A test shot from 2010 of Will. For an article for Studio Photography Magazine about the Leica M9 and the Leica 35mm f1.4 Aspheric lens.

Will van Overbeek at the old Trianon Coffee location. 

He is not a "Leica Believer...." 

But he is a famous and widely collected photographer...

 I'm having an interesting week delving into sensor technology as it relates to Leica. The Leica M9 is a bit of a cult camera which is actually rising in price on the used markets in spite of it being discontinued in 2012, having well documented sensor corrosion issues, and a now fleeting supply of usable batteries available to replace dying varieties. The reason usually given for its popularity is that the camera used an 18 megapixel,  Kodak CCD sensor designed specifically for this particular camera. On one hand there are a lot of people who seem to prefer the color and tonality of CCD sensors and on the other hand it was not an "off the shelf" sensor but one that used a thin AA filter and various physical modifications to yield a really good performance with M series lenses; especially of the wide angle variety. 

As the only M on the market at the time it was only to be expected that those who wanted a Leica rangefinder camera learned to love it completely. Flaws and all. After all, in the digital space, no other camera maker had stepped in to compete in that particular camera niche. 

Studio Photography Magazine had Leica send me the M9 and the lens in order to write a review of the two products and I certainly had fun doing it. There were things I didn't like about the camera but they mostly were about how loud I found the shutter and only a little bit about how messy the high ISO files got; noise-wise. There was a definite look to the files that was different than those from Nikon and Canon in those days. The blacks were a bit crushed which I think was a way of hiding shadow noise. The files had a harder contrast curve than the competitors but at the same time it was good with the tonality and roll off of the highlights. All assuming that one was working in raw. The Jpegs of the day ---- not so much. 

Coming from the very quiet cameras like the M3, M4 and even the M6s, the shutter in the M9 suffered by my ability to directly compare it to those stand out legends of quiet. Subsequent digital Ms have had progressively better sounding shutters. It's a little thing to most people but a big thing to others...

There seems to be a groupthink fallacy that the next generation of Leica sensors, those in the M240 series and the original SL are just re-badged Sony 24 megapixel, CMOS sensors but in reality the sensors were designed and made by two different companies and neither of them is Sony. Here's what the Wiki sez: 

"The M uses a CMOS 24-megapixel (6,000 × 4,000 pixels) image sensor designed for Leica by the Belgian company CMOSIS, and made by STMicroelectronics in Grenoble. The pixels are on a 6 x 6 μm² grid."

Interesting to me is that Leica used the same underlying sensor technology also in the original SL (601) that was launched in 2015. The emphasis was on making "film like" files with emphasis on eliminating the AA filters, keeping the rest of the filter stack as thin as possible and using micro lens technologies to keep light rays workable all the way to the corners and edges of the sensor when using wide angle, close back focus lenses. Those who could "see" a difference in color and tonal rendering have always had to deal with the "great unwashed" legion of "experts" who are now sure that only Sony makes sensors for full frame cameras. The reality is that the sensors used in Leica models up to but NOT including the SL2 were not Sony sensors. While they may have lagged behind on noise performance at higher ISOs many feel the look of the files is different enough to make it worthwhile to squirrel away those older Leica models. If that's the look you like.

Even though Sony "may" have produced the sensor in the SL2-S I think that sensor inherited much of the R&D on the design side from the 24 Megapixel cameras with BSI being a feature that Sony may have brought to the table with the SL2-S sensors. The SL2 is pretty much acknowledged to have its sensor come from the Sony catalog with with some filter tweaks to help out with the lens demands of rangefinder lenses. Which goes a long way towards explaining why I like the look of files from the SL and SL2-S better, across several parameters, than I do the SL2. And why I tend to hoard cameras that I like a lot. 

There are many myths rumbling around the camera world and the most persistent is probably the one about Sony making all the great sensors. I think they make the most cost effective sensors because they've gained the advantage of scale but there is still room for other players. At least there was up until the current rev. of Leica cameras. 

The old, 18 megapixel M9 was fun to play with and the bigger size of each pixel has a positive effect on the appearance of sharpness in the resulting files. Personally? I'm happy Leica moved on to the CMOS sensors in 2012. We gained a couple stops of better high ISO noise performance, probably a stop and a half more dynamic range, better battery life and faster throughput. Did we lose something? Only the choice of having a different style of color and tonal rendering which were in part compensations for the perceived shortcomings of the CCD tech. 

Takeaway? I wish I'd kept that 35mm lens. It was great!!! But the whole package had to be dutifully returned after the review was written. Leica offered to sell the package to me at a discount but I still had a house to pay off and a kid to put through college....so you know how that goes.... 

Turkey Legs and tacos. Red beverages for all. Sony A-77 SLT. In downtown Austin. Circa 2010

 

I could never honestly say that I "pre-visualized" this shot.

If you have a New York Times subscription you might be interested in reading friend, Paul Johnson's obituary. It's nicely detailed and paints the picture of Paul as we all knew him.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/dining/pableaux-johnson-dead.html?smid=url-share

 Thank You to Gordon Brown for kindly sending me the link.

Combining two happy ideas. Coffee and swimming. A nice respite on a long day.

 

Just hanging out by the pool at the Hotel San José.

I am sorely tempted to pick up another Leica SL2 since prices on used ones have plummeted in the last few weeks. I like the SL2. I like the SL2-S better and I like the SLs best of all. So, whenever the urge strikes me to overinflate my collection of SLx bodies I have an exercise I undertake. Something to bring back needed perspective. I grab my favorite SL (yes, I have two but favor the one with the most nicks and abrasions) and a lens like the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF, set the camera the way I like it and go out to take some photographs. With that camera and lens combination I find almost every photograph I take; especially those shot at wide apertures, rewards me with color and tonal palettes that are different than the newer cameras and more in line with my personal tastes as to what an image file should look like. 

And that helps tremendously to tamp down the siren song of desire for newer, later cameras.

There's a momentary feeling of mastery... until I remind myself that I am just a beginner, really. At the very start of my learning curve.

Being a photographer is, I think, a lot like being a barrista, a maker of coffee. Sometimes we get the formula just right and the water is perfect and the cup is pre-warmed and we end up with a very satisfying cup of coffee. Or a very nice photograph. Some days things go awry. Maybe the grind is slightly off, or the water has some mineral that flavors the mix and renders it just a bit off. Maybe the cup we pour into is too cold and we're left with the Hobson's Choice of drinking lukewarm coffee or putting the cup into the microwave oven to warm everything up. Timing is almost everything.

We can measure and measure but some things are just out of our control. Even down the to reality that every bean harvest is different and every click of the shutter is a combination of so many fragmented parts of our frail human process. 

But when you get it just right there's buzz that makes it all worthwhile. 

The best blog post I ever wrote. Seriously.

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/08/street-shooting-part-one-why-hell-would.html

It was 2010. I was grappling with the "why" of personal photography after two hard years of commercial doldrums brought on by the collapse of the creative economy. 

At a baby shower yesterday a fellow swimmer, Patty, who is a book editor asked me about the blog. She fished around for an example of what I valued in the blog.

The link above is the only thing I sent to her. If you've already read it then Thanks. If you haven't and you have a few minutes please do. It might make the current blog seem more sensible...

New Orleans lost a stellar human on Sunday. Paul Johnson was a very close friend... It's been a tough month for me.

 My friend, Paul Johnson, passed away in New Orleans on Sunday. He went by "Pableaux." He was 59. He was a renowned cook. A brilliant writer. A diligent photographer and so much more. I met him here in Austin way back in the late 1980s. He was working in tech and every once in a while he'd cook up a big ten gallon pot of gumbo or red beans and rice and invite every one he knew well and everyone he'd like to have known better over to his small house in Landon Lane and feed them. 

I once ran into Pableaux unexpectedly in Rome, Italy of all places. He'd left the tech world altogether and was writing and photographing about food from all over the world for the New York Times. I asked him what brought him to Rome. His answer: He'd pitched the NYTimes a story about the best gelatos in Italy and they had ante'd up the budget for him to do the story. He was walking through the Piazza di Popolo heading toward yet another gelato shop. The ultimate bon vivant. He enjoyed life with incredible energy.

My own special memories of Paul were about me teaching him photography and getting occasional phone calls, usually followed by visits for extensive lunches and consultations about which camera to buy and...how then to use it. Here is my epitaph for Paul:  I taught Paul how to do photographs. Paul taught me how to enjoy life.

I'll miss him very much. As will hundreds of other people. All of whom will consider him to have been a close and special friend.  Here's more information: https://www.nola.com/news/pableaux-johnson-dies/article_8dcbe608-dc49-11ef-93af-ebc56bc9752d.html

On Christmas day my family lost my little sister. She'd battled cancer for eight years and had recently undergone a bone marrow transplant. On Christmas day, just before her family arrived to celebrate she died suddenly. It was a devastating loss. And reminded me that my mom had also passed away at Christmas five years earlier. 

I won't go into any details about my sister. She was a private person and wouldn't want that. But not a day goes by that I don't think of her and try to deal with the sadness of our loss...

It puts our own lives, and the unknowable agenda the universe has for us, into clearer focus. Perspective. The great tragedy would be to waste the time we have for ourselves and with each other. Something Paul and Alison never had to grapple with. They were both fully engaged in their lives.

Too much personal information for a blog but there it is.

If it seems sometimes like I am wondering around aimlessly with a camera it might be because I am. 

Somehow I find it comforting that my friend, Paul died with his favorite camera in his hands, photographing one of his favorite subjects (New Orleans Parades) in his favorite city...

How to know if you are taking photography too seriously...

I've been a working, professional photographer for over 40 years now. That's a long time. But the funny/happy thing is that I still love it. Maybe as much now as I did when I was running around photographing my super cute college girlfriend with my first real camera, a Canonet G3 QL back in the 1970s. Tri-X film made everyone look smarter, cuter, more endowed with gravitas...

Sure, there were times when the business of photography, and mostly the active fun interdiction of clients, took some of the pleasure out of it in the moment but for the most part I looked forward to getting up every morning and doing it again. And I still do. 

When I look around though I find some of the folks I knew who were really into taking photographs have abandoned their practice and moved on to other pursuits. Seeing this more and more often I've tried to understand their progression from: "Oh my God I love taking pictures!!" to: "Yeah. I got bored and I couldn't think of anything to photography so I just stopped.:"

What I think I've figured out is that the biggest impediment to having fun doing photography is... taking it far too seriously. Thinking that there must be logic, order and rules about a creative process.  But how can this be avoided?

First it's important to know when you are stepping over the line between having fun with photography and not.

The first warning sign is when you take everything about photography too seriously. If you are keeping field notes of everything you shoot. Every aperture, every shutter speed, every focal length along with the GPS coordinates of your location well.... That's a sign that maybe you've got your eye too rigorously glued to the ball, so to speak. If you have an exacting routine for photographing that never varies you may inadvertently be sucking the fun completely out of the process. You might need better creative peripheral vision. 

One of the biggest warning signs for professionals is when you find yourself only picking up a camera if there is a paycheck involved... DANGER.

Other signs are: 

Needing a philosophical underpinning for your photos. Or a manifesto. 

When you come to believe that you can't shoot good stuff without having an overarching idea to reference when you work. 

When meticulous archiving of not just your good work but all your work takes precedence over going out and shooting for fun.

When you spend more time working on color profiles than you spend with your significant other. Or actually out shooting.

When the specifications on the camera or lens spec sheets are more important to you than how the camera or lens feels in your hands. ( I don't care if a camera is "the best" if it's more fun to use.).

When you find yourself getting into prolonged and sometimes heated arguments with other photographers about whether or not cropping is an evil maneuver. Or whether removing a distracting element from a (non-journalistic or non-documentary) photograph is cheating or unethical. 

When you become dismissive if someone doesn't follow the rule of thirds or when someone centers the main subject right in the middle of their frame. 

When you deem it necessary to know every detail of the history of all photographic processes before you can proceed to photograph. When you make spreadsheets about what subjects to shoot and when to schedule them for greatest efficiency. Basically when you deem yourself an expert the fun is just about flushed out...

When you become inflexibly rigid about formalist parameters in your work. (as in: All my images must conform to the square format to be valid!). Or (All important photographic work should be presented in black and white). 

When you come to believe that an image can't: exist, be important, be counted as a real photograph, have value, etc. unless it is printed on paper. And then there's the slippery slope of: "Is it on the right kind of paper? And did you use the right inks?"

When you compulsively search for comments by "old masters" of photography to bolster your arguments for or against the inclusion of a current style, process, presentation or genre. As in: "Well, Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Weston never shot in color and they were the greatest photographers who ever lived." 

When you use the credentials you earned thirty or forty years ago at school to justify now why people should consider you the final authority for the rightness or wrongness of a position on anything photographic.  As in: "I once met Bill Brandt at the Queen's College school of Masterful and Appropriate Photography and he told me that no one should ever......use Dektol, long lenses, lower contrast papers, a full dynamic range, etc.."

When Kirk's blog so triggers your ire because: he is so "wrong, misguided, mis-informed, about the Scheimpflug Principle" (or whatever)  which causes you to spend the better part of the day composing and sending a scathing comment that PROVES he is wrong." And tragically, he moderates your hard and dutifully prepared arguments right out of existence with a glancing touch of the "delete" key.

When you head to your blog and write a long post, referencing barely tangential debate points, literary references, personal asides, etc. for an idea that could be well covered in a short paragraph. Because you want to make sure your audience gets it....over and over again. And then again. Because you want everyone to know that you know much more than they ever will about....photography.

When you stop picking up a camera to take out for the day when you leave the house in the morning. 

When you get depressed if the light isn't just right. And you refuse to "waste time" going out to photograph.

When you realize that you really no longer have a favorite focal length lens choice. And, even worse, you decide you don't care.

When you come to believe that all new techniques and features are nothing short of cheating.

When you think that the only valid approach to photograph is the way you do it. Exactly.

There is no simple solution when happiness fades in any pursuit but the usual therapy is to do the complete opposite of what got you into this mess in the first place. Feel the need for total control? Try getting a camera with no non-automatic controls and use that instead. Feel everything has to be shot at ISO 50 for maximum quality? Set a camera at ISO 12,500 and spend some time shooting with the camera set only there. Always use a tripod? Try always handholding instead. Always shoot handheld? Try turning off the image stabilization and see if that helps. Do you have years accumulation of those cute little Moleskine notebooks with endless facts about how you set your cameras on shoots? The likes of which you never revisit? Use them as kindling in the fireplace. 

Rather than revising and revising work in post to try to make it perfect just go ahead and post your first  blush attempt. Endless perfect-ization is unachievable and only makes sense for true immortals who have infinite time on their hands. Not human photographers. Besides, too perfect is less fun. Honest.

Always shoot landscapes? Try shooting very attractive human models instead. Do you always shoot very gorgeous  models? Then I find it hard to believe you are not happy with photography already...

Need to find a philosophy for what you are doing? Consult a psycho-therapist and see where your lack of confidence in your chosen pursuit comes from. Usually from unsupportive parents. Want to have more fun without a philosophy of purpose? Keep going to therapy. Stop trying to find meaning about photography in books by Kant or Heidegger or Carl Jung. Look at more fluffy photo magazines from the UK. A philosophy is just a permission slip from your brain. But a very confining permission slip.

Do you always shoot with boring photographer friends who totally agree with you? Go out shooting with a painter or a plumber instead. Or get new photographer friends. 

Want to concentrate on the pure fun of making photographs? Leave your mobile phone at home. Maybe on the charger. Maybe not even that. 

Finally, search your inner thoughts and see if the joy started to dissipate when your camera menus became overwhelmingly complex. If so, stop right now and sue the camera company for obstruction. And then get cameras with nicer, simpler menus. And stop caring about customizing your camera so much. Complexity is the mother of mental breakdowns. 

Stop looking for approval of your work by strangers. Just shoot stuff you like to look at. Put yourself in positions/locations/events that are fun, photo-rich environments and try to forget everything you learned back when technique was important. It might just be the one perfect remedy. 

In fact, my favorite technique for staving off the dreaded seriousness is to work while pretending I know nothing at all, technically, about making photographs. Honestly, the photos are always more interesting.

Always flirt with regret by bringing only one camera and one lens on fun outings. If you have no other choices you'll learn to "love the one you're with." And not carrying all the other stuff around will make every outing a lot more fun. 

If you are rich put a map of the world up on a cork wall, blindfold yourself and throw a dart at the map. Go where the dart hits but first imagine the one camera and lens that will work best for that location. If you don't like the God Awful location your dart hit first, go ahead and cheat and keep throwing the dart till you get somewhere you like. Then tell your pilot to gas up the Gulfstream and get you there. (much as I love photography I've always thought it would be even more fun if I had a jet at beck and call). Running joke among my wealthier friends after someone in the group complains about flight cancellations or delays.... "Oh. You still fly commercial?" 

Just a few thoughts while waiting for my tea to cool.

Or,  you could have delightful fun spending more time researching??? Not very likely.

Be sure to sign up for my "Who Gives a Fuck" workshop. For some reason it's not filling up quickly. Maybe it's because you've come to realize that you know just as much as I do about the mysteries of photography....as it exists today.