isn't rushing to use these new resources then there is some breathing room for current photographers. At least for now (but see the Kodak Delusion above...). 

Last weekend I needed to get out of the office and away from the computer. I walked downtown through familiar territory. Everywhere the trees, lawns and gardens were green and growing. The weather was textbook perfection. And all over the touristy spots of downtown Austin the landscape was busting with portrait photographers taking graduation portraits, engagement portraits, model portfolio portraits, family portraits and even portraits just for fun. All of the customers, if they had deeper knowledge, would be perfect candidates for much cheaper, retouched A.I. images --- if they were aware of the existence and value proposition. But they seemed happy to work with photographers who were working exactly the same way they did last year and even a decade before. The majority of photographers I saw were Gen Z and Millennial females, almost all wielding the almost cliché Canon DSLR and one of two zoom lenses, The venerable 24-70mm f2.8 or the 70-200mm f2.8. Some used flash but most were just winging it in the shade of the tall buildings. Gotta like open shade. It's the best. 

Here's my take. I think there are a lot of guys like me who really get into the technical stuff. We're on top of the latest gear and the latest techniques. We can imagine, clearly, the consequences of this sort of evolution.  But it takes a lot longer for people who aren't welded into the industry in the same way to "discover" the value of new technology. 

I remember years after I bought my first two wildly expensive Kodak digital cameras running into a friend/peer/competitor at one of the local processing labs (we still needed prints back then for clients) and he was asking me if I thought digital would ever supplant film-based commercial imaging. This was in 2004. He thought not. He thought his Hasselblad film cameras would be adequate for at least a decade more. And then, BAM! He was thrust by his own clients into the fast learning curve of digital at the time and a year later sold his last film camera to retool. It took the lab a long, long time to convince him that sRGB files were, indeed, what he needed to output his files as for printing. He tried to get good results giving the lab ProRGB files (incorrectly rationalizing that the wider gamut would provide better quality) for a long time before he understood. But eventually he came around, shoved along by the momentum of commerce. 

We're at the same kind of inflection point right now. We might be able to adjust in a number of ways. We can learn the new software and try to add our own value to it. We might pivot to a different specialty that values primary, human interpretation. We can delay the invasion of automation for a few years more by turning to video production instead (but the writing is already on the wall there too...). Or we can find the clients who don't want to change, don't know about the new tech, or just don't care how we do the job as long as it gets done. 

As an older generation (our demographic here trends "over 40") we have two real choices. We can learn as much as possible about new innovations, new trends and new tools like A.I. and incorporate them into our creative existence/workflow or we can hide our heads in the sand, deny that anything has changed, soldier on with an ever decreasing market share for our traditional wares until we are left barren of customers/audiences and distraught. 

There is a third option. We can just exit the market. If you don't need the income you can choose not to choose. But if you do need continuing income from creative content then you'd better get busy learning new ways. 

Sad to think that my old laptop and ChatGBT might just be the next Vladimir Nobokov. Or Richard Avedon. Now where did I store that cache of EMP weapons? Currently baiting the robot traps with lithium batteries....

Time elapsed concepting, researching, writing and editing: 1 hour 30 minutes. I owe it all to my typing teacher at high school... 

"Happiness is a learnable skill."  -Jewel

So much news. Sigma introduces two (or three; depending on your formats...) new lenses. All of which will be very, very popular.

 Today Sigma unveiled two lenses I want and one lens I'd like to have but don't really feel the need to rush out and buy. So, let's cover them in order of their value to me. 

The first two lenses are part of Sigma's i-Series. This "series" is a collection of smaller, lighter but no less potent single focal length lenses that are built entirely of metal and glass, have aperture rings and are beautiful to look at and happy to hold. So far I've purchased the 24mm f3.5, the 35mm f2.0, two of the 45mm f2.8s, the 65mm f2.0 (don't buy this one if you want to continue to think your other lenses are worthy...) and the 90mm f2.8. The 90 and the 24 are tiny. Definitely the kind of lenses you want in your travel kit. The 35 and the 65 blow away their competitors when it comes to sharpness and good optical behavior. 

There are also a couple of lenses in the i-Series that I don't own because, well, I'm not interested in the mix of features, etc. One is the 20mm f2.0, another is the 24mm f2.0. I have lenses that cover these focal lengths and they work just fine. Why duplicate for the sake of owning the complete catalog?

Every one of the i-Series lenses that I have purchased and used is wonderful. The 24mm 3.5 at f5.6 is perfect. The 45mm is full of character when used wide open but bite-y sharp when used at medium apertures. The 65mm might as well be a standard Leica SL lens. The 90mm is sharp right from f2.8 on down and is nice and small. But I've always been pining for one lens in particular and it's finally arrived. It's the 50mm f2.0. 

The 50mm, according to the specs, is not a budget "nifty-fifty" lens but a more modern version with 11 elements in 9 groups. If features aspherical elements and an HR element as well so it should be highly corrected and very usable at f2.0. The lens is about half the size and weight of its sibling, the 50mm f1.4 DN DG lens. So, it's a combination of balanced features that I think will be great for people like me who want a really well corrected 50mm "standard" lens but don't need the higher speed aperture and really don't want the size and weight of a big "Art" series lens for walking around and casually making photographs. 

The i-Series lenses are beautifully made; even down to the metal lens hoods and the metal, magnetic lens caps. All of the lenses I've bought in that system have been sharp even wide open with the exception of the 45mm f2.8. But the performance of the 45mm is not faulty. It was intended to be a lens with a different look profile when used at its widest aperture and especially when used in close. As in portrait photography and closer still life situations. It was designed to have residual spherical aberrations wide open with a more mellow look intended. And it really does work. In fact, I like it so much that when an additional one came bundled with a used camera I decided to keep it and have a low cost back-up for the first one.

But the new 50mm was designed by Sigma, in my opinion, to have 99% of the performance of the faster Art series 50mm from f2.0 onward and what you gain from giving up the stop of widest aperture is all about handling and usability for people who need mobility combined with high image performance. Yippee. That's me. 

I had considered buying the new Leica 50mm f2.0 Asph but I'd heard rumors about Sigma's intention to fill the gap in the i-Series between the 45mm and the 65mm and decided to wait and see what they would introduce. I'm happy I did. I have no doubts that the Sigma 50mm f2.0 will be just a good a performer as the Leica; or for that matter, the Lumix 50mm f1.8, but I gain an aperture ring on the lens barrel and a handling format that's familiar and comfortable for me. And, if you are industrial design sensitive you also get a lens that's a good visual match for any other i-Series lens purchases. 

Many will compare the new Sigma 50mm to plastic Canon, Sony and Nikon lenses and grouse about the premium price but looking at the optical design one has to realize that it's a more capable and more expensive product.  Of course, we could all make great photos with old, used lenses from the 1970's but I think that might be beside the point.

The second Sigma lens in my "wanted" list is the 17mm f4.0. My reasons are starkly utilitarian. I sometimes am asked to shoot interiors, exteriors and industrial landscapes that can benefit from a wider angle view. I've used a variety of wide angles over the years and the choices are usually demarcated between costly zooms or overly fast primes. Each comes with their own set of compromises.

Zooms are good at some (but not all) of their focal lengths and worse at others. I know some are highly corrected but like the super fast, wide primes, the best tend to be big, heavy and expensive. I can't figure out why I would want, for example, a 20mm f1.4 lens but in fact I bought one a couple of years ago and hated using it. There was no advantage to me, for the kinds of situations I use wide angle lenses in, to a super fast aperture. And optical engineers have indicated that each stop of increased speed requires 4x the precision of manufacturing to execute at the same level as a slower lens. 

The idea of a 17mm with "only" an f4.0 maximum aperture seems like a very good idea to me. The lens can be made smaller, lighter and much less expensive while delivering (at like apertures) at least as good performance as a faster lens of the same focal length. 

The 17mm, and lenses like it, are ones that I almost always use with a tripod so the slower aperture is meaningless to me. In fact, in most use scenarios I am much more likely to be using such a lens at f8.0 in order to get maximum depth of field. Maybe even f11. Combine that with smaller, lighter and cheaper and you have a great compromise for casual ultra-wide angle users like me.

I was surprised that the cost of the lens was so reasonable. Only $600. So, maybe a barebones kit for a traveler or someone who just wants to lighten the load might end up being the 17mm, the 50mm, and the 90mm. A lot of range for the money and at a lighter weight than would have been possible before. 

The final lens is a different animal. It's not an i-Series lens but is instead a "Contemporary" lens from Sigma. And it doesn't cover full frame; it's made for APS-C camera and also Micro4:3 cameras. The lens is the 23mm f1.4 which translates in full frame language to the every popular 35mm focal length. A favorite of so many streets shooters. This lens joins three other Sigma Contemporary prime lenses that have all been high performing favorites of APS-C oriented photographers. Those lenses are the 16mm f1.4, the 30mm f1.4 and the (absolutely awesome) 56mm f1.4. While these lenses aren't the smallest available for the format I can comfortably state that they have great optical qualities --- based on my experience with all three. While I'm not one of the rabid fans of  the 35mm experience I'll probably add the 23mm f1.4 to my inventory for all those times I want to take advantage of the charms of the Leica CL cameras. I have two of them and am impressed with the images every time I use them. 

It may be that 23mm on the smaller frame will work differently for me than a 35mm on full frame. Who knows? It may even become a favorite. But it's way down on the list of things I want to pay for right now.

Even though we've become very L mount-centric around here I should make it clear that all of the lenses mentioned here are also available in the Sony E mount. That expands what is available for the Sony A7 series and a6000 series camera quite nicely. It gives Sony users more choices. And very good ones at that.

For me the 50mm is the top priority. I'll get a lot of use from it. But I'd love it even more if the focusing ring gave me repeatable distances and had a distance scale on it. I'd love the option to zone focus when needed. But....that's what the older "legacy" lenses are for, right?

Now, where is that Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Planar I had around here? 

OT: Healthy Photographer, Happy Photographer.

Strong enough to lift and entire Leica CL up to my eye...

It's hard to work or play if you don't feel good. And it's easy to get side-tracked by medical issues if you don't stay on top of them. Recent studies indicate that exercise helps not only to prevent sudden medical events like heart attacks and strokes but can also reduce the risk of developing dementia by up to 40% !!!

People often argue that they "hate" to exercise but I can't imagine that living with excess body fat, low energy and the aches and pains caused by being sedentary is any bit more fun. Or that unchecked decay is any less time consuming or less expensive than exercise.

On the advice of my swimming coaches I added a bunch of strength training to my weekly exercise "diet." I've extremely happy with the results. My swimming has improved as has my overall energy level (although I've never been mistaken for a person with "low energy.").  I added three days of strength training at a local gym to my usual five to six days of swimming workouts. And, of course, I still try to get out and walk as often as possible. If work interferes I just try to reschedule the work. Or cancel it altogether...

I wondered at 67 how much benefit I would see from both the exercise and the healthy diet that B. and I try to maintain (admitting to an occasional pizza or hamburger...) so I was pleasantly surprised by the second part of my annual physical with my doctor today. Last week I endured all the blood tests, stress testing, an EKG and a bunch of other measures. Today was the "hands on" part of the physical as well as a review of the results from all of last week's testing. I'm happy to see that I've lost 4 pounds in the last year, my BMI is now 23. My A1C is normal and my cholesterol is at a happy ratio with low triglycerides.  All testing looked good and the machines that test for things like body fat, conductivity etc. calculated my "metabolic" age as being: 50. 

While I don't believe I can turn back the clock or that I've found the fountain of youth I do know that it's much better to spend whatever time I have left to practice photography in the best health I can and with the energy that comes from being pain free and unencumbered by largely preventable maladies. Knowing that I'm on the right track also helps me sleep well.

Once again, I know a lot of you are already doing pretty much what I do to stay in shape, but for the folks who are on the fences I can't emphasize strongly enough that the prevention provided by aerobic exercise and strength training (coupled with good eating habits) is more valuable than all the money or other treasures I can conceive of. Given the choice of being poor but healthy or rich but infirm I'll choose the former any time. Best of both world's? It's something to aim for...

P.S. It's not enough to show up. You have to do the work. 

 

Two very different versions of Austin's downtown. As seen from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

 

Camera: Leica SL. Lens: Panasonic 20-60mm. Focal length 20mm.

Camera: Panasonic S1R. Lens: Panasonic 24-105mm. Focal length 24mm.

I'm reading more and more about generative A.I. and it doesn't sound like a good thing for the vast majority of working photographers. Especially portrait photographers. It's not an existential dilemma for hobbyists, fine artists and all the folks who love the process of taking photographs but are not dependent on making money from their craft. Critics can dismiss the samples they've been shown on some websites as "fake" or "inferior" but I've seen some really convincing images and I would suggest that we're already seeing a workable quality in computer derived portraits even though these are the very early days of the new applications of A.I. in photography. 

On one level I really care about the incursions into the business side because it would be nice to eke out a few more profitable years doing the kind of work I really have enjoyed over the last 40 or so years. This revolution in imaging might not affect the very highest levels (Annie Leibovitz? Platon?) of photographers but for most others it will mean a significant devaluation of hard won abilities, talents and marketable products. 

On the other hand I'm somewhat insulated from the coming financial carnage by dint of being so close to exiting the commercial markets altogether. What does the generative A.I. onslaught have to do with me personally? With the exception of denting my self-identity as a portrait artist and reducing opportunities for easy billing, not much. In fact, I am so confident that taking images will continue to be fun and fulfilling that I ordered yet another lens to play around with. It should be here mid-week. It's the Nikon mount version of the Voiglander Ultron 40mm f2.0  SL IIS lens. I've been buying the DSLR/Ai Nikon mount version of some lenses like this one because the mount is so easy to adapt to any of the mirrorless cameras. And the selling price of the lenses in this mount are much less expensive than the M versions because the rangefinder coupling, which is expensive to implement well, is not needed or (obviously) included on the Nikon F mount versions. Yes, the adapter makes the lenses a bit bigger but on a relatively large Leica SL camera it hardly matters. 

I had the thought this morning that when all the cost efficient, bottom line focused businesses have fully accepted A.I. assisted or created portraits of their staffs, and all the landscapes are being rendered by Mid-Journey and DALL-E, that perhaps authentic human-made images, seen and captured with human thought, might become more collectible and have more intrinsic value to collectors and appreciators of photography. Also, the theatrical act of the portrait session might become more valuable as an experiential indulgence. An elite and economically lofty investment. One never really knows that much about the future. That's why it's so hard to predict accurately. 

Sitting around the studio printing out the tax return from the CPA. Damn! You actually have to pay taxes when you roll over funds from a tax deferred account to a Roth IRA. Who knew? (Besides my accountant).

 

The secret is to buy cheap lenses! No, that's not exactly right....

And, of course, I had to ask my accountant, when printing out the tax forms to put in the filing cabinet, "do the forms print better on an Epson printer or a Canon printer?" And, "should I use archival ink?"

I think we tend to concentrate on camera gear and photographic experiences on this blog site but we sometimes forget that my original thought in setting this up was to cover all the aspects of being a photographer and also running a photography business. To share what it's been like to go down the pathway of running one's own business. An undertaking that's very much about making and licensing art. Which means it's a business constructed and run to make a profit as well as fun photos. 

We generally set aside a full week each year to round up all the 1099 forms, find all the receipts for expenses and cost of goods, go through logs and invoices, etc. We have to be in charge of our own accounting, our marketing, our retirement planning and investment strategies as well as our healthcare costs and every other detail of business existence. It's a totally different mindset than that used to make creative products or to collaborate creatively with our customers and our supporting vendors. It's very much right brain versus left brain. And I'm never sure which brain is winning. 

I was joking around with my CPA (he's about my age) and I asked him what sort of accounting formula there is to determine when a person can or should retire. He suggested that as soon as your dividend income exceeded your profit from the business, year to year, that you could bail out without reducing your quality of life. Nice rule of thumb. I'll file that away for future pondering. Of course you could just spend down principal and hope you don't run out of $$$ before you run out of "runway." 

Every April I do a "State of the Union" for myself and the business. Our "Union" is strong. We billed more in 2022 than we did in the year before by about 40%. I chalk that up to the overall economy recovering from the Covid epidemic. Our camera purchases were no larger than in 2021. That was a good trend for overall profitability. We underspent on marketing (like, zero) and were still able to increase earnings year over year. 

We shed a number of business niches and clients that we deemed not to have a good profit-to-fun ratio (PTF ratio) and replaced those "time slots" with more swimming and strength training (which, incidentally, is paying off in the swimming). We've been studying the market for images and reorienting the business around our current predictions. Our research shows that we have a couple more years of potential, traditional photo market left and we'll work to maximize our profits from the business in those two years. After that we'll shut down.

As a result of long term financial planning we have been able to move all but a small percentage of investments from tax deferred accounts to Roth IRAs, or after tax brokerage accounts which will go a long way to minimizing the effects of RMDs (required minimum distributions) in retirement. We don't talk about things like this nearly as often as we do about lens edge sharpness or smoothness of focusing rings but maybe it's worth sharing for younger photographers who are now navigating the fun puzzle of building wealth. Tedious process but better than the alternative. 

Part of the plan was always to enter the last stages of the business with our mortgage paid off, our liabilities at zero and with enough cash in the "bank" to weather just about any foreseeable storms on the horizon. With inflation and down markets it's always a moving target but if you get the windage just right...and lead the economy by just a bit...

Photography has never been a remarkably profitable enterprise, especially on the small scale which we pursued it. We were able to eke out a decent living from the cash flow of the business but the real secret to building wealth is less about making a lot of money than it is about saving a lot of the money you make. And investing it wisely. 

Albert Einstein is said to have remarked that “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it…he who doesn't… pays it.” I paid little attention to this reality for the first 40 years of my working life because I have been blessed to have a partner who understood it early in the game and set the right course. I was left to run on autopilot --- as long as I contributed my share.  And it's true. If you are well invested and get a 10% return (annually) over time on your money you'll double your net worth every seven to ten years. That's pretty cool. No....that's amazing. 

The secret, as explained by my partner, is simple. To quote our in-house expert: "Keep your damn hands off the money." To which I would add: "Always ask for the senior discount..." 

I will be officially finished with 2022 taxes on Monday when I transfer a "huge" (all relative) amount of money to pay for the consequences of that darned roll over. After that it's all fun and games until the well runs dry. And by "Until the well runs dry" I mean it metaphorically --- about cash flow. 

One of the lovely things about getting older is that you focus more and more on what you consider to be the important things in life rather than the bling. Friendship over prestige. Happy routines over flashy vacations. Shiny cameras instead of mistresses. Swimming over drunken debauchery. And a good night's sleep over bad habits or questionable judgement. Photography over watching sports on TV (which was referred to on a TV documentary about the ancient Greeks as: theater for stupid people).

That's the "State of the Union" for my small business as I see it today. And I'm pretty happy with the results. 

Hope you are barreling into tax day with huge profits and a better talent for organization than I possess. 

No April Fool's messages this year. Look elsewhere.