The Eclipse is coming! The Eclipse is coming!!! So are my new glasses. And a replacement for a stupidly lost diopter. And I think people's taxes are coming due. But Leica and Fuji still can't promise us their cool new cameras are coming.

 

I'll admit to being absolutely amazed that the coming eclipse is such a big deal to so many people. Eclipses have been happening pretty much forever. At least forever in human terms. They tend to be very short in duration (totality measured in single digit minutes) and there is no longer any mystery or magic involved. The moon transits between the earth and the sun. Forgive me, but isn't the moon constantly circling the earth? Day in and Day out. And, if you look at it all from the opposite point of view isn't the earth nearly constantly "causing" eclipses on the moon? Whatever. If you really think it's smart and wonderful to travel hundreds or thousands of miles, braving weather reports now suggesting clouds or even thunderstorms, to catch a brief peek of the sun being momentarily blotted out by the moon then knock yourselves out. Go for it. Be sure to buy a bunch of stuff in central Texas before you go back home. We could use the sales tax income. But I'll still sit and wonder "what the heck?"

I'm much more excited about the arrival of my new eyeglasses tomorrow. Maybe the new prescription and the "precision" lenses will improve my photography. Maybe I'm just grasping at straws. But I'll try anything at this point to add some pizzazz to my work. I do guarantee that the glasses will at least look very cool. The glasses were the lollipop at the end of my eye exam but I guess I should consider a good outcome from the exam as the real reward. Heading toward 69 years of age this year but no signs of cataracts, glaucoma, or other issues. All the veins running across the back walls of my eyes look great. I'll take that. But being shallow and silly (sometimes) I still think getting new glasses is the cool takeaway. 

Why? Because everyone else in my family had glasses. My brother and sister got theirs early on. In the first part of grade school. I was so jealous. From my first memory of my parents to the very end....glasses. But I was not on the "A" list. Never got glasses. At least not for a very long time. I was forty-six when I first was smacked upside the head with the need for glasses. Bifocals in fact. But I dodged eyeglasses for a long, long time before that. Always felt left out. Deprived. Even though my eyes were 20/20 and I couldn't make use of glasses in my youth even if some adult was silly enough to buy some for me. The real agony was the fact that everyone with glasses looked smarter. They just did.

I made up for the deprivation by always having really good sunglasses. Really good!!! Blocking out all sorts of harmful rays. My ophthalmologist friends tell me that my constant wearing of good sunglasses from an early age is probably a large part of my resistance to ocular deterioration in my "old" age. As in "now." A habit I've passed on to my son --- who is also blessed with perfect, uncorrected vision. 

But now I do need glasses to see exactly. I passed my last driver's license vision test without glasses. But I know things are much clearer with them than without. And when it comes to reading, well, much more so. And, when I wear them people ask me to help them with the New York Times crossword puzzles...

And this brings up the great tragedy of the week. A Friday horror story of massive proportions. Let me set the stage. I got a text from a photographer friend who had just returned from a quick trip to Paris. He went over to see the Mark Rothko show at the Foundation Louis Vuitton. He wanted to meet up for coffee and tell me about his adventure. He also wanted to show me stunning images of food and architecture he'd shot on an iPhone 15 Pro. The images were, indeed, amazing. Not just amazing for having come from a phone camera, they were just amazing in their own right. (Note to self: buy an iPhone 15 Pro!!!!!!!!!!). 

We agreed to meet lakeside at a coffee shop called Mozarts. It was a very pleasant day and there was plenty of outside seating. I stood in line to get a iced green tea and as I stood there I was juggling a camera over one shoulder, a hat which I took off as I was indoors, in one hand, a cellphone and my car keys. We found table and I was blown away by my friend's work with the photos. Amazing. And Paris continues to be amazing. And always new. 

When I got home I saw something in the studio that I wanted to photograph so I grabbed the camera I'd taken with me for our coffee meeting and pulled it up to my eye. The finder was fuzzy. I put my glasses on and the finder was sharp again. Took them off and....fuzzy. Hadn't I just equipped all three Ms with pricy diopter attachments that screw into the eyepieces? Yes. I had. But apparently all the handling, rubbing against my shirt, tossing into the passenger seat of the super high performance Subaru Forester and other kinetic actions had caused the diopter to.....become unscrewed. And when your Leica camera eyepiece diopter is unscrewed then you....are screwed. Tragic. Sad. Anxiety provoking. 

I took the car apart looking for the lost diopter, hoping against hope that I'd lost it in the car. No such luck. I went online to my favorite Leica store. No luck. The diopter I needed was out of stock. The dark clouds over my head increase in being....oppressive. I finally sourced the right replacement at B&H and ordered it. 

But now I am consumed with worry about how to keep these little suckers from falling off. And falling off unnoticed. At $150 each (with shipping and tax) I am loathe to lose any more of them. Weld them on? Super glue? Scotch tape? Prayer? I'm certain some wiser and more experienced Leica user who visits here from time to time will tell me. And will be in disagreement with the other few dozens whose advice will directly conflict with everyone else's. It's emotionally taxing...

We've already filed our taxes. We are ahead of the curve. Someone younger, much younger, asked me "How much will you be getting in your refund?"  I laughed and laughed until I got the to privacy of my office and then I just weeped weakly for a spell. I kept repeating to myself: "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." Coupled to another connected mantra of: "My CPA deserves his fee since he keeps me on the straight and narrow."  Still not sure how it's all working out.

And, while on the subject of taxes my mind immediately goes to various ways to legally reduce the amount I pay in taxes. My favorite strategy being the purchase of too many fun toys. For the business. Of course. Most of which can be deducted. Not depreciated but deducted. (thank you Ronald Reagan for ACRS). So, with the strategy firmly in place I checked in to see how my place on various waiting lists for the Leica SL3 was progressing. 

Not a chance. I'd have better luck getting a basket full of Fuji X100VI cameras. I wish camera makers would cobble together thousands and thousands of new cameras and have them on hand BEFORE they make their announcements. The eternal shortage of the really, really cool photo stuff is vexing. It's enough to make me stop buying cameras altogether and just work with what I have. But before that happens I need to stock in whatever the best camera is for that five minute eclipse. The eclipse millions of people are coming to central Texas to see next Monday. Bring umbrellas...

Oh. A quick explanation for all the stuff I wrote above. I got my Covid Booster (yay! Moderna) this morning at 10:15. I'm expecting an onset of horrifying side effects shortly. Thought I'd get some blogging done before I start bleeding from the eyes and ears and seeing visions of Lady Gaga using Sony cameras. Coupled with Tamron lenses.

In answer to MJ's question on his blog, which was: How often do you shoot with your lens wide open? I have to ask: Which notes do you play on the piano? Which ones do you avoid? I've never particularly liked f sharp... 

Living in fear of San Francisco, CA.? Hmmm. Maybe a plunge into a data set would help...

 

Most Dangerous Cities in the US 2024

Detroit boasts a staggering violent crime rate of 2,007.8 incidents per 100,000 individuals, notably recording a total of 261 homicides in 2018. Remarkably, it stands as the sole midsize or large city in the United States to surpass the 2,000 mark in violent crime incidents. Despite its current population of less than 700,000, Detroit reported approximately 13,500 violent crimes in 2018—an alarming figure surpassing cities with double its population.

The city's stark economic challenges have contributed to an annual unemployment rate of 9.0% and a striking 37.9% of residents living below the poverty line. These economic hardships exacerbate social tensions and exacerbate the conditions conducive to violent crime.

Rank	City	State
1	Detroit	Michigan
2	Memphis	Tennessee
3	Birmingham	Alabama
4	Baltimore	Maryland
5	St. Louis	Missouri
6	Kansas City	Missouri
7	Cleveland	Ohio
8	Little Rock	Arkansas
9	Milwaukee	Wisconsin
10	Stockton	California

NOTE: In its assessment of the most dangerous cities in the United States, 24/7 Wall Street conducted a comprehensive analysis of data from the FBI's 2018 Uniform Crime Report. This analysis encompassed key indicators such as each city's rates of murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Importantly, only cities with populations exceeding 100,000 individuals were considered in this evaluation.

Additionally, the study took into account the poverty rate and unemployment rate for each city. These economic factors were included in the analysis due to their well-established correlation with crime rates. By examining both crime data and socioeconomic indicators, 24/7 Wall Street aimed to provide a thorough understanding of the safety profiles of various urban areas across the nation."

Wow. SF doesn't make it into the top ten. Maybe it's not that big a risk to take a 14 year old camera model into the city. And from everything I've heard SF has turned a corner and is on the mend. Take a deep breath my fearful photographer friends. In all honesty though SF is still a bit above the average in crime stats for a city of the same size nationally. 

Walking down by the UT campus. A nice morning walk. By afternoon the sun is always in just the wrong place for me. But mostly this is an observation about using the Leica M240.

I finally have my Leica M240s set up exactly the way I like them. I have thumb grips mounted in each hot shoe. Each camera has a +2.0 diopter screwed into the eyepiece (dammit Leica; $180 for one small piece of glass? Yeah, I get it...gotta preserve the brand..), a small, black leather half case both protecting the bottom plate of the cameras while adding nice finger grips at the front. But very understated and quite cheap...non-Leica. About $34 each for the leather cases. A nice, short, happy and totally mismatched (color-wise) leather strap on each. The straps are from Small Rig. They are tan leather. Of course I would have preferred black (I think) but the company only offers one color. I'm sure, now that I've bought three of the tan leather ones the new, black ones can't be far behind.

Having used the cameras with the above features and additions in place for a while now I am very satisfied. I'm sure M10 users, and users of the first two generations of Sony A7(variants) will question my putting a leather case on the bottom of the cameras which does not include a little flap to access the battery or memory card. Yes, you have to remove the case to do those things. But here's the deal. The battery in the M240 lasts (almost) literally, forever. I shot for hours in downtown yesterday with the camera turned on for the entire time. I shot hundreds of frames. I chimped  like a first time digital camera owner. I even used live view from time to time. When I got back to the office and checked the battery was still at 80% full. Much different than my SL cameras. And, from what I hear, much different than the experiences of Leica M10 users. (thinner camera, smaller batteries...).

Every time I use these cameras I learn something new and at the same time feel more at home with them. It makes daily photography more like an exercise and less like some sort of big undertaking. 

I had an odd thought as I walked down the main drag across from the biggest university in our state. Not a single person on the crowded street had any sort of camera in view. No one had a camera over a shoulder or on a neck strap. No one was paying much attention to anything around them. And I wondered how we'll remember these random moments in time differently than the past eras when Garry Winogrand and a legion of Winogrand wannabes stalked the streets around campus with "serious" cameras hanging off one, or both shoulders. Would we have evidence of what life looked like today when we look back from the viewpoint of twenty years in the future? Will it matter or will we all be living in the Matrix by then? If, indeed, we are not already. 

When I was a student and practicing photography as a hobby it seemed that the preferred camera of female photographers was the Olympus OM-1. All the guys aspired to own some variant of the Leica Ms or rangefinders by other makers. The few who wanted to be photojournalists instead of fine art guys embraced the Nikon world. In 1974 it was all F2s or Nikkormats --- soon to be replaced by either F3s or Nikon FM cameras. But the point is that one couldn't walk down one of the streets on or adjacent to The University without bumping into an aspiring photographer every 100 yards (or, on a nice day, every 25 yards). 

Old duffers and people who haven't kept up with culture constantly moan about Leicas being "worn" by photographers who are trying to show off. But show off for who? Judging from this morning's walk no students or faculty in the area had any interest in any camera and probably never heard of the brand before. If they lifted their collective heads up from their phone screens to see what camera I was using I'm sure 99% of them would think "My grandfather had a camera like that. Poor old guy. Maybe he can't afford a Sony or a Canon." 

The idea that young thieves are cruising through crowds of people, hoping to identify Leica cameras, and their vulnerable users from which to steal said cameras is just flat out laughable. A holdover from a time when people read photo magazines, believed that there were differences between current camera brands and were afraid to travel out of the country because of...crime. If someone in a prosperous city is out to steal your Leica because it's a Leica you'll like find that thief to be in their late sixties or maybe seventies. Cruising the tourist hot spots with their walkers and resting up to be able to make a quick getaway once they get their liver spotted hands on your stuff. Young people? Dream on. 

At any rate, I spent all morning walking through and around the campus and taking photographs. I saw no other person carrying or using any sort of camera whatsoever. In fact, no one even stopped to take a photo of anything with their phone. And it was such a gorgeous day....

I guess photographers who still use dedicated to purpose cameras are operating in our own little bubble or dream world. If you see a bunch of people around you with expensive cameras slung over their shoulders you are probably at a photography workshop and you've perhaps forgotten that you actually did sign up for one.  Otherwise you have accidentally attended an air show or a craft festival. But out in the real world? It's one gigantic camera-free zone. Well, except for me and you and some other people who've spent forty or fifty years developing the habit of photographing. Everyone else has moved on...

Inadvertently we may emerge as the people who've saved a visual record of what life is like right now. Cuz I gotta tell you that no one else is...

Why a Leica M240? Because they work, they're cheap (relatively), they are different --- and that's always good, and they are actually very low profile. So, maybe you'll get one and I can bump into you in the streets and we can tease each other about how all the young thieves are ignoring us so they can steal Sony cameras instead. They're easier to pawn. At least that's what I hear from law enforcement... YMMV.

there is endless construction around campus. Huge dormitories that are 

more like fancy condos. Amazing wealth flowing into big universities. 

Is scooter culture subsiding? Not seeing many people using them today. 

One of the new high rise luxury dorms across from campus. Six or seven other huge 

private dorms under endless construction. 

My favorite coffee shop on the drag. 

Two different businesses commingling signage messaging.

Today's answer to the "Red Couch" phenom from years ago.

Little glimmers of Austin/UT campus history peek out from time to time.

Mobile hotel parked in front of a residential co-op on Guadalupe St. 

So, Dirty Martin's (original name until the 1990s) has been making hamburgers and French fries and pairing them with beer since the 1920s. They've been in exactly the same place. They recently defeated a city attempt to zone them out of existence. I haven't eaten there since I was an undergraduate but every time I walk past I promise myself that I'll grab some old UT friends and head over there for an unhurried lunch. It could happen. Really. I don't remember ever getting sick after eating there but I'm betting my gastrointestinal system was a bit more robust in 1974...

"Americana" Austin style. A combination of weird taco trucks and national brands. 

Tan leather strap on a black camera. What a faux pas. 

How do I manage to get out the door with stuff like that?

Probably any lack of adult supervision...

 The only person to pay any attention to me today was an huge, hulking Department of Public Safety trooper with a felt cowboy hat, reflective sunglasses and big-ass Glock Pistol hanging off his belt. He pegged me as trouble from a distance but by the time he got close he realized it was just one of those harmless old guys with a Leica. Probably lost and wandering around looking for his car. I smiled. He didn't. Still playing the hard ass. He wandered off to harass someone else. 

I found my car...

Way OT: The path of totality for the eclipse has shifted a bit. We are now a few miles deeper toward the center of the path.

 Anybody need to Air BNB my back yard? I can let space go for $5,000 per tent, per night. A bargain if you just have to see the eclipse for about four minutes. I think I have space for maybe a dozen tents....

We'll have sparklers too.

Cash. We only take cash...

currently busy trying to copyright the eclipse from our unique point of view...

How Green is my Austin. Let my 35mm lens show you...

    

Canadian friend of the VSL blog (and of Kirk) named, Eric,  responded with surprise to a recent post of mine that showed a lot of fresh Spring greenery in Austin. Seems that during the same week in which everything in Austin seemed to be in full bloom, his area of central Canada got something like twelve inches (30.38 centimeters) of fresh snow and the temperatures there were once again just a bit above absolute zero. 

For all our bitching and moaning about random and debilitating ice storms followed by months and months of roasting, humid Summer, we do have spells of weather in Austin that are more or less perfect. Good examples are the weather we've had for weeks and weeks now. Low temperatures in the upper 40s and highs rarely cresting 80 degrees. Ample rain. Followed by days and days of soft, nurturing rain. 

I remember taking two years of French language at the University of Texas at Austin. Back in the day all  university students were required to learn (or at least try) a foreign language in order to graduate. As I also remember there was one group in the system that had an "out". Those were the business majors. Bless their souls... 

In my first semester, while mostly studying electric engineering, I took a French class that was taught by a young woman who was a French native and who had just arrived in Texas, from Paris, for the first time and was here only a handful of days before the start of the semester. When a number of us trouped into class she seemed a bit nervous. The class went well but afterwards she asked me to stay as she had a pressing question. "Why?" she asked "Do so many of you wear holsters to class? Are guns allowed on campus?"  

At first I didn't know what to make of her question. Her concerns. But then she pointed at a case I was wearing on my belt (yes! hyper-nerd alert!!!). I suddenly realized that she'd mistaken the case for my big, shiny new, Texas Instruments TI-51 calculator as a holster for some sort of weapon. She was very, very relieved to know that I and the various other engineering majors in her class were not actually "carrying." 

Her next question was more of a statement. She remarked, "I had no idea that Austin, Texas was so green. So many big trees. So many flowers. Everything blooming everywhere. When I was growing up all the books about Texas showed deserts and cactus and tumbleweeds. None of the images showed anything lush!" 

Sometimes I forget that Texas did a good job pretending to be very inhospitable. That's not true of all our geography, only the politics. 

For all the readers who have never been to Austin I thought, when I headed out to take a walk yesterday, that I would assign myself to make a few shots that had green trees and plants in them. Even in the middle of the urban downtown. A note though, we no longer ride horses through the middle of the city. It disturbs the car-bound people too much...

But first... Here's the area around the house and studio and how green it is for most of the year. The trees drop their leaves in the very late part of Fall and start to bloom again in mid-March. Our area of Austin is covered with elms and live oaks. And several very cute Japanese maples.

The view from the doorway of my office.

Trees in the front yard.

Looking at the front of the house (studio on the left)

Looking down the street.

Front of the house. from the street.

What I see when I walk up to the front door...

So, to my Canadian friends, and all others who might be unfamiliar with Austin, I have to share with you that we have our own collection of wonderful trees, well (un)tended gardens, thick grass and all the other luxuries of landscape which defy the stereotypical depiction of hardscrabble land in central Texas. We also have lakes. And sometimes they are full of water. Not always! But sometimes. 

Anyway, here's what I saw when I went looking for green in downtown....

My old favorite, the Seaholm Power Plant. Now an office, shopping and residence center in downtown. 

Across the street from the main library...

On second street. A nice fixture in downtown.

Shade all the way to Congress Ave. 

And, as you can see, the mannequins are getting ready for the Summer season.

Little hints of green all across the bottom of the frame. 

the continuation of Second St. on the east side of Congress Ave.

Even untended fields are bright green.

Evidence of ivy climbing up the exterior walls of ancient buildings.

The back alley that runs between Sixth St. and Fifth St. 

In some sort of nod to Spring I pulled my most perfect Leica M240 out of its place in the studio. It's the first one I bought. It's absolutely mint. Such a pleasure just to look at. I used it on this particular day with the 35mm Carl Zeiss Biogon ZM lens. And I suddenly realized why I like shooting with the rangefinders more than any DSLR or mirrorless camera. It's because of the way the lenses are set up. 

Whether you buy a Leica M lens or a Voigtlander or a Carl Zeiss lens; any designed for use on an M series rangefinder camera, you'll get an actual distance scale, a depth of field scale as well. Right there on the lens. When you look down at the lens all is revealed. This makes zone focusing so, so, so much better than trying to do so with a focus-by-wire lens of any brand. With the focus by wire lenses you just don't get to set it and forget it when it comes to setting a focusing distance. And depth of field? Guess work at best. 

I used my camera just like the most primitive of old film cameras. I set the aperture to f11, focused a bit past 15 feet, I set the camera to auto-ISO and set the slowest shutter speed to 1/250th of a second. Higher than that? No problem. Lower than that? Not needed. If I saw something I liked I could just bring the camera up to my eye, compose and shoot. No other intervention needed. No fears about AF locking on to the right detail. No opaque-ness to slow down the reaction to visual stimulants. Just see and shoot. A very speedy and fluid way of working. 

And... I think the little Zeiss 35mm f2.0 ZM lens is absolutely great. With the Leica M240 camera I just set the lens profile to that of the Leica 35mm Summicron. The pre-aspheric model. Seems to handle all the stuff like vignetting and potential color shifts quite well. Of course, now you can also access the actual Zeiss lens profile in Adobe Lightroom...as long as you've shot in Raw.

When I got back to the car to head home I checked my phone and discovered that the afternoon temperature topped out at 78°. Nice. 

Happy hour at my friend, Will's house. We sat in his garden with one more usual friend. By the end of the evening, after the sun set, it was already down in the 60s. Just the way I always thought Spring should be. YMMV.

 

On the prowl for Leica capable flashes. On camera flashes. Bounceable flashes.

I learned flash in the "old school" way. Guide numbers. Off camera with a coiled sync cord. Dismal batteries. But it worked. It mostly worked really well. When shooting film you aren't able to bounce around the ISO scale. You load a roll and you get a setting. Done. But over time I've gotten as lazy as everyone else. If you are shooting a lot of stuff fast and you are at a reception or in a ballroom it's nice to be able to point a digital camera at a cute couple and just press the shutter --- being mostly confident that the flash will go off and, while flashing will communicate with the camera which will then tell the flash when it's had enough. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. 

But then I screwed everything up and started buying Leica cameras. The one brand that no one seems to want to make dedicated TTL flashes for. Sure, there are the two re-badged Nissin flashes and I guess they are okay but geez, they cost a lot of money for something they stuck a logo on and increased the price by a factor of two... 

In the old days Leica had Metz make a flash for their mainline cameras and it was called an SF-58. Not only did it work in manual and full on TTL (including HSS) but it also came complete with an "old school" automatic setting. That means it has a sensor "eye" on the front of the flash and it's connected to a thyristor which measures the flash bouncing off a subject and quenches the flash when it's done enough. There's no connection to the camera other than the sync. An automatic setting is rare in a flash these days but it's a wonderful thing because you can use an automatic flash on any camera and still get a pretty proficient flash automation. Not TTL but not bad at all. And if you are shooting color negative film you'd probably never know you were over or under by much. (Film has latitude..).

The SF-58 is a traditional looking flash with a "cobra" head. Meaning you can swivel it up and bounce it off the ceiling or from one side or the other of the camera instead of just straight ahead. It has a bunch of modes. It can be used in a manual exposure slave mode, in full TTL, in TTL with HSS, in full manual with ratios down to 1/250th of a second and, of course, automatic. The flash takes takes four double A batteries and it's a model that seems to hold up well over time. I found one used at Camera West and snapped it up. Then I started looking for a second one. You know... for back up. 

I have two different multiple day events to cover on assignment in April and some more in May. I guess I'm over compensating for having been "out of the water" vis-a-vis event work since I fired several of my less desirable event clients last year. Now I'm rushing around trying to find the optimal solution for pairing eccentric Leicas with workable flashes. And I'm hoping that either the SF-58 is what I'm looking for or that I finally land on something even better. 

I'm not too panicked since I could use a Panasonic S camera with one of several dedicated flashes I have for that marque. And, if necessary there is always the Fuji 50Sii as a back up. I've got one of the Godox V flashes dedicated to that system... But in truth I want to find the holy grail of Leica flashes. 

One that will work across the SL, CL, M and Q2 series of cameras interchangeably. It was so much easier in the old days when the only real choice (pre-digital) was the Vivitar 283 or the slightly later 285. And then all those Nikon SB flashes. The SB-24, SB-26, SB-28 and finally the SB-800. All great and all fully rigged to shoot automatic on other brands of cameras. 

Right now I have several options. The SF-58 is the front runner. A Metz 58AF-2 is a nice automatic back-up. Any number of Godox on camera flashes still do fully manual flash --- and that's still a workable solution. 

Just wish that Leica would spend a little time and effort to up their game with flash. I know it seems antithetical to the M series cameras but would come in very handy to make Leica more competitive in the mirrorless DSLR replacement space. Right? 

Hey! Got any SF-58 flashes hanging around that you need to get rid of? I know a photographer in Austin who'd love a couple more....

 

Spring time. Love is in the air.

 

Love on South Congress Ave. Just to the North of Jo's Coffee.

Loving the raised foot.