Does anyone remember the Sony SLT-a77 camera?

Ben acing the mile at a high school track meet. 

In the first decade of this century Sony came onto the market with an interesting camera. It was the Sony SLT-a77. The camera had an APS-C sensor and used a semi-transparent pellicle mirror which was permanent and stationary. It did not move when you shot your photos. Part of the light hit the mirror and was directed to a viewfinder/imaging sensor which sent the signal to an EVF. The rest of the image forming light also went through the mirror and struck the same sensor at the back of the camera. At the image plane. Once you hit the shutter it took some time to process and write the file. This caused a blackout or a freezing of the image in the finder.  It was an odd system and I guess it was done to get a mirrorless, non-optical finder experience but one which would allow users who bought the more traditional a850 and a900 cameras to use the same line of lenses on a new type of camera. 

The a77 used a 24 megapixel CMOS sensor in the APS-C size. The gripes from photographers about this kind of system were focused mainly on two things. The first was a long lag time and a finder black out between each frame. Sure, you could shoot at 12 fps but only the first frame would show in the find and it would be held there until you finished your burst. In the opinion of most photographers that lag and resulting blind spot of imaging made the camera impractical for shooting sports. But I am hard headed and decided to use it to record a number of my son's track meet and cross country performances. Learning good work arounds is like solving puzzles. I guess you could get frustrated and turn the table over, scattering the pieces or, you could work with the camera and discover ways to circumvent some of the operational issues. 

In some regards the camera had a lot going for it. The EVF was, at the time, state of the art with 2.36 million dots of OLED resolution. The AF used phase detection which made it fast and accurate to focus. It had micro adjust to fine tune lens to body AF integration. It was big enough to feel good in daily use and it took advantage of a really nice series of lenses. I think Sony can be grateful about their acquisition of Konica-Minolta in that regard. 

I had a couple of the a77 cameras and used them for a wide range of assignments over the course of a couple years. I eventually replaced them with the full frame (and, from an image viewpoint, a stellar file creator!). The things I remember best about using the a77 was how well the camera worked with Sony's 70-200mm f2.8 lens for the system. It was gorgeous. And, of course on the APS-C format camera body it was more like a 100-300mm lens with a blazing fast aperture. They also made a 16-55mm f2.8 that was almost as good. Sadly, when Sony introduced their full-on mirrorless family; the A7 series, those great lenses could only be used with a kludgy adapter that slowed down the AF and added too much bulk for bodies that were already too small. 

There were a number of SLT models at one time, culminating with the full frame, 24 megapixel a99 but in all of the bodies in the system the one major fault that pushed me to move on was their abysmal flash performance. The professionally capable flashes for the SLT series were expensive and fragile. They shut down quickly if they got hot and took a long time to be functional again if you tried to restart them. Not good for an event photographer at a fast moving conference. And when the flashes did work they didn't meter exposures especially well --- if at all. 

At one point I bought a Hasselblad lens converter that would allow me to use V series H-blad lenses on the a77 bodies and I had great fun putting stuff like the 80mm and 100mm Planars on the front. But that got old as the live view wasn't enough magnification to really let me manually focus well enough.

When it came to general photography the cameras were good enough but in theater photography at that time they were tremendous for me because they were the first cameras that offered good live view through the EVF. You could actually judge exposure and color in the viewfinder for pretty much the first time. The a77 and the 70-200mm gave me lots of great theater images but even in that niche the camera stumbled in that its high ISO performance was nothing to write a blog about. Noisy over 800 ISO and even noisier beyond. The a99 was a much better high ISO performer though it's been eclipsed by newer cameras. By a long shot. 

The SLT (Single Lens Translucent) technology was a direct descendant of the Canon RT film camera. That camera used a pellicle mirror solely to increase the cycling speed and eliminate the finder blackout, and the RT was a descendant of the F1 Pellicle which was a special order camera created by Canon for sports photographers. The non-moving pellicle (translucent is a poor translation for the concept) mirror of the F1 was also used to increase the frame rate and also to eliminate viewfinder blackout altogether. Actually great for seeing flash in real time. And if Sony had figured out a way to incorporate electronic viewing AND eliminate the black out between frames they might still have an SLT system out there. Now, with the hyper quick processing of the A7 variants the need has subsided. For the most part. It is important to know that the switch from DSLRs to mirrorless was not entirely direct. The SLTs were an interesting stop gap. 

There are a lot of them (a77) out there in the used market. A quick check shows that they can be had for around $400 to $450 used. Not sure about sourcing the lenses but I bet they are out there too. I'm looking for used a99 cameras and whatever the 50mm f1.4 of the that system was. But I'm not looking too hard. There's better stuff here now. But man, that was a good system for its time. Especially if you could slow down and use it the right way. 

And, yes. I finally figured out that when using an a77 for sports one would have to "lead" the subject by just a bit and then sort of follow the action instinctively during the black out. It could be done. It can be done better with the tools we have today.

The Rumors around the launch of a Leica Q3 are expanding quicker than Takata airbags.

The public spaces at Seaholm in downtown Austin have an area covered with nice shade trees. A nice place to sit outside on a hot day and have a cool drink with a friend. And until very recently they had beautiful little café tables in different pastel colors. They were small and spare and minimalist. Just the way we like small tables here at VSL. Sadly, one day, they were just gone, and replaced by these 1970s referenced ugly as F tables. All of them feature a ghastly green finish and all the chairs are cabled to the chairs for that added touch of urban paranoia. Public life on a downward slide...

Across the web I'm starting to see everyone referencing the imminent launch of the latest Leica "Q". Destined to be called, if we believe the web, the Q3. I guess it's time to update and upgrade but I was just settling in to the Q2 and no one has come close to cobbling together anything to rival it so I'm not sure why Leica is in a hurry to push out yet another camera... but let's take a look at the rumors.

The exterior of the camera is supposed to be a dead ringer for the current camera....at first sight. But in a gigantic and earth-shattering departure from Leica's usual design ethos of structural integrity over popular feature spread it looks like they might be going with a flippy screen for the rear LCD panel. Not a swivel-ly screen. Just a flippy screen. I don't need one. I didn't ask for one but I guess I could get used to it in a pinch. I imagine enough "street" photographers like to shoot surreptitiously, from the waist level, and so the addition of this capability will be seen as a plus by them. Personally, I like that there are fewer pieces  to break off on the first two iterations of the camera. LCD screens that move around are one of the mechanical parts that fails most often on other camera brands. I just happen to be a fan of structural rigidity and simplicity...

The next big change seemed destined to arrive at Leica from the moment Sigma launched their fpL camera. It's the inclusion of a 61 megapixel imaging sensor which also includes (for the first time on a Leica camera) PDAF. I suppose this means that we'll see two effects. One good for advertising and one a headache for the Wetzlar marketing team. The first effect (the bad one) we might confront is that very few of the current Leica lenses, or Panasonic lenses were designed to take advantage of PDAF and might not be able focus any faster or better than on the older cameras, which are contrast detect AF only. On the other hand, given that the AF system will be brand new and only needs to be integrated with a permanently attached, single focal length lens, I think we'll see much hyperbole about the "fastest AF camera in the world." At least until some enterprising website does an A/B comparison to disprove the marketing hype. 

But wait! There's more. 

If we can believe the "leaks" the camera will be the first of the Q series to feature either wireless charging (not thinking this is so great....) or charging through USB (which I think is a good idea). Either way, users will be able to charge the battery without removing it from the camera. And what a battery it is supposed to be. The new battery is compatible with the current battery across the line of SL cameras and the latest Q2. The big news is that (as Panasonic improved two years ago) the battery will now be more powerful. Something like 2100 milli-amp hours, up from 1800. It's not a dramatic increase but I'll take any increase in battery life they can give us. I just hope it doesn't come packaged with an excuse to raise the price of batteries to $325 from $285. The current price is already in the realm of sinister capitalist fantasy. I hope it doesn't spread.

I haven't read it yet but I can't believe Leica would launch a Q3 in 2023 without increasing the EVF resolution to what has become standard across the SL line. That would be just a hair shy of 6 million dots. And that would be a worthwhile improvement. It would move the EVF from pretty darn good to spectacular and I can only think the standardization of parts would benefit...everyone.

All of this Germanic magic and craftiness in one small box is supposed to hit the market, according to the shadowy sources on the internet, by the end of this month. But par for the course I'm sure Leica will have made a couple hundred copies at the outset in an attempt to fill thousands of orders. After all, the Q series has been their most successful seller in the digital space. Why would they want to satisfy all consumer demand in the first week, month or even year of the launch? Inconceivable. If they stretch it out they can milk the desire for years to come... ... ... 

So, will I get one? That's an unknowable question. If past trajectory gives us any sort of launch target I'm sure I'll eventually get one. Maybe five years from now when it's long in the tooth and prices have stabilized. Maybe in the next quarter if the markets don't crash. Maybe never if I can convince myself that the current Q has more than enough resolution, focuses quickly enough and with complete accuracy for my needs, and if I can convince myself that the addition of a flippy screen is an aberration and that making the decision to shamelessly appeal to the masses Leica will have ensconced the Q2 as the last super quality contender in the space. More robust and well sealed than its successor and blessed with a sensor that is the perfect compromise between noise performance and resolution. Then I'll just buy a second Q2 to have as a back up and go on with life. You can't have too many Q2s. And you can interpret that two different ways.

I'm happy though that Leica keeps making and marketing new cameras. It gives the Sony and Canon users among my group of photographer friends something more to tease me about. And the prices keep imparting a subtle frisson between my rationale brain and the bigger, more robust, impulsive shopper part of my brain which is...enervating. Oh hell. You see where this is going, right?

Are you now lining up to pre-order one at your favorite Leica dealer? Should I try to beat you to the punch? Or maybe we should just all go out for another walk. 

Banal melange of 1970s buildings. Now made chic through the passage of time and the 

diminishing of architectural taste in general.

As a home owner I have come to think of drainage as being holy. A must have.

Stereo dinner jackets.

I'm loving the strength training. It's fun to go to the gym. It's funny to watch jacked up/pumped up guys strut in front of the mirrored wall and check out their own biceps. It's funnier to watch the young women take selfies in the mirrors of their own butts. But it's mostly fun to lift the weights, do the machines and then, two days later, feel the results in the pool. Stronger means more stability in the strokes and that translates into either more speed or more endurance. Mostly your choice. 

My goal is to build swim strength, not abnormal muscle size. So far I have resisted any desire to photograph my own butt with my cell phone in between sets. We live in an insane world. Really. But, as Lao Tzu once said, "People are gonna people." 

Happy Mother's Day. From Rome. 1986.

 Photographed with a Hasselblad 500 C/M and a 100mm Zeiss Planar. Hand developed Tri-X film.  Printed on Seagull paper and then scanned. One of my favorite "mother and son" portraits. At the outdoor tables in a café. Hope you celebrated well today! 

Photos from around the house. Mother's Day. Seems the perfect time to use my favorite camera and lens.

B. seems to be filling the patio, the gardens and the walkways with various succulents. This little fella sits right in the middle of the dining table on the screened in patio. Today we had soft rain and cool temperatures and when I came home from (you guessed it...) swim practice she was sitting on the patio savoring a cup of coffee and reading a book called, "Lawn Gone." It's about converting water hungry lawn spaces to areas filled with native species and non water consuming ground cover, like river rocks and crushed granite. 

I made a cup of coffee and joined her on the patio. The smell of the rain was good. The smell of my freshly brewed coffee was delicious. I ate two blueberry waffles. They were a fun divertissement from my usual Spartan fare. The morning was quiet and we both read our books and just relaxed. 

I was reading Annie Leibovitz's book, "At Work" and enjoying it immensely. Especially the essay in which she describes coming to a realization that she'd like to do a project without people in the frames. She was drawn to places that resonated with her, like Emily Dickinson's house and Georgia O'Keefe's Southwestern haunts and refuges. In the moment that desire to photograph objects or places instead of people spoke to me. 

I put down the book and walked into the dining room to pick up a camera from the big table in there and bring it outside. I brought the camera in from the studio the night before. I always like to have a camera in the house in case I see something I want to photograph. Yesterday I was interested in revisiting the 65mm focal length so I had the Sigma 65mm f2.0 on the oldest of my Leica SLs. Together they are a beautiful combination for photographing single objects and small tableaux. 

I tried to use the lens at its widest aperture but sometimes felt the need to stop down a bit to cover the objects I wanted in focus. I photographed B. reading her book but she has issued a moratorium on current images of her appearing on social media so...  I'll have a nice collection of contemporary B. portraits to print and hang around my office.  More >

The images of the yellow tulips above and below were taken in low existing light which required ISOs of 4,000 and 5,000. The SL camera does a fine job handling noise without losing either saturation or sharpness of small details and textures.  More >

We're hosts to more succulents than you can imagine and more seem to keep arriving as gifts on most holidays and birthdays. Some of the bigger ones, planted in beds outside, didn't make it through the recent ice storm but are in the process of being replaced. More >

Baby Succulents. 

When I'm seated at my place at the dining room table this is my view. Well, it would be my view if I saw everything through a 65mm lens...

My Berlebach monopod resting next to a bookshelf in the living room. 

It's lovely to use on hot, sunny days outside.

This old cedar chest from Adana, Turkey seems to be the transitional repository

for photo books I'm in the middle of or returning to frequently. Here's the current 

crop. "Wonderland" is overwhelming in sheer volume so I have to take it in smaller 

doses. It's not a "one sitting" retrospective. Same with the Peter Lindbergh book. 

This book however is a good one sitting read. And every  time 

I read through it I find something or some part being more emphatic and 

interesting than the last time I read it. The book hasn't changed. I guess

it would be my point of view that's in flux.

The view from my chair at the table on the patio. 

Everything in this quadrant of the yard seems perennially green.

So. After a quiet time outside on the porch what could be 

more natural than coming into the office and looking at 

photographs? 

Happy Mother's Day. 

 

OT: The sky was lit up from midnight onward. And the rain keeps coming. But, we managed to eke out a swim practice anyway.

 I must have been startled awake three or four times last night. I'd awaken to multiple flashes of lightning and pounding thunder that shook the windows and sounded like cannon fire from the 1812 Overture. Of course I despaired of there not being a swim practice this morning given that it's in an outdoor pool and, well...lightning. 

But, ever optimistic I rolled out of bed, ate some toasted Super Bread with a slash of crunchy peanut butter on it, washed it all down with a cup of Columbian Supremo coffee, brushed my teeth and exited the house into the steady rain. But no lightning in the moment.

I pulled into the parking lot about ten till 8. The early group didn't show because there was thunder and lightning leading up to their usual start time of 7. The gate to the pool was locked and it was apparent that our usual coach woke up to thunder, presumed our aquatic adventure was cancelled, then turned over and went back to sleep. Not so for the more diligent swimmers. 

There were two people waiting in the parking lot when I got there but quickly more people arrived through the mist. Seeing that we were bereft of a coach one enterprising swimmer got on her mobile and texted one of the coaches who lives nearby -- and for whom the swimmer had a phone number. Miraculously our kind, substitute coach showed up in her pajamas seven minutes later, opened the gates and started conjuring up a workout for the twelve hardy swimmers now in attendance. She also hopped in and swam the workout with us. Her quick response on a dreary Saturday morning was very much above and beyond the call of duty!

Knowing we were racing against the clock, against nature, against the power of lightning and the cruel power of entropy we rushed in and, only five minutes past 8 we were all deep into the warm-up. Stragglers, perhaps sensing our determination from afar, started showing up and diving in. Our coach tossed a bunch of good, hard yardage at us and we ate it up like candy. 

At 8:53 we were stopped at one end of the pool to listen to the coach tell us about the final set when a blast of lightning triggered through the glowering sky. Judging by the delay between the flash and the peal of thunder it was about a mile and a half away. The thunder rolled on for many seconds. The coach called it a good stopping point and we all jumped out of the pool and made our way to the locker rooms in the still pounding rain. Rain that was about 20 degrees cooler than the pool water. That will wake you up if you aren't already paying attention. 

The entire time in the water I had only two thoughts. One was about that front catch on my freestyle stroke. I'm still perfecting that. The other thought was about whether or not I should just bite the bullet and order the real deal of M to L lens adapter from the Leica Store. I have two Hoage Macro adapters and they work well at all focusing distances but they do have focusing helicoids and I did have one quick episode where I accidentally turned the ring while changing lenses and caused a few frames to be out of focus. I thought I might benefit by having at least one "bullet proof" precision adapter to use when I'm trying to be a more serious photographer. 

When I got home I checked on line. Found a 9+ condition used one at CameraWest and bought it. Should be here next week. It's going on the Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 ZM lens that's coming from B&H. Might as well have a complete set of my favorite focal lengths in these tiny sizes for those times that I want to lighten my load but still shoot sharp. Or on the off chance that one of my readers here is so enchanted with everything I've written that they can't help themselves and they decide to send me an M11 Monochrom as a "Thank you." It could happen. 

I've been putting up new photos at my portrait display blog site. Wanna see em?

Sure you do!

https://kirktucksportraits.blogspot.com/ 

And here's a little something to inspire you to exercise: https://neurosciencenews.com/fitness-neuroscience-23228/

Swimmer portrait. Getting ready for Summer over here. New "Senior" swim pass obtained for all City of Austin Pools. In addition to the swim club. Gotta have options.

 Jennifer. Swimmer. Triathlete.

For the last couple of years I have been buying the Senior Pool Pass that's offered by the city of Austin. It gives me free access to every single municipal pool from the first of April through the end of October. It also includes a hang tag for my car which gives me free parking at the Barton Springs Pool. This is very handy since that parking is also convenient for long walks around the hike and bike trails and into downtown. 

Since I swim daily at a private club, with my masters team, I won't get my money's worth out of the swim pass --- if you just consider it a primary swim resource. I get the pass because it's occasionally fun to swim somewhere different and I have a number of swimmer friends who sometimes like to mix things up by swimming laps at Deep Eddy, a beautiful, WPA era, spring feed pool that sits adjacent to Lady Bird Lake. Just across the running trail.  It's 33.3 meters instead of 25 yards so that's fun to mix in as well. Fewer turns. More distance. 

I buy the swim pass for those rare times when our primary pool is closed. Might be for a kid's swim meet or to do some needed maintenance but as any addict will tell you the idea of having to go without for even a day is... uncomfortable. I also buy the pass each year because the money generated by the sale of the passes goes right back to Austin Aquatics (the city) and helps support maintenance and staffing. 

My swimming is getting expensive. I pay $110 a month to swim with the masters team and that's in addition to club dues and the original membership fees. I also spend about $50 a month for chlorine removing shampoo and body wash. Every six months or so I find myself splashing out for new goggles ($25) and every two years or so a new swim suit ($65). I add it all up and I'm maybe spending a couple thousand dollars a year to swim. At times I look at the numbers and consider that I should just cut out all of that and sit quietly at my desk, behind my computer, just waiting to die. And then I realized that I often spend more than all swim costs combined on one lens. Or 1/6th of a  new camera body and that puts everything back into perspective.

Then my accountant ( a long distance runner and a varsity track and field athlete during his time at UT ) calculates for me the average amount the average 67 year old spends on medical co-pays, drug co-pays, therapies of all kinds, lost opportunities from being in poor shape and the very real specter of shortened and burdened lifespans. The numbers are stark. The swim costs are ultra-cheap compared to all the alternatives. And swimming with a lot of like minded and very healthy friends is uplifting and so very social. Hard to be lonely and isolated when one is surrounded by 30-40 good, decades long friends for an hour or so every day. Even my CPA, Barry, couldn't put a price tag on that.

A fringe benefit is that my swim friends are of a large range of ages, all are in really good shape, and they are fun to photograph. So different from the majority of the people I see out in public. It's a nice additional feature for a swimming photographer. It keeps me feeling younger than I am. But that might be my recently diagnosed Maturity Deficit Disorder. Don't bother looking it up in the DSM, it's a new thing. My current perceived maturity is right in line with that of an 18 year old. At least behavior-wise. Sadly, (happily) there is no cure... (this is meant to be satiric, not actual or factual diagnosis...). 

Thinking of getting a GoPro to attach to the front of my kick board. Just for something fun and different. 

Senior pass in hand. Swam hard earlier today but now heading over to Deep Eddy Pool for some relaxed stroke work. And some pool side conversations with an alternate group of swim friends. Water good.

Oh gosh. I forgot to schedule any work or chores for the day. Oh well.