What is it about the Sigma fp that makes it desirable to a certain segment of photographers?

Small, visually boring from the front. Indestructible. Capable and 

anonymous. No big logo on the front of this camera. Nothing you'd 

need to cover up with black tape. This one is already "stealthy."

The Sigma fp is such an interesting product. It's small, hard to hold without an add-on grip. Bereft of the usual popular features (it's contrast AF only, no eye level finder, no weird picture modes, pixie battery life, L mount only, and a scandalously thin menu system). On the other hand it can shoot RAW 4K video to an attached SSD. And on the other, other hand it has color like no other camera I've used. 

I think the camera is sexy, desirable and niche-y precisely because it's a specialized tool that's more about taking great images than it is about making everything super easy for photographers. Yeah. You have to work with the fp to get what you want. But when you do get what you want it sings beautifully. 

How else can you explain that two photographers who represent the opposite ends of the aesthetic and technical spectra; Kirk Tuck and Michael Johnston, can agree so wholeheartedly about a camera that each uses to create images so different from the other?

I bought mine when they were first announced. Well, at least when they were first available. That was back in early 2020. I've probably shot 30,000 frames with the camera and rarely use it at all for video. A minor breakthrough for me was when I got progressive lens eyeglasses and decided that it would be okay to forego an eye level finder and use the rear LCD for all my composition, etc. I gave up thinking about getting the EVF and, when I use the camera for work stuff I'm just fine using the gigantic loupe that Sigma made for the camera. 

When I use the camera for fun (most of the time) I like to strip it down to the barest essentials and work that way. It makes sense because in its most distilled form, using no loupe or EVF, and no grip, just the original 45mm lens (without even a lens hood) it looks so much like a point and shoot camera to most people. And it's most people that I want to photograph when I'm out and around. Not camera lovers. Also, I am finding out, belatedly, that most people absolutely ignore you if you are going full amateur and are composing on a rear camera screen with the camera held out in front of you in your outstretched arms. 

But since the fp is easily as good as a Leica, at least as far as image quality is concerned, that anonymity is like a super power hand delivered by this camera in spades. I used mine all weekend out on the streets here in Austin and the people I pointed the Sigma fp at rarely acknowledged that it was even there. Much less that I was taking their photograph. No "stranger danger" with a bland looking, small camera.

But there is another side to the fp. It's that the sensor is magnificent and the color science is just right --- for me. Sometimes I use the fp in a totally different configuration. On a tripod. With Leica glass on the front. With the big loupe on the back. And I use it this way to make product photographs and lit, studio portraits --- even environments portraits. And, as Michael Johnston has written at least several times, when used this way it's his modern version of a view camera. Control, control, control. 

I used to bitch about the battery life but I gave up caring. There are so many high quality battery options for this camera. And they are, for the most part, inexpensive. They are also the same type of battery that powers the Leica CL camera and generations of Panasonic cameras. You can pick up serviceable batteries for $20 and vetted, Sigma batteries for around $45. Problem solved. Just bring a Baggie(tm) full of the batteries when you go out to shoot. 

And you can just imagine how incredibly cute and seductive this metal,  rectangular box looks when you use it with Leica M lenses on it. Eye-watering goodness.   

 

sometimes. Most of the time, it's just a walking around camera. 

A snapshot camera with the potential to gobsmack pixel peepers. 

the Sigma fp dressed up for work. Ready to go into the office or to 

work from home. Configured here with the Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 Art lens, 

a Sigma handgrip and the infamous loupe.

You know that curved building on the edge of the lake in downtown 

Austin that I seem to enjoy photographing all the time?

Well, here's what it looked like in its infancy about four or five

years ago. Acres of rebar and a deep, deep pit. 

Yes. The fp can do "monochrome" and it doesn't even 

need to be converted. But if you're feeling rich then buy one, send it 

off and you can have a custom version. 

Used an fp late last year on a photo shoot for a national 

accounting firm. Environmental portraits in the office space. 

It worked really well for that. Really well. 

Skin tones are delightful right out of the camera. 

I've used a lot of top-of-the-line cameras but none of them have exuded the sheer "personality" of the fp. You either love it or you use it for a week, sell it and then curse me for months for having written so much nice stuff about it. 

It's not a universal camera. It's not an all purpose tool for someone who is constantly doing different kinds of assignments. Rather, it's a specialized camera for someone who already has a different system for fast moving work; a person with fast focusing needs. And you definitely need a second system if  your work entails using flash --- pretty much at all. But, if you've got other working cameras and you find them boring or too easy to use and you need some friction in your process this is for you. Just be aware that having some friction in the process doesn't mean the camera doesn't have the potential to make great images, it's just that getting them into the camera is pretty much all on you. It's not a camera with training wheels that's there to save you. It's willing if you are capable. 

I don't always nail everything I shoot with the fp but that's what makes it fun for me. It's the challenge. But a challenge with outsized rewards. 

In many ways it's the anti-Sony. And that's okay with me.

These are just my opinions. I don't make money having opinions about cameras. There are no links here. We don't sell cameras either. Nope, Sigma didn't give me a camera (but I wish they'd give me a second fp, just for back-up) or a car or a trip to Spain. I'm writing about the camera because I really like using it and think it's largely been marginalized by doltish "influenzers" with contagious and flawed points of view. Mostly driven by a desparate need for cash. So, take it all with a grain of salt but be aware that I'm not trying to separate you from a tiny fraction of your net worth just to rationalize my own purchase of a wildly eccentric but wonderful camera. Your mileage will most likely vary. But that's okay too. More for me.

Finally! Back in the pool for a swim workout. Yummy.

Coffee in Leipzig. Red cup specials...

You know how, when you were young and oblivious, cuts, scrapes and various non-fatal wounds seemed to heal almost overnight? What a marvelous thing that was. I cut open the top of my right hand when I hit a lane line all wrong at swim practice last Thursday and I've been nursing the battered flesh ever since. Those big scrape wounds tend to be "weepy" and I tried to keep mine covered with right-sized bandaids. But there is no denying that the more years added to your ledger the longer the healing process for most (all?) things takes. 

I slept in this morning, drank coffee, and walked three miles and change through the hills with B. It was a glorious 46 degrees when we stirred and only 48 by the time we left the house.  A lovely start to the day.

I made it to the pool for the noon practice instead of my usual 8 a.m. aquatic adventures. 

In what I later found was an excess of caution I used a big, waterproof bandage to cover the back of my hand. Two physicians I swim with assured me that the high chlorine levels in the pool would kill anything I thought might have killed me instead. 

Swimming at noon on a near perfect day is like candy that won't rot your teeth. Or wine that will never give you a hangover. Or chocolate cake with no calories. The air temp was about 60° and the water temp was a near perfect 80°. The sky was clear and Texas Blue. Practice was not nearly as well attended as a usual Tuesday morning practice so everyone got their own, individual lane. The hour shot past.

I've been cleaning up the studio today and stopping from time to time to play with cameras. The current favorite camera, the one sitting in the car right now --- patiently waiting to see where my coffee break of the afternoon will take us --- is the oldest and most beat up of my Leica SL collection. Just for grins (and because I like the tonality...) it's wearing an old, 50mm f1.4 Canon FD SSC lens. The camera seems to play well with the lens and  the lens just seems happy to be out of the drawer and out in the world.

I'm glad I made it to the pool today. I was beginning to worry that I was putting off returning because of the accident. But I was equally worried that I had gained a pound, what with the travel and then the down time from the pool. I've weighed a bit less than 160 lbs. since 2001 and I'd hate to cause the trend line to deviate. If it did and I gained I might have to find my own fad diet to torture my readers with....

I was supposed to photograph a new hire at my favorite law firm today but the poor guy broke his foot yesterday and the last I heard from the office manager was that the attorney was heading to an orthopedic practice to get some scans. No shoot for today! Well, at least no shoot for a client...

I'll be back in the pool tomorrow morning. Can't get too much of a good thing. Gotta keep that resting pulse rate nice and low...

Some pix from Berlin:

A fellow beta tester for the Samsung Galaxy NX camera and lenses.

 

My life is changing but not my interest in taking photographs. I got a great response to yesterday's images but they were only a small collection of what I shot.

 

Catching a ride to the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

The irony of "motoring" across the Pedestrian Bridge.

Life is always interesting. When you are working in the middle of your career you feel like you are too busy to even breathe. A bit later you feel like you are just calling it in. I guess I could go on photographing for clients and running a business until I drop over dead but this year has been a pivotal one for making decisions. Do you stay or do you go? Or...is there some middle ground?

At the end of next week I'll be turning 68. I've had a long and successful run as a photographer. I count myself lucky at 67 to be able do the same kinds of physical work I've always done as a photographer. Packing up gear. Hauling it upstairs and downstairs and across muddy fields in the heat. Getting home on red eye flights at one in the morning and keeping track of all the gear until the Uber drops me off at the office and I unload. My eyes still work and my hearing is fine. My balance is good and my swimming (when not injuring myself) is challenging but still achievable. Still fun. But as much as I've kept my energy, and my passion for making images for myself, I seem to be losing my motivation to make clients happy. To keep generating images for advertising campaigns. Even for nice, fun clients. It just feels .... futile and boring.

I've explored options. Many of my friends tell me I am lucky to own my own business so I can just ratchet back and take only the jobs that are really fun. They call it "lucky" that I can also keep my toes in the water, so to speak. To be able to just step in and say, "wow! that sounds fun! Let's do it." And that's an option, I guess. Picking and choosing. But it never really works out as neatly as that sounds.

People who are only motivated by money might look at the business and see an opportunity for me to go on and on until I'm physically spent, in order to get the money, take the tax advantages, and operate my life completely out of cash flow; putting off the time when I'll actually have to reach in and start taking money back out of retirement accounts and the like. 

More realistic friends generally look at the overview of my situation and ask, "Why in God's name are you still dealing with clients?!!!"  "Go and do your own work and have fun with it." The message is: retire already.  Even our wealth manager occasionally calls up and suggests I could spend more money. That I'm not in danger of running out too soon.

I guess my subconscious has been preparing for this for a couple of years. During the pandemic I stopped marketing to clients entirely. That decision worked well to separate the boring and commodity type jobs and clients from the real deals but the friends in advertising I've made over the last 40 years are more tightly bound than I would have imagined. They're not ready to let go. Not entirely. 

There are three or four companies that I still work with. They are kind and smart and their budgets tend to be...generous. Everyone else, from tech to healthcare to manufacturing, the ones I looked at as a necessary job in order to wrangle a profit, a "pay check", those have been culled. When they call me now my pat line is: "Well, we've stopped offering that particular service." and any other service they might need....

The sad reality is that most working photographers who've been successful have come to value the continuity that the work itself provides for us. They miss the work. I'm no different. The work creates a foundation and format in which to exist. We know where the boundaries are. We know which buttons to push. And good work fills the days with purpose. Retire and all of a sudden you have to confront an additional eight to ten hours a day without real, external structure. Retire and you need to find new purpose.

The trip to Montreal was a test run for real retirement. Could I be satisfied with a full week of self-directed photography and could I emotionally flip the switch from saver to spender? I discovered that I'm pretty good at self-propelled engagement. And I like the freedom to change plans at random, and to embrace a certain amount of chaos. The money doesn't really figure in.

Anyway, when I walked around yesterday with a "primitive" camera and a single lens (Sigma fp + 45mm) I realized that the freedom to photograph is the thing I most enjoy. Being able to leave the house in the middle of the morning and walk until it's time for dinner, just taking frames and soaking up the rich tapestry of life in the moment. That's delicious.

I spent the weekend trying to decide what to do with the business part of life and came to the conclusion that it's time to progressively step away. It's just not very meaningful to me anymore. And, as far as work in the advertising and marketing community goes it seems obvious to me that, at some point, everyone ages out. Priorities change and focus changes and we start more jealously guarding our time. And it's only fair, I think, to step aside so a younger generation can have more opportunities. They'll need em.

I'll miss the ability to rationalize buying the latest toys. Not that a lack of clients would stop me from buying expensive crap I don't need. But not having to prove something at every engagement robs the toys of some of their purpose; their fun.

I used to spend too much time surfing the web for photo gear and new techniques. New faces in industry and new ways of doing art. Now I'm spending a lot more time surfing the travel sites. Tossing money at hotel reservations and plane fares. Becoming newly appreciative of nonstop airline routes. 

Every place seems to have some sort of charm, some reason to visit. And with a camera in hand how can it not be fun? As long as we are careful to maintain the balance with swimming, dinners with friends, and time for myself everything should work out. 

It's time to claw back some time and to learn how to spend money effectively to achieve maximum fun. I think these are things I can work towards. Not much will change with my writing and blogging. That's still fun and it was never really about earning a paycheck or marketing to work clients. No workshops. No print sales. No advertising links.  It was just community and sharing and .... fun. And it's still fun. 

heading to the concert. Me? No. I'm heading in the opposite direction.

Been in Austin longer than I have. And still serving great stuff.

mannequin modeling day of the dead flowered headpieces.

the Summer version of the Stetson "Open Road" hat.

ooo. ACL Fest is such a class act...

A custom, silver cowboy hat.

the coffee shop inside the hat store makes a decent latté. Not perfect. 

But quite decent.

group tours always make me just a bit nauseous. 

The endless line for coffee at Jo's Coffee on S. Congress.

Crocs with applied decor. 

regular contrast.