Testing the (relatively) new Fujifilm GF 35-70mm f4.5-5.6 zoom lens. Works fine....

 

I got the Fujifilm GFX50Sii with one lens. It was the 50mm f3.5. It's a really great lens. So far I like every photograph I've made with it. Well, I mean I like the technical qualities of the lens but maybe not always the subject matter. But so many readers and friends emailed me after finding out that I'd stuck a whole foot back into the Fuji camp to tell me just "how great" and "what a bargain" the "kit" lens was that I just felt dumb not acquiring it immediately. Turns out that my friends were right. It's a fine lens. Even though it's slow it's very sharp and seems perfectly corrected. No stumbles on focusing and no artifacts that I have to work around. 

Much as I like futzing around with cheap, all manual lenses I have to admit that it's nice to have lenses that autofocus and can be used with all the autoexposure programs on one's camera. For outside use, on a bright, sunny day with a visibility of 28 miles, I'm using f8.0 as my go to aperture. That's nice and sharp. The first image (top) was shot at f11. That's sharp as well. 

The 35-70 is a collapsible lens; it trumpets trombones in. That makes it smaller for times when you want to dump the whole rig into a camera bag. There's a big warning on the LCD reminding you to extend the lens when you turn on the camera. There's not much else to say about it in particular but I do have one thought about "testing" short range zoom lenses. 

It's this. There is a psychological tendency (at least in my brain) to shoot images at both the widest zoom setting and the tightest zoom setting, of the same subject, to see if one angle of view works better than the other. Kinda dumb since I already can see that I have a preference for the middle ground. But as you look through these pix you'll find some "sets" of images shot from the same spot but with one at the wide angle setting and one at the telephoto setting (if you can call 50mm 'telephoto'."). 

These images were submitted via email the Tate Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art. They were roundly rejected. But at least the MOMA sent a nice note along with their 'cease and desist" notice. They said, "Only William Eggleston and Stephen Shore can send us boring test shots and expect to get this kind of banal stuff exhibited. But we admire your courage in actually sending along this crap...." The note was unsigned. Oh well. I gave it a shot. I'll see how it does on YouTube....

35

50

Happy Aspect Ratio. Happy focal length. 

Some day in the future someone will think this is an interesting relic of the late 2010s. 

35

50

a shutter speed fast enough to stop a fast moving passenger train. 

But the train was actually standing still....

All images are straight out of camera jpegs. 

Nothing fancy here. 

After endless hours of deliberation I've decided to keep the lens.

It's fun to meet up with people who read my blog. We both brought cameras. I had a wonderful afternoon coffee with Gordon Lewis.

I was determined to get out today and take some more photographs with the new camera. I know that sentence sounds like something you've probably read here a hundred times... "Kirk wants to try out his 'new' camera." I'm referring this time to the Fuji GFX50Sii. I've taken it out for a short spin before but this time I had the new 35-70mm zoom lens on it and I wanted to see how it would all work.

But, of course, it's not the lens I used to take the two portraits here....that would be too easy.

So, I headed downtown and snapped a bunch of familiar scenes. I usually don't carry my phone with me on walks but B. was driving back from San Antonio and I wanted to be available if she had any troubles on the highway. I checked the phone every once in a while and the last time I checked I had a text from a number I didn't recognize. 

Usually I trash texts from unknown numbers but the text was written with nuances of familiarity. I remembered that my friend and blog reader, Gordon Lewis was supposed to be in town this week so I queried back: "who?" Got an instant reply. Yep. It was Gordon. He wanted to know if I had time to meet up this afternoon. I'm nothing if not spontaneous, and Gordon is fun to hang out with, so of course I immediately accepted the offer.

I dropped by the house, changed lenses to the 50mm f3.5, hopped in the VSL staff car and headed over to meet Gordon at a restaurant where he was finishing up a lunch appointment. We both agreed that it was too hot to walk around and take photographs so we decided to find a nice, cool, coffee shop. 

After a moment of deliberation I decided to take us to my local coffee place; Trianon Coffee. It's at the end of my street. I spend a lot of time there. Mostly goofing off. 

When I have coffee with people who are smarter and more interesting than I am I try to remind myself to stop talking so much and listen better. Gordon has been a professional photographer and is now focused on being a professional writer. He knows stuff that I don't. 

We talked a little bit about cameras and photography. More about music and a good deal about life. I had to drop him off over at the University of Texas after coffee. He had another meeting. But he made two hours of conversation go by in a flash. I was a little sad when he got out of the car. Kind of like when you see a good movie and then it's over and you have to exit the theater into bright sunlight but you wish the movie had lasted just a little longer.

He took some photos of me. I hope I get to see them. If they make me look at least 10% better than I do in real life I'll be sure to post them here... with Gordon's permission. 

Gordon Lewis. At Trianon Coffee. Austin, Texas

Fujifilm GFX50Sii + 50mm f3.5

#funstufftodoinaustin

Met an art director/friend for lunch at Maudie's Tex-Mex restaurant today. We almost froze!

 Texas might not always be good for things like education, healthcare, power grids and fair government but man --- we seem to have air conditioning down to a rocket science. I'm not talking about the environment I have control over; my house or my office, nope, I'm talking about public spaces like restaurants and offices.

I'm trying to be a good conservationist by keeping my thermostat set to 78° during the heat of the day. If the power overlords ask me to voluntarily cut back during an unexpected shortage I'm complicit. I understand. I'll risk 80 or even 82° for the greater good. But all bets are off when I'm on someone else's turf.

Today Greg and I went to Maudie's. It's an Austin restaurant chain with six locations. They serve straight up Tex-Mex cuisine. I wouldn't call it healthy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But it's familiar comfort food to anyone who grew up in Texas. Lots of yellow cheese. Lots of rice and beans. Baskets full of hot, greasy, delicious chips. Hot sauce for dipping and generally clearing out sinuses. 

We go to the location that's right between our home offices. It's just north of Lady Bird Lake on Seventh St. and it's very popular at lunch. Today we got our signals crossed. I was right on time at 11:45 and I secured a table in the far back corner of the restaurant. Greg plugged in our lunch time in his calendar as noon and arrived, un-punctually at noon but at the same time punctually at noon. He picked up the check. He is forgiven.

Trastevere. Rome. Cards with friends.

We were both wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts and we had the same initial reaction when we walked in ---- albeit fifteen minutes apart. When I got to the location I had to park at the far fringes of the parking lot. A walk across a shade free black top expanse with the sun beating down and then stepping through the glass door and encountering a temperature drop of dramatic enough proportions to fog my glasses. I went from 103° to about 70° instantaneously. As I followed the hostess back to the corner table embedded deepest into the dining room I noticed a gradual but real decline in the temp. By the time I got seated in a booth I'm guessing we were right at about 60°. 

When Greg walked in you could see him shake off the heat and then break out into a smile. So nice for a change to be too cold. If there is such a thing.

This is not an unusual occurrence. It's pervasive across the most of the Central Texas dining industry. Nobody orders nearly as much food when they are sweaty hot as they do when there's a chill in the air. I guess the cost of power is part of a trade-off for upselling the food tickets. 

I notice the same thing when I duck into the chain hotels in downtown Austin. My favorite and most humorous "drop by" hotel has got to be the W. Not only is their air conditioning noteworthy for its intensity and chill factor but even on the hottest day in the hottest Summer they have a gas fire in their big fireplace in one of the downstairs public rooms just off the main bar. 

If you are so disposed you can settle in on a couch across from the flickering flames and soak up the warm ambiance while feeling a delightful chill on your back. It's really quite bizarre. 

I opted for the chicken enchiladas with a tomatillo sauce. Delicious. Almost overwhelmed with melted Mexican white cheese on top. Greg had the cheese enchiladas with a rojas sauce on them. And lots of fresh onions. We split a large bowl of queso. Since it was early we washed it all down with ice tea. Better to pass over the beer or margaritas when instant outdoor dehydration is a valid concern...

He mentioned a new project which needs photos coming up in August. I mentioned the new camera. We both thought we could make it all work out. 

One thing we were on the same page about was Summer travel. He suggested that anyone trying to get on a plane and go somewhere in the dead of Summer must be crazy. It's all a crap shoot. Texas sounded hot until we got the news about Spain, France, Italy and Greece. Dramatic! It's hot here too but Texans do one thing really, really well --- it's air conditioning. Staying close to a favorite pools doesn't suck either. And don't even get me talking about the wildfires and the worker strikes...

Explaining the benefits of a new camera to a lifelong art director is always vague and a bit frustrating. They really, really don't care about all the technical stuff. They just want your assurance that the photographs will be really nice and they depend on you to bring along the right stuff. 

Get two photographers together at lunch and it's a whole different story. We could argue over something as vague as what's the best material to use to make shutter releases. And that's before we move on the the huge issues of lens design --- and don't even bring up dynamic range. As if we could measure it at all..... 

But the "art director" approach is nice. Less stress/impetus to bring something insanely different and better to each encounter. 

When I got back to the house the temperature felt less delicious. I was temporarily seduced by the icy allure of the restaurant and its brief antidote to the heat wave. The house felt quire warm by comparison. But I had a ready solution. I walked into the backyard, turned on a small sprinkler, kicked off my shoes and ran gleefully through the spray a few times. When I walked back into the 78° house, clothes soaked and the ceiling fans spinning the chill felt just right. Evaporative cooling at its best.

Errata: I'm sending good thoughts to my swimmer friend, Scott, who chose this week to show his family Rome, Italy. He's been there since Monday. They booked two weeks. In raging heat. With two teenagers. My idea of hell. I hope he survives. 

Hot Walk. Museum Visit. Captions...

Old habits die hard. I could park close to the museum in a University parking garage but I'm so used to parking somewhere a bit further away for free. It's a hold over from early to mid-career when I had to watch every dollar I spent. Always trying to figure out how to save something to prepare for buying a house, putting a kid through college and hopefully saving enough to eke out a decent retirement. Breaking a habit is tough. I guess I'm still holding on to that "scrimp and save" mentality. When I decided to go to the Blanton Museum in the early afternoon it was just plain hot. But I found that parking space on LaVaca St. and I just couldn't help myself. 

But, if you park too close to wherever it is you are going you might miss some fun stuff along the way. I'm thinking printed newspapers are just about extinct...

I might have missed a bright red pickup truck in front of a mint green building. But I didn't. Good shoes. The right hat. Perfect sunglasses. Curiosity. 

It's queen Nefertiti. But I forgot to read the placard on the wall to see who the artist was. My bad...

Always check your camera settings if you are coming from a bright sun situation into a much darker museum environment. I still had the Q2 set for 1/250th of a second, f5.6. Thanks to Auto-ISO I was able to stumble through the process. But I did end up with an ISO of 6400. Hello noise.

Given the heat and humidity, and the fact that it was Tuesday and not a holiday, I thought the museum would be nearly empty of people. I was wrong. It was well attended. I think people are just tired of hunkering down, waiting for cooler weather. The museum was nice and chilly. It would have been even better if they'd been finished with a renovation of the café...

I meant to take the new Fuji MF camera with me but I thought it might add too much size and weight for a long slog on foot. I opted for my favorite, current point-n-shoot camera. A Leica Q2. Grows on me a bit more every time I take it out... Slow burn.

Part of the recent renovation of the courtyard/plaza space included these giant, fluted, shade constructions. On every visit to the museum I try my hand at how to photograph them better. I've got a ways to go.

On the way back to the car I had a long, long wait in the burning sunlight until I got a walk sign for the crosswalk. As I was standing at the intersection I thought to myself that this building across the street from me might be the most boring bit of architecture I've come across in a while. But I'm no expert. Far from it. I can't even keep the edges parallel. 

Loving the idea that World Peace might be obtainable through the delicious Tex-Mex cuisine. Sadly, the restaurant is now closed for good. We might never know if salsa and tortilla chips might be tools of our own salvation. Not just something fun to munch on with Margaritas. 

It's always sad when a good sandwich shop throws in the towel on a location. But Covid messed with a  lot of traffic patterns. Especially foot traffic. The flow changed and the customers vanished. Sad. It's a street that's close to the state Capitol and a few blocks further on it T's into the UT campus. I hope the four or five blocks between there and there get their mojo back soon and are reborn as restaurant and bar destinations once more. It would feel nice. 

Don't mind me, I've just been out in the dusk watering various potted plants. Gotta keep my flora buddies alive....

Tomorrow morning, after swim practice, I'm determined to get the Fuji out into the real world. See you after that.
 

The Blanton Museum Goes Yellow.

After swim practice and calculating and paying the state sales tax for the biz I got a tiny bit motivated to leave the house and see something new. Something beyond the pools and the walls of the office. I drove over to the University of Texas at Austin campus to visit the Blanton Museum (of Art). I presumed that going on an outrageously hot Tuesday afternoon would mean a nearly empty space but I was surprised at how many people were visiting the Art today. Families, solo appreciators, feckless tourists in Texas Summer clothing, etc. 

I was going to bring the new camera along for fun but after walking a few steps to the car at home I realized what a burden a big camera and big lens would be when out walking from my favorite parking to the museum a quarter mile away. I ducked back in the house and traded the big Fuji for the much smaller Leica Q2. In retrospect it was the perfect choice.

There were lots of things to photograph but one thing that struck me over and over again was the repeating use of yellow as part of the museum's branding. So I started looking for yellow stuff. 

I'm happy to have seen the main show one more time. Happier still to get out of the house and to use a camera. Happiest to weather the heat and arrive back at home unscathed. 

I hope your home town is cooler than mine today. If you live somewhere that is currently "suffering" through 60 or 70° "heat" please go out and photograph a bit for me. Just to do it. Just to appreciate the photographic potential provided by....comfort.

 

I have to stop complaining about the heat in Austin. Most of Southern Europe is having a much worse (and much more dangerous) time with this series of heat waves...

I was reading about the heat wave currently pounding Italy, Spain and Greece. The temperatures are higher there than here. Sure, we get a few days on which the temperatures crest 106° F. and then we complain about the heat index but I'm seeing temperatures over 114° F in large swaths of Greece and Italy and that's air temp; not "feels like." Actual, punishing heat. 

Why else should I put a sock in the complaining? Well, according to several articles I've read, about 90% of homes in the USA are air conditioned. I get that using a ton of electricity is going to be a hard burden for many who live on tight budgets here but as long as the AC works the issue doesn't rise to the level of existential peril. Not so for many parts of Europe where home installation of air conditioning is something like 10 to 12% !!!! That means there's no ready escape from the danger of being overheated. 

Sure, I worry about the Texas power grid but I've checked it every day and it's holding up well. And, as a fan of having back-up solutions to most mission critical aspects of my own life, then as long as the grid holds I'll be fine. If we have an issue with the home air conditioning systems we have the resources to have a new one central air system installed in a matter of days. And, as a safety back-up, the office which is just steps from the front door of the house has its own, separate air conditioning system which is relatively new and currently working well. We would have a quick refuge in which to wait out a system replacement for the house --- and vice versa. 

My biggest worry right now is just keeping the trees and the yard alive. And so far I'm working within the county drought restrictions and having about an 85% success score. But it sure doesn't look like rain any time soon.

I had coffee with my favorite camera addiction supplier photographer friend today. I wanted to hand him a check for the Fuji GFX50Sii before he heads out of town to cooler climes next week. We met at the halfway point between our two offices for cold coffee. As is typical we spent an hour just catching up and talking about our professional lives. We both had decent business in the first part of the year but as soon as the high pressure dome and the ensuing heat wave hit our home town both of our businesses flatlined. No calls. No appointments. Nada. 

We're both ready for retirement and neither of us is worried about paying the bills. We're not depending on the next head shot or architectural photo to keep from starving. But it's interesting how quickly the "tap" turns off when people feel paralyzed by the heat...

We both agreed that, like our clients, we're equally unmotivated to go outside after the early hours in the morning and that the thought of just moving gear from the studio to the car and the car to the client's location seems overwhelming --- and a stark impediment to even accepting jobs. 

Sad to have a new camera that I'd love to put through its paces but not having the stomach to get out in dangerous heat to do it. Better I think to bide my time and wait for a break in the weather. I hope we see it before Christmas...
  

This heat wave will end up costing billions and billions of dollars in lost economic opportunities. Much worse, it is already costing lives. Stay chilly. Visualize snow. 

Waiting for a new lens. Testing out black and white profiles. Staying out of the heat.

1:1 aspect ratio. Fuji 50Sii. Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 (nikon mount/adapted). 

Handsome male model; a stranger passing by.... naw. just me... Acros with G filter.

Loving the Jpegs...

Don't know about you but when I first get my hands on a very new to me camera there's a bit of fussing around, shopping and adapting that goes on. A process of getting a feel for the camera and the lenses and then deciding what's needed in the short term to really make the camera useful and ready to work the way you'd like it to. 

My first move is usually to buy a couple extra batteries but the camera came with three. There are buckets of fast, big SD cards sitting around the studio so, again, not a priority. 

The 50mm f3.5 lens is very nice and the adapted 58mm f1.4 Voigtlander lens is interesting and full of personality but I really wanted something just a bit longer. And a bit wider.

Almost everyone who has chimed in to comment on their experiences with this camera system has advised me to acquire the 35-70mm f4.5-5.6 Fuji zoom lens. Especially now while it's offered new for $500. The retail price is $1,000. When used in conjunction with the square format the lens is just long enough to make good portraits. And, when used in 4:3, it's just wide enough to do fun urban architecture shots. 

I ordered one from B&H and it should be here sometime mid-week. I can't wait to try it out. The only fault that gets mentioned about the "kit" lens is the slow speed of its maximum aperture. But outside during this Summer in Texas? Not an issue. Inside the studio for portraits? Also not an issue.

The camera is really nice. I'm happy with everything it does now that I've figured out how to magnify a frame when previewing -- while using a (non-Fuji) manual focusing lens. Once I learned that, and how to shoot without a Fuji lens attached, I starting feeling more and more at home with the whole kit. 

I'm resisting getting the lens I'd really like. That would be the 110mm f2.0 Fuji lens. It's kinda pricey at $2200 (on sale - new) but coming from Leica World it actually seems like a bargain. I think I'll spend some time with the current inventory until I feel a strong, pressing need for the ultimate portrait lens and then see where we are. 

There are some older, 35mm legacy lenses still kicking around that I'd like to try first. Like the Carl Zeiss 135mm f2.0 APO Sonnar ZF.2 lens. Which on the full frame of the 50Sii would be the equivalent angle of view as a 106mm on a 24x36mm sensor. Now, that would make for a really nice portrait lens...

I am also interested to find out how well the two Zeiss M series lenses (28mm and 35mm) I recently got work on this camera. Oh, and the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron (nikon F mount); since I have already acquired the needed lens adapter....

Most prospective buyers who talk about wanting to use these cameras with some of their Nikon, Canon or Pentax lenses, designed for the 35mm format, seem to worry about whether or not the lenses will show a hard, mechanical vignette, and even if the lenses will fully cover the 33x44mm sensor. I have fewer concerns since I keep coming back to the idea of using the camera as a square format machine. Still, it's nice to know that some lenses made for the smaller format actually do a decent job in covering the sensor without a hard mechanical vignette. A soft, optical vignette being much easier to correct. 

A different topic: I've been so conscientious about getting to swim practice all month, in spite of the heat-inspired lack of any possible motivation. But I felt the need to give my brain a break from the pool today. I got up early and ran a three mile loop through the neighborhood. There's a long grade, about a quarter mile, up a hill that will really make one break a sweat. It was chilly when I laced up the shoes and headed out. A happy 80 degrees. Bearable in comparison to recent mornings. My time was not fast and it really wasn't meant to be. But running is different from walking and I don't want that rhythm to slip away from my muscle memory. 

After the run and a cup of nice, Columbian Supremo coffee (drip, of course....) I felt warmed up and still had some excess energy so I headed to the gym to work through my usual 45 minutes of strength training. I'll never be ripped, chiseled and all puffed up but I sure am working hard at keeping sarcopenia at bay. Three times a week seems to be my limit. Anything more and I'm too stiff and sore to sleep comfortably.  And then my flexibility falls apart...which is detrimental to effortless swimming. It's all interconnected. 

Finally: Rounding up talent to photograph for portraits is harder than I remember. As Austin gets hotter and at the same time more affluent more and more of the beautiful people decamp during the Summer months and go elsewhere. The selection of people that I want to photograph, but who also have open schedules and a desire to be immortalized, wanes with the heat. I'll keep trying. I'd like to get back into practice....

One more program note: someone chided me offline (email) about the silliness of "changing systems yet again after just recently pronouncing my everlasting love for the Leica cameras." The implication being that grabbing a new Fuji MF camera to use must mean that I will rush to abandon all the other cameras and concentrate for the moment on obsessing only about the Fujis. I just don't see that happening. The Fuji 50Sxxx seems like a much more niche camera. And I still have a crush on the Leica SLs (the original). The SL2 is still the prime choice for work and I pressed it into service recently for a healthcare client. One that required all the cool stuff Leica offers as well as needing macro lenses, wide lenses and longer lenses. It worked beautifully. And the extra depth of field was mission critical...

Let me enjoy a fun camera without making it into a drama about the futility and neurosis of system changes. At least until you see me snap up a GFX 100S and a box full of Fuji primes..... Just sayin. 

It's okay to have both. Really. I even asked my spouse. She said it would be fine. "As long as it's fun."

I wanted to see how the Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 Nokton looked when I used it on the Fuji 50Sii. I had the camera set to record in a 1:1 aspect ratio and took this image at f2.8 with the lens adapted for use on the camera with a Novoflex adapter. The focus was set onto the spine of the cinematography book near the left side of the stack. That's a somewhat out of focus photo of a photo of my dad in his old University office. Most of the books on the shelf are mine. Even the one in Chinese....

And look!!! No vignetting in the square!