It's Summer in Austin already. It hit 94° Fahrenheit yesterday. The UV warning was pegged at 10 this afternoon. The smell of sunscreen was wafting through the air. The mannequins are ready for the heat. I knew you'd want more...

 Today it's the Sigma 90mm f2.8 lens that's getting a workout. I have to say it's an often overlooked optic but a very, very good one. For several reasons. Let's get into it.

I have the 90mm Sigma Contemporary i-Series lens chambered for the L mount cameras. There are many things about this lens that endear it to me. It's small and relatively light weight. The metal finish is both good looking and lends itself to very good handling. The lens has an aperture ring and I find that keeps me in tune with the idea of controlling depth of field. Aperture control on the camera blurs away from my consciousness and I find I've gone a while without thinking about it. The lens hood is big and useful and protective AND matches the finish of the lens. I like the 55mm filter size because I have a box filled with expensive 55mm filters that I now have some reason not to throw away. 

I like the lens even more when I use it and am reminded of both how sharp and how optically well behaved it is. Even at its fastest aperture of f2.8. But the feature I realized I liked today was the just about perfect feel and operation of the focusing ring when manually focusing. With practice it's both fast and accurate but best of all it doesn't overshoot like many other FBW lenses do. I like the feel of the focusing ring and after realizing that it would give me both accuracy and tactile happiness I switched everything to manual and spent the day shooting that way. 

Even though I don't have affiliate links and your purchases won't benefit me in the least I think every one of you should rush to your keyboards right now and order one of these. You'll thank me after you've tried it out. And....as you can see....it works in color and monochrome. 

Les mannequins sont une métaphore de la vie moderne à l'ère post-pandémique. Ils ne bougent pas donc ils sont. C'est un truc de Descartes. Mais heureusement pour nous, nous pouvons les contourner et trouver les meilleurs angles. Ce sont les petits trucs qui nous font chier mais aussi les petits trucs qui nous font plaisir. Ne détestez pas les photos de mannequin. Ils sont là pour une raison... Yeah.

An interesting video about Monochrome sensor cameras by one of my favorite BW photographers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDxHq3Zlbz8

Getting all the angles lined up perfectly. Every line straight and vertical. So parallel it would make Ezra Stoller cry for joy. Or: ways to suck happiness out of sharing photography...

Remnants of the first banking drive through I ever experienced. 

Boring-techture. By demand.

For those not into architectural photography Ezra Stoller was a giant in the field as

far back as the late 1940s. He used an 8x10 view camera to photography buildings and residences of note. He liked all of the vertical lines to be perfect. 

So wonderful that we demand exactly the same geometric constraints here in 2023.

It's as though styles never change. 

 Bonus: An interesting video about Monochrome sensor cameras by one of my favorite BW photographers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDxHq3Zlbz8

Saturday morning art. We are toast.

 

le grille-pain de la classe moyenne. une photo du matin.

I was washing off the breakfast dishes when I turned and looked over my shoulder, out toward the gardens. The most humble of appliances caught my eye and I marveled at the way the soft light of morning wrapped around the metal chassis. Just behind me on the butcher block prep table was a camera set to photograph in monochrome. Or, in the parlance of the ordinary man; black and white. 

I picked the camera up, carefully focused the standard lens on the front and gently tripped the shutter button. Then, placing the camera back on the table, I spent a quiet moment just observing the play of light as a breeze blew through the trees outside.  Trees overburdened with new green leaves, creating the effect of ever-moving illumination. Dancing beams of soft light. Mirrored by the brushed aluminum finish of my favorite kitchen tool. The one I use most often. And with the best results.

If a refrigerator gives us problems I try to be patient; waiting for parts, waiting for service people to arrive. But if the toaster goes awry I'll have it replaced in a day. Some things are critical to modern life. The toaster more so that a phone or a blender. 

While I stood admiring the toaster in all of its glory it dawned on me that it had been a week since I last emptied the crumb tray at the bottom. I did so, being very careful not to drop toasted and re-toasted bread crumbs on the newly washed kitchen floor.

Simple pleasures. Toasting bread. Irish butter. Warm Coffee. A quiet start...

The refrigerator seems to be repaired now...

Taking a break from throwing Molotov cocktails through windows to do an off topic post about swimming.

 

Jaston Williams, Actor/Dramatist

I have to say right here and now that I should have added strength training to my exercise regimen decades ago. In just the past two months of doing targeted strength training I've seen my swim technique and speed in the water improve by leaps and bounds. Having good muscle strength and core strength goes a long way toward keeping my strokes stable though the entire range of motion. That stability lends more propulsion which creates more speed. The only unwanted side effect is when we train hard in the pool and then lift weights, which causes some muscle soreness the next day. I love the gym I chose. It's super clean, relatively quiet and filled with a mix of people including a big percentage of people over 60. And they are, almost to a person, there to be healthy. Successful people like to be around other successful people. Fit people enjoy hanging out with other fit people.

Today we did some fun sets after a long warm up. We're getting back into more distance swimming with sets of 400s, 300s and 200s interspersed with 50 yard swims of all four strokes. One of the things my favorite coach mentioned to me as a way to improve is to work on my kicking. Improving range of motion and muscle strength allows for more forward propulsion from one's kick and a better kick is instrumental in building great speed in sprints. I practice better form in my kick by "streamlining" on my side and working my kick laterally instead of the usual practice of just grabbing a kick board and changing my body position to compensate for the buoyancy of the kick board. Not using a kick board requires more focus on body position and also breathing.

My favorite competitive lane mate loves to go hard and also likes to shorten rest intervals wherever he can. Typical triathlete mindset. If some yards are good then more yards are better... At the end of each workout, when everyone else is getting out and heading to the locker rooms he usually announces that it's time to do "shooters." In swim parlance this means doing a repeating set of two lengths. The length down is all underwater. No breaths. No above water strokes. And it's tougher than it sounds to go the full length of a 25 meter pool underwater after an hour of speedy and sometimes anaerobic sets. At the end of the underwater length you use the easy swim back to the starting point to recover. Doing five or six of these successfully on a one minute interval is challenging. It might seem easy to hold one's breath for 20-25 seconds at a time but I challenge you do find out how rough it can be. Climb a set of stairs and then, immediately hold your breath and time the duration you can go without taking a breath. Repeat the whole process four times. What was your best effort on holding your breath?

It's easy enough to do repeated underwater lengths if you do them before the workout when you are relaxed and the pre-swim coffee is just kicking in. But that's kind of cheating. At least the way my lane mate sees it. 

A good, post swim breakfast? How about three fried, organic, free range eggs with a sprinkling of sharp, white cheddar cheese on top and a half a cup of fresh blueberries on the side? And a slice of seeded, sprouted whole wheat toast as the foundation. Works for me. 

A blog note. No straight lines in architecture photos! That ship has flown. 

Clarification: I am in no way against a monochrome only camera. In fact, if Leica Store Miami ever gets in more Q2M cameras I intend to snag one. My recent satire was more about the futility of having to do things the hard way. If you didn't like it you don't need to read it. In fact, I'll start labeling satires the way we do "OT" for swimming to save any delicate sensibilities. But don't tell me not to write about the existence of strange ideas about photography on the web. Some balloons just scream to be popped. Like the recently proffered idea that there is a wealth of displeasure on the web with the existence black and white imaging as art., I've never seen it and I scroll around a lot. Or that B&W has always been the province of Art Photography (over color) until just recently. Discounting decades of front and center color work in galleries and museums. An idea or opinion,  presented with a voice of authority, doesn't make it a fact.

Gone Mono. Now going fishing.

I spent yesterday investigating the mono imaging capabilities of a standard Lumix S5 when set to L.Monochrome.D; a higher contrast black and white setting. I also had the EVF set to show only monochrome. It was a fun experiment requiring me to ignore or disregard color in scenes. I allowed the camera to add a little bit of "grain" to the mix. Lumix S5 + Voigtlander 58mm f1.4.

A couple shots from Kirk's Panasonic Lumix S5 Monochrome...

After reading more about the marvelous psychological benefits of using a "real" dedicated monochrome camera instead of trying to fool myself by just setting any old camera into a monochrome mode (profile) I finally saw the light and decided I had to take action if I was to truly understand the complex and nearly overwhelming process of seeing in authentic black and white. And oh did I take action!!!

I got out an Exacto knife, pliers, a few different-sized screw drivers and my handbook on coding custom firmware and went to work modifying a Panasonic S5 I had laying around. I haven't tried this yet with one of my Leicas but if it works out I'm right on that edge...

I tried to tidy up my workspace to keep dust in the throat of the camera to a minimum. I took the lens off the front of the camera and got to work. Getting the tip of the Exacto knife just under the leading edge of the filter stack on top of the sensor was tricky work. It took hours to pull everything up, and lots of trial and error. Getting a grip on the edge of the (hated) Beyer Pattern filter was the hardest part. It's a very thin bit of filter -- but tenacious. That's where the pliers came in quite handy. There were a few rough spots where I unintentionally nicked the actual sensor but those wounds were mostly on the edges so I taped them off with thin pieces of duct tape and eventually, after much trial and error, programmed the camera processor to ignore the last 10% of the edges when making files for final output. 

Reprogramming the camera was more effective after I realized that I needed to start from scratch and totally re-write the operating system, tweak the controllers and then come up with an authentic and aesthetically pleasing mathematic set of formulae for rendering true black and white. Complete with an automatic lifting of shadows and an increase in dynamic range to nearly 16 stops (required to get more wiggle room for highlight recovery). While I was working on the interface between the mechanical systems and the electronics I decided to go a step further and disable any video functions and any software controls for video. Now it appears nowhere on my menus. I also re-wrote the menus so they would display a Comic Sans typeface as I find that more readable and to interfere less with my very precise monochrome thought process/workflow. 

I have to confess that I made a number of unsuccessful attempts on the project over the course of the last several weeks and in the process I had to "sacrifice" a few camera bodies. Well, at last count, five S5 bodies. But they are pretty inexpensive now that they've been replaced by the S5ii. I have succeeded in electrocuting myself several times with lithium camera batteries but the only damage was some burns to my skin, the only damage was some burns to my skin, the only damage was some burns to my skin...

The camera is now semi-functional and I'm in the middle of my beta testing. I have yet to zero in on the milky, soft, super low contrast look that other photographers who are driven to work in monochrome seem to find pleasing. I'm used to seeing a wide range of contrasts in prints from classic photographers so seeing 95% of each frame rendered as a "contrast free" middle gray is....  a bit disturbing. But I'm sure I'll get used to it....over time.....

When I look at modern practitioners who profess to "love" monochrome I am confused that they seem to conflate "monochrome" with only landscapes and indeed, only landscapes bereft of any deep blacks, pure whites or any sort of mid-range contrast. I'll chalk this up to me being a pure tyro in the world of black and white. In the past I have only printed B&W for a very few years and only with a very few formats or film types. I guess I spent from 1978 till about 1996 in my own black and white darkroom and have only printed maybe 10,000+ black and white prints from hand processed black and white negatives over that course of time. I'll admit I have not printed from all negative film formats, just half frame, 35mm, 6x6, 645, 6x9cm, and 4x5. Oh....and some contact prints from 8x10 inch negatives ---- but that sure doesn't make me an expert. Nope. 

I guess when I look back at the several thousand large, double-weight black and white prints lying in cases in my office what I really miss most with digital B&W now is being unable to print the resulting files directly on to silver paper. Stuff like the luscious Ilford Gallerie, Seagull Portrait, and Agfa Portriga. But now that I have more or less finished with the complete make over of an S5 it's only a matter of time until I figure out how to replicate all those meager, past, film experiences onto a modern ink jet printer. Is it really true that all of them distill down the big, juicy files from 12, 14, or 16 bits down to 8 bit files as they write out the results? That's the next thing I need to look at. Building my own 128 bit monochrome printer. Can't go halfsies. 

The image above is of one of my most prized possessions, the heart of my coffee making experiences.

The image below is what confronts me right now. Tree trimmers for the next door neighbors who have succeeded in parking their truck and a pile of fallen branches right across my driveway. Just when I started having a hankering for BBQ somewhere else....

A warning. Cameras are easy to break and I don't recommend doing any 

repairs or modifications yourself. It's likely that you'll have the same 

problems I did on this project: cut up fingers, ruined cameras that at 

one time had such promise. And the scorn of your photographer friends 

who can't seem to understand your insistence on customizing your

cameras.

Satire.

 

Might be cheaper for me just to see a therapist and learn to love my cameras as they are...

Shooting outdoors with augmented natural light. Image created as a candidate for a book cover. The editors went in a different direction.

I was writing a book about some aspect of lighting and I decided to shoot a bunch of variations for possible book covers. I asked an attractive friend to pose for me. Since it was work I paid a modeling fee. This was exactly the look I wanted for the book cover but there is a tradition/precedent/agreement in book publishing that while the author has editorial control over the contents of a book, because the cover image is part of marketing for the project, the publisher has authority over the front and back covers. I'm sure if you are a super-hotshot-legendary novelist currently residing in Santa Fe you can make your own rules with the publishers but we newbies don't have that kind of power.

The subject of the chapter I was going to use this image as an example of was about modifying sunlight by using translucent modifiers. A fancy way of saying those pop up reflectors that allow you to take the covers off and shoot through white diffusion material. Cheap to buy and easy to use. 

I decided I should do this image exactly with the method I was writing about so I put up a 50 inch round diffusion disk on a stand between my model and a hazy sun. The image had everything I wanted to write about going on in it. Blonde hair for highlight detail. Jet black shirt for shadow detail. A great out of focus background.... just for the heck of it. 

The image was shot with a Nikon D700 camera using a 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens and just the diffuser on a light stand.  It's an image I was quite happy with. Nothing over the top. Nothing too dramatic and certainly  an image that would be easy to replicate for a reader of my book. 

I can't imagine that a current Leica or Sony camera, or a more prestigious lens would have given me better results. Sharper? Maybe but I think this one is sharp enough on the model's face; which is where I wanted the attention. More resolution? Sure. Maybe four+ times the resolution. But the original would fill a book cover with 300 dpi's of information so to what end? 

Image created on December 19, 2008. At 3:15 in the afternoon. Can't believe that was almost 15 years ago!!!

Just reminiscing while other people discuss monochrome cameras. I'll get around to that as soon as my Q2 Monochrom gets here.... gotta test these weird and off the wall conceptions of preferences for myself...