Batteries? Lenses? Flashes? Cameras? Something you always wanted? Stock up now because tariffs are heading our way.

Zany man bucks trend, goes on shopping spree...

 I'm not going to get into the politics of economics and why the new president is enacting tariffs against our most valued trading partners but I will say that this rush to tariffs is going to have unexpected consequences everywhere, for everyone. Today I'm looking at it from the perspective of a consumer who likes to buy products from manufacturers in Japan, Germany and various other countries. Straight from the horse's mouth we know that tariffs are going to be enacted against the E.U. as well as our Asian trading partners, and it's just a matter of time before retail customers here see prices jumping up by 25% and more. Without commensurate increases in average incomes.

You thought Leicas were expensive before? Wait till tariffs add a couple thousand more dollars to the final bill you might pay! And then extrapolate that across lenses, batteries, filters, tripods, and, well, the whole infrastructure of your profession or hobby. 

I bought another (used) SL2 last as a hedge against my own desire to buy something new like an SL3-S. I'm not ready to buy an SL3-S right now. Don't need one yet. Might never need one. But I do like to have cameras that travel in pairs and I figured that people would be rushing to upgrade from their SL2 cameras, trading in older models for the latest. Two SL2 cameras satisfies my buying need in the moment while saving me about $3,500. If I waited too long and missed the pre-tariff window I felt sure that used prices on used Leicas would rise once new cameras got hit hard with inevitable price increases. The older, but still great performing, SLs, SL2s, and SL2-Ss, available used, would suddenly seem like great bargains compared to the prices of newly imported cameras and the market run on the older ones would proceed with vigor.  I paid $1995 for a very, very clean SL2, in the box with all accessories and a warranty. I can only imagine that when the USA government passed (at a minimum) a 25% tariff on German consumer goods (Leica included....) bumping the price on an SL3 from around $7000 to around to $8,750 many people in the market for a well made, new German camera will have hit their limit and walk away. One can only rationalize so much...

But it's not just Leica users who will feel the pain. There are really NO mass market camera makers in the USA and that means just about any camera brand you are interested in will be similarly affected. Add 25% to the top of the line Sony or Nikon cameras and see what happens to sales numbers. Suddenly cameras won't be quite as hard to find on the dealers' shelves but equally suddenly many previous potential customers might find themselves priced right out of the market for a new camera. Or at least the aspirational camera they had really hoped to acquire. 

This all happened last time there was a tariff on camera products here in the USA. Prices of used gear, stuff not subject to the new tariffs, went up a lot. Great, recent, used products became much more scarce. Some consumer demands went unmet. 

After swim practice today I was reading economic news from around the word and it seems that my thoughts just above are not in any way outlying conjecture. After breakfast I walked out to the office and promptly ordered one more SCL-6 battery (useable in all SL models as well as the Q2 and Q3 cameras) from a favorite retail camera dealer. The battery is currently about $200. I think it's expensive at that price but I'll think it's really expensive at $250 and, I know I'll want one or need one for upcoming projects. A handful of more powerful batteries goes a long way to lightening the load out for solo projects versus hauling extra less powerful batteries. And newer batteries are going to last longer than the old ones floating around the studio. 

If I were in the market for a car I definitely wouldn't wait until the tariffs kick in to go shopping. Sure, you might be able to stomach an American brand but if you have a specific German or Japanese model in mind you might find yourself gulping at the pricing after the financial shit hits the fan. 

Of course the best position to be in is not to need or want anything, product-wise. If you don't have to or want to spend the money I guess you are ahead of the curve. Until you consider inflation.....

A little stockpiling can be a good thing. Especially if you know that the combination of returning inflation and tariffs are heading your way. The dollar is strong right now...stock up.

I really get a kick out of these shots...

 

One thing I think Leica got just right with the Q3-45 camera was their use of the 43mm focal length. I use a similar focal length on my full frame cameras for the same reason; it's a well balanced chameleon of a focal length. I have a 45mm Sigma lens that substitutes for 50mm lenses when I want something small, light and capable. It has an f-stop of 2.8 but that doesn't seem like much of an impediment for most shooting. You have to stop it down one or, at the most, two stops when you shoot close; like I did here. It also has the super power of making big, full sized cameras seem smaller and lighter. 

I photographed these boots at Freebird's on S. Congress. I asked permission from the shop manager before I started blazing away. She just wanted to have some reassurance that I wasn't scouting product for a competitor. I won her over with the sincerity of my Birkenstock sandals. And my honest face...

She gave me the run of the store... 

The deep freeze last week did not kill off B.'s battalions of succulent plants. Here is a small, outlying contingent on the porch outside the dining room.

 

Still green everywhere but in the trees. Those leaves departed at the start of winter and won't be back till early March. Well, except for the live oaks...

Just another perfect Friday. Great Swim. Fun Walk. Booked a multi-day job in Santa Fe for April. Playing around with cameras.

Happy to get to the pool today after yesterday's storm induced shut down of swim practices. Bright sunlight and cool breezes. Topping out at 72° this afternoon...

Got a note from a long, long term client in financial services. Could I photograph a conference in Santa Fe? You betcha. I've done this for the client four or five times and each time I had a blast. Plus, I might be able to meet up with a literary luminary out in Santa Fe for a hot chocolate and a riveting bit of conversation. One can always hope.  Something to look forward to in April. I hope it's back at the El Dorado Hotel. I really like that property for big shows...

Yesterday Henry White spilled the beans about my latest camera purchase. Nothing earth shattering. Just a back up copy of the reliable SL2, the original of which I bought back in 2020 and have used extensively. I'll venture to say that I've taken over 100,000 on the first one. The second one should be here in a matter of days.

With that in mind I decided to go out today and photograph in one particular way that I've enjoyed in the past with this particular camera model. I like to shoot it in the square format because it has enough resolution to make 31+ megapixel files when used that way. It's a camera with massive punctum ability. One of the many other things I like about the SL2 is the way it makes black and white files when set to the high contrast monochrome profile. The images are snappy in the way I liked my film files and the camera does a good job putting detail into skies and contrast into middle tones. Like Tri-X on #3 graded printing paper. And just as nice. Without any post processing intervention from me.  The images below are Jpegs made using the in camera-monochrome HC profile.

On a different topic, I am re-reading a great book of essays about photography. I read this book a couple of years ago but was busy with family matters, logistics during Covid and an ever-shifting business environment and didn't give it the attention it deserved. 

It's entitled "Too True: Essays on Photography" by one of my favorite writers; K.B. Dixon. 

When I read the essays I sometimes find myself nodding in agreement, or chuckling, or even disagreeing but the writing and subject matter always seems to sink a hook in deep. 

Take for example this from an essay about Roland Barthe's book, "Camera Lucida" as it pertains to the idea of "punctum.": 

"If Helen's face launched a thousand ships, Barthe's coinage of "punctum" launched a thousand tortured essays. It was catnip to the explicating classes, a favorite of fledgling poseurs everywhere. I have always had a problem with it -- first as a word, but more importantly as a concept. As a word it has always struck me as unnecessarily ugly. (but then, of course, it may sound sweeter to the classically-educated Francophone's ear than to a State University-educated Anglophone's.) As a concept it has always seemed trite. Early in part one Bathes takes an analytical axe to his subject (the essence of Photography) and divides it into competing parts: Stadium, the ostensible subject of the photograph, the source of viewers "polite" interest, and Punctum, a tangential detail that provokes a personal reaction, that breaks through the complacent response, "an accident that pricks." To me this seems an almost meaningless tautology__ a needlessly obscure way of saying that certain photographs have a certain something about them that makes them special to certain someones-- a commonplace that when draped in Latin becomes a shiny original thing, a breaktakingly sophisticated utterance.

    Find the Punctum became a popular game for a while--a 'Where's Waldo' for academics.  A futile game, I'm afraid."

In less than a page of fun and informed writing Dixon summed up for me my belief that Barthes' entire discussion of Punctum and Stadium is an academic case of "The Emperor has no clothes." 

But the book is so much more. And I'm devouring it like a tasty supreme pizza from Baldinucci's. 

You might enjoy it too. Especially if you've been overly subjected to academic speak and all of its attendant pretension. After all, most academic writing is engineered almost solely to keep out the riff raff rather than to impart meaningful context to art itself. Just sayin.

But on to the pix. They are jam packed with compendium. And sauced with motus. And yes, I took Latin in middle school and high school. Cave Canem. Carpe Diem, and Gung Ho.

(I also took a typing class....)

We had a bit of rain and a lot of wind on Wednesday night into Thursday morning. 

I threw a car cover over one of the Subarus to keep the leaves and dust off it.

Now I'm waiting for it to dry out so I can stuff it back into its storage bag. 

Playing around with the monochrome features in the Leica SL2.

The thing I like about a black and white setting in most of my Leica models 

is how well it replicates sky values. Many cameras go too light on skies and milky 

on highlights. Not here.

Yet another stroll through Maufrais hat shop on S. Congress. 

Another reason I'm partial to the SL2, and just ordered another one is that

there's enough resolution to shoot square and still end up with a 30+ megapixel file. 

That's a nice balance. Oh, and the B&W files look good right out of the camera. 

Poster boy for shopping in S. Congress. I actually bought something there on 

Tuesday. Not at Sezane, but down the street at Madewell. Best, thickest, logo free

hoodie I've ever found. Nice for cool days in Austin.

I came across an army of cinema workers. They were screwing up traffic on S. Congress, filming and photographing a  fully stationary Waymo automatic, self-driving car for a commercial and some ads. In the old days we would have done a shot like that with three people, a couple of off duty cops and 

a model or two. These days? It's an enormous crew...

Okay. It's just a mannequin shot of a white mannequin in a black leather jacket but

I was stopped by the reflections in the window that made the image...weirder.

Two young women in boots stopped to take selfies of their outfits in the mirrored sign in front of this store. It's an odd fashion statement. Boots for everything.

And again with the sky straight out of the camera...

Traffic blocked in an entire lane. Just in time for rush hour.

 

Kirk falls off the camera-sobriety wagon....yet again..... close friends tortured by the deliberations...

 

A Guest Post By Henry White.

If you know Kirk I guess you know that this was inevitable. He just finds it very hard to pass up bargains, especially when they are about cameras or lenses that he really likes and uses... a lot. While he spends way too much blog time hashing through why he thinks the original Leica SL is a "marvelous" and "intriguing" piece of industrial design, and a damn fine photo machine, it's really an SL2 and recently the SL2-S that he carts around when he's "on the clock"; when clients and their money is involved. Just ask him how many times he's used one of those "darling" M series cameras for a paying job and watch him squirm trying to give you a cogent answer. 

While the man may  be addicted to all sorts of eccentric cameras he's made 90% of his fees from photography in the last four years with one camera. An SL2.

Last year, about midyear, over a cup of coffee or two at Trianon Coffee, we discussed where the business was headed, where the economy was heading and if he was taking any steps to reconcile his projections with his buying habits. This was just after his rash purchase of a new car.... An unneeded new car...

He thought about it for a few minutes, took a bite of banana bread, washed it down with some Kona coffee and then muttered, "I guess I have enough cameras for now. I could probably not buy another camera for the rest of the year and that would be...prudent." As Tuck is very verbose you can be assured that I am paraphrasing and editing down his initial response but you can also be assured that the bones of his soliloquy are there. He basically pledged to himself not to buy a single camera in all of 2024. About a month later he called to let me know that he'd slipped, fallen off the wagon --- so to speak --- and "had to" buy one more camera. It was an SL2-S. 

His rationale? "It was too cheap to pass up." Followed by, "I always wanted one for work portraits. You know, for the smaller raw files." Okay. So one camera for the whole year. His friends secretly celebrated not having to get more of those phone calls that start with, "Okay, I don't know if you know what's going on with the camera market but.... and they are a sizzling bargain!!!" This would be the introduction to half an hour or forty five minutes of highly descriptive points about why a particular camera or lens would be just the thing to complete his inventory of "work" cameras. As though being able to profit from a particular camera was something he really believed possible. Self-delusion being a powerful elixir. 

But I guess the important point is that he made it through the entirety of last year having purchased only one new camera. One. A record achievement. The most frugal camera buying period since the middle 1980s. And he was so proud of himself...

My heart skipped a beat when I got a call today, looked at the caller I.D. and realized it was our favorite camera addict. I had an inkling of what to expect. I knew we'd be talking about some camera that just came out and I was tempted to just send the call to voicemail but I knew deep down that Tuck is tenacious. I'd be sending calls to my voicemail hourly until he reached me. I might as well run toward the rationalizations; whatever they might be.

When the call connected this was the start: "Okay. I know you don't keep up with Leica stuff but here it is. Remember my SL2? I paid $5600 for it brand new back in 2020. It's been a great camera. Now, all of a sudden Leica has launched two different cameras that are being couched as serious upgrades. But wait. That's not the important point. The interesting thing is what's happened to the Leica SL2 market. Prices on used ones are falling off a cliff. Almost literally. You can buy a mint condition version with a 30 day warranty for less than $2,000!!! Imagine that. A two thousand dollar Leica with 47 megapixels and a build quality that's off the charts. For a little more than I'd pay for a re-badged Panasonic LX100ii. (the Leica D-Lux 8: $1599). Remember that huge photo shoot for XXXXXXX? And that other shoot we talked about for YYYYYYYY? All done with the SL2. And dude! Only $2K." 

I asked him what he would use it for and that was a mistake. Kirk can rationalize a purchase at the speed of light. In minutes he was traveling the world with a matched set of SL2 cameras and a carefully selected selection of prime lenses. Shooting always in a square format. Pulling giant prints from the files and seducing clients into booking him left and right. I sighed, poured a glass of Screaming Eagle Cab, took a sip and listened absentmindedly. 

He pulled out all the stops. Did I know the SL2 has better image stabilization than the newly introduced SL3? And better/higher flash sync? And it's already able to shoot 5K video. And the shutter sound is nicer. And the body is more durable. And, and, and....

I stopped him and said, "Look, all these are good arguments and I've heard your belief that cameras are getting worse and worse while the older models you like keep disappearing. I understand the compulsion to stock up on the cameras you love while you can. Just the same way we all stocked up on Kodachrome when we heard it would be discontinued. So why don't you just go ahead and buy one of the "phenomenally priced" SL2 cameras from a trusted dealer and be done with it?"

The conversation was quiet for a minute. Then he responded: "I already did."  And so Kirk made it through almost one month of 2025 with admirable restraint but he somehow escaped from that retail resistant straitjacket we tried to wrap him in and went off the rails. 

We finished up the call but we promised each other we'd have lunch soon. I can hardly wait (sarcasm indicated here). He'll be certain to bring the new camera with him and, over burgers and fries, I'll have to hear yet again how this camera will "change his life for the better." 

I once asked his kid about his dad's camera buying habits. He just laughed and changed the subject.

 

Kirk did ask me, after he'd secured the camera he wanted, to do a public service announcement here and let everyone with good camera taste know that used SL2 cameras are currently flooding the market. But he warns that it will be like what happened with the original SL cameras last year. They vanished from the used market as aficionados snapped up the best ones in the market. Now the leftovers are priced higher than they were two years ago and even those are very hard to find. He suggests you line up and get your SL2, or several of them, now. Before it's too late. 

I shook my head after I hung up the phone and wondered if it will ever stop. But, if it did, what would Kirk focus on next?

He was too busy re-reading old SL2 reviews to write anything so I agreed to step in --- just this once--- to do my part. After all, he is my boss. 

And a couple of shots that wouldn't have worked as well in black and white.

 

Although the SL is a great monochrome camera it's a perfect color camera. At least amongst the 24 megapixel rabble. And though the CZ 50mm 1.4 is famously unsharp (or overwhelmed with character...) wide open it just takes a couple stops down to sharpen up nicely while preserving its wonderful color presentation. It's a good match for the sensor in the SL.

Thunder, Lightning, Downpours, Oh My! It all adds up to....no swim practice this morning... But that's okay, I had a backlog of retouching to do on some portraits.

Every day is a little different (or a lot different; depending on your perspective). Yesterday was soupy and a bit chilly and it felt like the rain was going to arrive suddenly and with vigor. But it didn't. At least not until my stroll was complete. I'd written something about the sensors in both the Leica SL and Leica M240 cameras and I thought I'd just double check how I perceived files from that set-up since I had some spare time. 

I put a Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 on the SL with an adapter, set the whole mess to operate in aperture priority with auto-ISO, set the exp. comp. to minus (point) .7 and ambled out of the house wearing a hoodie as a jacket. Then I just photographed anything that interested me with the intent of applying my favorite Leica Store Miami SL color profile and seeing how everything looks. I thought of using a bit of the ole A.I. noise reduction but decided just to go older school and let the files end up where they landed. 

Back in the studio, before I set out on my walk, I was compositing portraits of an executive I have known for decades into backgrounds of bustling trade shows. Backgrounds I generated in PhotoShop's version of Generative A.I. I was working hard at matching the color and feel of the foreground portraits with the fabrications in the background but after much trial and error I started to get the hang of it. And a slight layer of gaussian noise over the entire finished files helps cement them, perceptibly, as all of one layer. One solitary scene capture. 

But any time you find yourself in the weeds of a project that requires subjective decisions galore you'll know when it's time to put the project to sleep for a while and take a walk. At least I hope you'll know.

It's probably obvious but the things that make a composite work are have depth to your blur, matching the color palette between foreground and background and, of course, matching the direction of the light in both parts. After that it's all tweaking. 

The industrial and primitive nature of the hulking metal construct that is the original Leica SL (digital) is a nice antidote to a quasi-fantasy existence inside an image processing program. You feel the cement of the sidewalk under the soles of your boots. You feel currents of cool, moist air tickle your face and your exposed hands. You feel the weight of the gear over a shoulder, dangling from a strap when it's not in use. But mostly you see a never ending collection of visual delights as you motivate yourself down the street and around the next corner. There is also a willingness to give up the fiction of complete control one has when sitting tense in front of a computer and its addictive monitor. Stuff might happen. Dynamics in real life might fling a curve ball at you or toss you some delightful little award. Like bright magenta shoes...

And then it's back to work. Back home before the rain hits. And you barely have time to assess the files you've shot before moving on to the next event on your personal agenda. But here's my takeaway:

The SL files and the M240 files alike have a feeling of richness that's missing from more modern sensor cameras. Colors are richer. Shadows deeper. And there's a contrast that's almost like a nostalgic rendering of the best color slide films. Better? Up to you.... Reproducible from other cameras in post production? Sure. What's not? The thing I come back to again and again in the older Leica sensors is their ability to make the color red in a photograph seem both accurate and strangely exciting at the same time. Reason enough to change systems? Naw. You're probably already happy with what you've got. Why rock the boat? 

The café tables on Mañana's Coffee patio are battened down and secured in anticipation of heavy rains and strong winds scheduled into the first few hours of the evening. 

And the chairs. But not the leaves.

I know. I know. More mannequins. But this is different. This time I was responding to the way the clothing draped on the model and  the stark difference in scene color between the model in the window and the product all through the background. A reminder for myself that auto white balance generally sucks and the idea that sometimes you have to decide on one or another white balances in the same scene knowing you can't have both and a compromise between the two is just that.

Whatever I wrote just above applies here as well. Fun to see through the windows to the space around the corner. Guy mannequins sometimes look lame.

Currently in love with red shoes laces. Always in love with the look of industrial gratings. 

Austin, for the last twenty years, has been fascinated with big, outdoor bars and bars with big patios. 

I'm not a fan. If you are going to go out drinking with people it should be either in seedy bars with bad lighting or in the gorgeous lobbies of elegant hotels. Nothing in between. Outside is for swimming, walking, playing. Not for getting hammered. 

Shiny trees in the window of a sushi restaurant. 

Now back at work making trade shows and executive guys look natural and somewhat cool. 

Kinda lonely with one blog in the photo-sphere down for maintenance. I hope MJ is actually taking it easy and getting some restorative rest. Missing those occasional posts about photography....