The lenses arrived. They are as cute as can be. Tiny and mechanically perfect. Here's my quick, first look at the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon ZM.

 

I opened the box in the dining room, put the 28mm lens on the SL2 body, turned around and snapped my first photo of the day. Just a shot of my living room at the house. Not perfect but fun. For me.

What I quickly found was that when used on a digital camera like the SL2 the 28mm does have some vignetting. The lens is certainly sharp enough across the frame but there is a slight blue shift in the vignetted areas. A partial and mostly successful workaround for this is to go into the SL2 menu and find the M rangefinder lens profile that most closely matches this lens. For my taste it's the profile for the Leica 28mm Elmarit. The version just before the ASPH version. Applying this in camera to my Jpeg files (yeah. I was shooting medium sized Jpegs.. .. ..) went a long way to correcting the vignetting and the slight corner color shift.

Speaking of color, I found the rendering of the Zeiss 28mm to be cooler (more blue) than the rendering of the Leica lenses and Voigtlander lenses I have been using. Correcting the color back to where I like it also tames the apparent/inherent (almost like poetry...) contrast of the files a bit. All part of the learning curve when trying out new lenses for the first time.

The focusing ring is about as perfect, in terms of placement and feel, as I could ever want and I was so happy to get back to an aperture ring calibrated in thirds of a stop instead of the full stop settings of the two recently acquired Voigtlander lenses (40mm and 56mm). The lens came without a hood and while I didn't have any issues with flare I'm getting an aftermarket hood just to help keep my greasy fingers off the front element of the lens. 

Below are samples from yesterday's walk. In a surprising break with tradition I did not stop for coffee. I'm finding that I have so perfected my selection of fresh coffees and my unerring brewing process that I have now spoiled myself for coffee done nearly anywhere else. Oh sure, I'll still go out for coffee but more for the social aspect of it than anything else. Sad when perfection in one field ruins your routine in another.. .. ....

Yeah. It's just construction but clicking in on the yellow cranes shows off the saturated color 

palette that seems built into this lens.

A nod to the visitors who want relatively straight up lines in their images... ..

As seen on Sixth St. 

A good test of sharpness and detail at f5.6. Yes. Very "usable"

In defense of the lens, the bottom corners were falling into shadow naturally.

The difference in color here is more down to the shadows being in shaded areas while the rest of 

the scene "sees" reflected daylight. Pretty accurate --- from a physics point of view.

There is a sucker born every minute. And a group of con artists just waiting to fleece them. 

Austin was host this week to a "conference" or cheerleading session about crypto currency.

The Great Tulip harvest of our century. Can't wait to fire up the diesel generators, log into the bank of servers and harvest me some BitCoin. While ruining the environment. Now, where have I put my "Ponzi Scheme" playbook? But the people seemed so earnest. 

They even have their own shuttle bus. That's how you know they've arrived. 

but can the lens do close-ups? 

Sad. One of my favorite stops in downtown, the café/restaurant at the main library,

the "Cookbook Café" is now shut down. No idea if it will re-open or if something 

else will take its place. But you know how much we fear change!

Next up we play with the 28mm's best friend, the Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 Biogon ZM.

And maybe we'll give them both a whirl on the front of a couple of Leica CL cameras

at Eeyore's Birthday Party tomorrow afternoon. 

Might be the way to go photographing for fun without the big cameras.

Landscape crew did a nice job with the lawn. Not sure what kind of mowers they were using... .. . 

Waiting for the Fedex guy. And a reminder that Eeyore's Birthday Party is this Saturday.

Afradet.

I guess we're spoiled for speed. I ordered the two Zeiss lenses on Tuesday and here we are on Thursday with me drumming my fingers on the desk, reading about some guy cutting his grass, and waiting for the Fedex truck to rumble up to curb and then deliver my package to the wrong house.

To be fair though that only happens on about one out of five deliveries. But what bothers me is that Fedex always sends along these authoritative looking emails to let me know about the progress of my upcoming delivery. And those emails are always so, so optimistic when it comes to projected delivery times. Read the fine print on the email and you can see that they've given themselves until 8 pm this evening to effect delivery. But in bigger type on the same email they tease me with "estimated delivery times" which I've never seen actually pan out here in the real world.  The latest email predicts that the package will arrive between 9:40 a.m. and 1:40 p.m. But I'm afraid, as usual, that this will turn out to be an administrative fantasy.

Since I bought two lenses and they have a certain dollar value the shipper elected to send them and require an actual signature to acknowledge receipt. Pretty much means someone has to be here until the package arrives.. .. .. and I would like for the package to arrive. Sadly though, B is back out of town, Ben no longer lives here, and we seem to have given all of the domestic help the year (or decade) off. When I ring the bell for the butler no one ever shows up!!!  That means there's only me to sign for my package. Given the choice, and the fact that we live in an hysterically safe neighborhood, I'd be happy to decline having to sign for the package and would take the bet one way or the other about finally getting the box.

If past performance is any indication of future results I can safely predict that the delivery time will be late enough to rob me of the opportunity to go out for lunch, the chance to get by the Blanton Museum before closing, and will shipwreck me onto this island that I call 'home' for the duration of the day. Thank God the refrigerator is working and there's plenty of nice food in it. Thought I saw a big box of fresh, organic blackberries in there. Merits further investigation. .. ... .... And two Cosmic Crisp apples. WooHoo. 

I'd be happy if the delivery person could just leave the box by the front door. That way I could be as irresponsible and foot loose as I'd like. I'm sure, if history is a guide, that the box would still be sitting there no matter how late my return. 

But the enforced captivity has had its upside. I've been on a crusade to eliminate from my Smugmug.com account all of the files that are no longer pertinent to my work or which no longer give me joy upon seeing them again. As of 12:47 p.m. I have permanently deleted about 27,000 of the 450,000+ images that have resided there. It's a start and it's also a bit cathartic. I mean really, who needs the full inventory of all shot images for Dell headshots from 2003? Or 2004 for that matter? Or another folder of building shots from downtown?

And I don't know if this happens to you but I have a tendancy to put folders of current work in progress on my desktop and then forget to trash the folders or move them once I've completed the projects. I just dumped about 60 gigabytes of stuff that's already backed up elsewhere off the desktop and off the system hard drive. That's got to be better for the system performance if nothing else. 

Hmmm. There should be a service that comes and waits at one's house just to accept deliveries or to meet maintenance people and refrigerator repair people so that not so busy but very spoiled people can "get on with their lives..." (See what it did just there? A correct amount of dots in my last ellispse... .. nope, lightining doesn't strike twice. .. . ). 

I'd call the service, "We're waiting for You!" A nice little double entendre. 

And in other news: we're slated to have rough weather here tomorrow and tomorrow evening but it's all supposed to clear out and give us all a sunny and cool day for Eeyore's Birthday Party. I'm trying to decide on my costume because I don't want to be one of those old guys who just lurks around on the outside of things grabbing surveillance style shots, with long zoom lenses, of beautiful young people. It's always better to be immersed in the social milieu in the moment. I think I'll go as a Viking this year. When I was in Iceland I saw a lot of fun sloganing around this: If you can be a Viking, be a Viking! Doesn't have much to do with Winnie the Pooh but what the hell? 

 

I reached into a time machine and grabbed an image of the downtown power plant as it looked about ten years ago.

 Austin's old power plant before the downtown building boom. 

No curved building in the background. No pesky skyscrapers.

No surrounding shopping center. 

Two new (to me) lenses arriving at VSL this week. Stay tuned.

 Interesting times for me. I added two Nikon mount, Voigtlander lenses to the equipment inventory this month and learned, in doing so, that I really like the process of manual focusing and that I really, really like some of the quirkier, older (pre-2010) lens designs and resulting optical characteristics that have been floating around for years. 

I did something dumb yesterday. I had a moment between swim practice and lunch with B and I misspent the time looking around mindlessly on the web. I went to a popular website for a camera retailer in the San Francisco area and browsed through their "Recent Drop" offerings. It's a long, rambling listing, with product photos, of used gear that they've accepted on various trades. A lot of Leica, Nikon,  and Sony stuff, and a good number of collectible items as well. 

I was half way down the page of the first 100 listings when two or three lenses just listed caught my eyes. The most important of the them were both Carl Zeiss Biogon lenses for the Leica M mount cameras. After getting re-educated lately about 28mm lenses -- via the tutelage of the Q2 -- I was hankerin' for a manual focusing 28mm lens I could use on my L mount cameras (Leica SLs, Panasonic S5). I wanted a lens that is known to be sharp and contrasty (on all but the Sony cameras with their overly thick filter stacks) and best of all, small in size. A Carl Zeiss 28mm Biogon f2.8 ZM (M mount) in 9+ condition seemed like the way to go. I put it in my shopping cart. I've purchased from this store a number of times before and feel comfortable that they'll stand behind their sales (and product descriptions).

I was about to shut down my impromptu shopping and head into the house but lens adjacent to the 28mm on the page also caught my attention. It was the Carl Zeiss Biogon 35mm f2.0 ZM. And it too was in top condition. Might make a good pairing and both are reputed to share the overall look (color and contrast) of the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Planar which I also have. I couldn't resist temptation so I dumped the 35mm into the shopping cart as well. (Both are still available new as current products.. .. .. ).

I was about to complete the order online when I was inspired, no doubt by my recent negotiations with GE over the dastardly refrigerator, to go into an available chat on the website to see if I could negotiate even better pricing (although, in all fairness, the items were well priced already). Having spent two years in Turkey I learned to love haggling with vendors. ...  ..

I asked about a discount for ordering both items at the same time, tossed in my "returning customer credentials" and got into a good natured discussion with a real person. But online. They took a couple hundred dollars off the initial pricing and tossed in free 2nd day shipping. I bit. We'll see if the lenses turn out to be as good as I thought they would be..  ... 

Anybody out there have experience with either of these lenses? Chime in if you have the time. 

The guys are here to cut the grass and do some landscaping. I can't stand the sound of mowers and leaf blowers so I'm heading to the gym for some strength training. Hopefully everything will look ship shape when I get back. Funny, I have plenty of lenses and would always like a few more but in 26 years living in this house I've never purchased a lawn mower or other motorized yard work equipment. A case of different priorities I guess..  .... .  ..... 

Tips to live by... ... ..

 

Much as I love to go see photography exhibits I usually only go to lectures by book authors. They are more interesting. Unless you can find lectures by photographers like Elliott Erwitt.

 I have been in and out of the HRC (Humanities Research Center, also named, The Harry Ransom Center) many, many times. In days of yore I could arrange to take my photography classes from UT to the center to see some of the collected works in their great repository of famous photography. In the 1980s when I taught in the College of Fine Arts we could make reservations to have curators show our students actual, original works by Strand, Steiglitz, HCB, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and many others which are part of the Gernscheim Collection.

The class sizes I took over were small. Just my teaching assistant and six or eight students at a time. Curators would hand out white, cotton gloves and then we'd get a quick tutorial on how to handle paper prints without crimping them or otherwise marring them. Once educated we would pass around say, a Weston contact print of Peppers so students could see what great prints really looked like. Some prints only got handled by the museum's staff. But we could lean in and really study them in detail.

I remember one image that Henri Cartier-Bresson made of the Pope at the Vatican plaza surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people. Just tightly packed in around the Holy Father. HCB had a high vantage point. The image was striking. Printed 16x20 inches (which is why student weren't allowed to handle it directly). But, as most of the students pointed out, HCB had missed focusing very precisely on the most important part of the subject. The Pope was rendered soft. Slightly out of focus. But what a powerful object lesson for aspiring photographic artists. Everything doesn't have to be perfect.

I was at the HRC for a lecture by Laura Wilson a month or two ago. And I was there last Thursday for a lecture about Norman Mailer and James Baldwin, given by writer, Darryl Pinckney.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Pinckney 

The talk was thoughtful and interesting. Afterwards there was a reception with wines and finger foods. And I walked around the first floor of the HRC just looking. That's when I came across this image presented as a transparent film on one of the HRC windows. Part of a classic Dorothea Lange photograph from the FSA. 

In another part of the gallery space was one of the very first photos.... ever.

Altogether it made me happy to live in a city that can be so stimulating for artists. Well, at least for the artists who show up.  

Here is a video my friend Will and I did years ago about the loan of the Magnum Collection to the HRC by Michael Dell.  Fun. And also in "monochrome." 

https://vimeo.com/9830948  Will and I filmed this 13 years ago...

I went out for coffee after swim practice on Saturday. We tried a new coffee shop. We walked around the neighborhood and stumbled into some art produced by children. It was fun!!!

 

I like to keep up with friends. My friend Anne used to be one of my assistants back in the 1990s. She graduated into being a wedding photographer (not my fault!) and then she realized that a real job with a salary and benefits was preferable and she became a nurse. We check in with each other about once a month. Always over coffee. And our "coffee klatches" are mostly capped with a walk around whatever area we found our coffee in. 

Since Anne and I have such a long history together (and probably since she is a nurse with a master's degree) her first questions always seem to be about my health. I gave her a good report on Saturday and we moved on to other subjects. Mostly about art, music, the declining quality of coffee out in the wild and the need to stay in motion as much as possible. 

We did talk for a moment about film photography and she told me that she's never sold any of her film cameras. The Hasselblad she used for weddings, the Leicas she used for personal work and the Canons she also used for weddings are all still waiting patiently for her in a closet in her house. Well done, considering the resurgent popularity of top line film gear. 

After having coffee at the very crowded packed Radio Coffee house and gardens we decided to ramble around a neighborhood, just adjacent, that neither of us was at all familiar with. In a few blocks we stumbled into a beautifully landscaped little collection of modest mid-century houses that had been transformed into a private, primary school called, "Habibi's Hutch."  We had both heard of the school for years. They are known to be very "art forward" with their students and relatively without borders when it comes to each individual student's curriculum. And boy oh boy, it's apparent that art class is a top priority for many there. 

I had a blast walking along the fence line making photographs of the student art hanging on the fence wires. The colors were vibrant and saturated with little help from me or my post processing. I was using the Leica SL2 camera and the Voigtlander 40mm. I seem to have a crush on that lens this week. 

I can hardly wait to go back again and photograph more of the art work. I didn't want to truncate the walk on Saturday. But the universe is pretty good at rewarding folks who take the time to get out and walk through the world. Especially if they also bring along their cameras. 

Be sure to click on the images and make them big. They are fun. Children's art always reminds me that not being too serious all the time makes being creative a lot easier!!! B thinks the secret of any creative success I've had is my immaturity. In fact, one of my coaches told me he thinks I have: M.D.D. = Maturity Deficit Disorder. This, he believes is why I like to swim fast, play around a bit at practice and smile more than I frown. Maybe he's right. Maybe more people should catch it. I wonder if immaturity is contagious? I hope so. There are way too many people walking around with a stick up their butts....  (four ellipses alert!!!)....