Don't leave them hanging...

 

In the end the camera you choose to use doesn't really matter at all. For most of us our brand choice is an extension of ego. The most mentally healthy amongst us can make a good argument that their choices are only predicated by the intended use case. But I'm not sure I buy that. 

I had a client call and ask if I would put together a collection of food shots from which to choose a small sampling of images for a campaign. The funny thing is that some of my favorite images from the 400+ I put together in the catalog came from the casual use of an older iPhone; the XR. Now five generations old. A few of my least favorite came from very expensive cameras and top tier lenses. 

Putting together a collection is like looking into a time machine. There were image candidates made with cameras from nearly every major brand. Micro 4:3rd camera images were over-represented. As were images from Fuji cameras. There were even a couple from my old, cheap, 4x5 Calumet view camera...

Were those cameras better than the other, newer, full frame cameras? Not at all, they were just the cameras that were in the right place at the right time when I was in the right mood to be entirely awake to the potential in front of me. 

I have no external reasons not to succeed at making good images. The stumbling blocks I do have are: preconceived notions of style, copying the look and feel of a homogenous collection of shots I've seen over time, depending on a particular feature of a camera or lens that doesn't pan out, laziness, feeling rushed, feeling bored by the subject, trying to hard to please the client standing next to me, an over -reliance on technical chops, an under-reliance on creativity and intuition, ignoring inspiration and instead clinging to the safest way to make a photograph. 

None of these things has anything do to with cameras or lenses and everything to do with the state of mind you find yourself in, or the ability to allow yourself to step outside of how you did stuff yesterday in order to try something new today. Inspiration comes to those who can conquer their own fears. And none of us are perfect at this all the time.

Some stuff is about problem solving but most stuff is about paying attention to how you like things to look.

Organizing a brief trip to another city to shoot a conference. Who knew there were so many details to attend?

 

The Eldorado Hotel. Santa Fe.

Never give a certain type of photographer too much time to plan a trip. They will research it to death. 

I'm heading to Santa Fe, N.M. in the middle of next month for a three day bank conference. I'm working for a client I really like and have worked with for nearly 30 years now. She mentioned my participation for this meeting way back in Spring of 2024 and confirmed it just after the start of this year. I put the dates in my calendar and ... immediately started worrying over details. 

The last time we did this conference in Santa Fe was 2022. I drove there then. That was a big mistake. Everyone says you can drive it in one day. I'll only agree that if you are 18 years old, high on speed and driving a Porsche GTS-R3 then...yeah. You can make it in one day. If you are, say 66 years old, driving a Subaru Forester and the most powerful drug you ever put in your system is coffee? Then no. It's a two day trip.

Better yet? You can now fly directly into Santa Fe on a real airline. It's no longer required to fly into Albuquerque, rent a car and drive for two hours. Nope, you can fly right in. I researched it. I booked my tickets back in January. There's a one hour stop at DFW. Not a big deal. 

The airlines seem to be anticipating declining travel numbers in the short term. Businesses are uncertain about things like tariffs and, well, basically the sanity of the people running the government. It's showing. American Airlines emailed today and offered to upgrade all of the legs of my flights in and out of Austin  and Santa Fe to first class seating for a fee that would just about cover dinner for two at a nice restaurant. First class buys you pre-boarding, a better seat and...most important of all, a dedicated overhead luggage space. Perfect for people traveling with delicate cameras. I jumped on the offer and didn't give it a second thought. 

For the last several months I've been trying to figure out exactly what gear to take. The flights into and out of Santa Fe are on smaller regional jets and I was operating under the idea that I'd be flying economy and that I needed to pack to make sure the cameras could fit under the seat in front of me. That's based on the premise that the overheads will be tiny and that no matter how I tried to game the boarding with my luck I'd end up near the end of the line and would have to hassle with whether or not I'd have to gate check cameras. And lenses. 

One month, back in 2018, I was working on an annual report job for a huge infrastructure company and I did 24 different flights, some round trips, over the course of 30 days. Most of the locations were in and out of rural areas where big planes didn't fly. I got really good at figuring out how to pack hard to break stuff to check into the bellies of planes and how to pack soft-sided camera bags that could be coerced to ride under the seat in front of me; if necessary. Those were the memories I conjured up as I approached packing logistics. 

And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to safely bring along everything I wanted to have, from just in case to wouldn't that be nice to have? I'm pretty much locked in now. Then I found a solution that will allow me to bring everything I could ever imagine. Which is good because at last year's conference in a different city we needed extra lights, light stands, a tripod, and modifiers. Not stuff that fits into overhead compartments. 

No fun packing... but.... I remembered that the Austin-based event production company (lighting, sound and staging) that my client likes to use are people I have happily worked with in cities across the country and in places like Lisbon, Monte Carlo and Madrid. Really good guys who do mostly very high end production work. I called over to them last week and asked if they were sending a big truck to Santa Fe for the show. Yes indeed. They are. Could I toss in one medium-sized Pelican hard case? You bet! Just have it at our office by the 9th of April and we'll have it backstage at the hotel when you arrive. This allows me to pack a full complement of prime lenses, an extra flash, mountains of batteries and a second SL2-S body, along with accessories and cabling, and have it shipped free of charge right to my final destination. And back home again.

That means when I fly I only have to handle a much lighter camera bag with an SL2-S, the 24-90mm zoom, one flash and one Q2 camera. Oh, and my laptop. These will all fit in one manageable Domke shoulder bag which will ride on top of the roller case with all my clothing and toiletries in it as I march through the airports.

And now that I have upgraded to first class I could actually check two bags for free and also be assured that my roller case is flying close to me in the overhead space. 

My flight will leave before sunrise and I don't take chances so I'm driving myself to the airport at 4:30 in the morning. Way too early!!! But parking at the terminal can be time consuming and iffy so I've made a reservation for a covered parking space at one of the close-in private lots at the airport periphery. I've used them many times before and their shuttle will get me to the terminal fast. On the other end I have ample time to get a taxi. Or an Uber. 

I've upgraded all my production software on the laptop as well as all the firmware for the various cameras. In addition I'm meeting with my client for a lunch this week to discuss schedules, needed photos and other details. We do this each year before the show and it's helpful to know what's planned and to get a feel for the mood of the corporation. 

Every work camera will have two fast SD cards backing each other up and I'll be downloading to an outboard SSD and also to the internal SSD in the laptop each night of the conference. 

Now that I have more leeway in the luggage I'll also pack swim gear. You never know when a Santa Fe based friend might need an impromptu swim lesson....

None of this planning is my only focus on work. Last week, this week and the week after all have other projects booked in. But it's nice to have a plan, a plan "B" and a plan "C" just in case. Once I hit the hotel and grab the trucked in case the feeling of relaxation will be almost overwhelming. At that point my only worry will be getting the shots. And having fun shooting. 

Bit by bit a project comes together. It's so much easier these days when I'm not planning around a kid's soccer games or trying to figure out how to pre-pay for stuff out of a limited budget. The schedule is mine to plan around and the cash flow is no longer a worry. In fact, the most stressful part of almost every out of town trip these days is getting to the airport, getting seated on the plane and making those connections. Everything else?  I've practiced so many times it should be automatic. 

The only other logistics consideration is wardrobe. It's a banker conference. Very high end. Coat and tie. Shiny shoes. Pressed shirts. Unwrinkled pants. More than one jacket. But, again, this is not my first rodeo. I've practiced the wardrobe thing with U.S. presidents and Fortune 100 CEOs. It's the same basic plan. Dress conservatively, plan for plan B and lean on the hotel for needed pressing and dry cleaning. And if the shoes get scuffed...get them shined. 

Love the Eldorado Hotel. It's a great business destination. That's all I've got for today.

Someone asked me what camera system I'd buy into if I'd never stumbled head first into the Leica swamp.

When I look back over all the cameras (and lenses) I've used in the past twenty five years (the Age of Digital) there are lots of individual cameras I liked. A lot. But one camera does not a system make. 

The hand feel of Nikons like the D700, D610 and D750 were really good for me. But the system had its issues. Most of the pre-mirrorless Nikons could have issues with front focusing and back focusing. And I found that correcting for one lens might put another, different lens in jeopardy. I have some good images from my years with Nikon but...

Then there's my time with Sony. Interesting to me that I was at the Photo Expo in NYC in 2013 when Sony debuted the A7 and A7R cameras. The A7 was interesting but the shutter noise and slap in the A7R (even though it was a mirrorless camera!!!) was so awful and profound that I almost dropped it out of sheer surprise. I owned an A7ii, and A7Rii and a couple iterations of the (very good) RX10 cameras but back in the early days of Sony cameras both the batteries and the camera menus seemed locked in a competition to see which could be worse. Which one could most annoy working photographers. And I never got used to carrying around eight to ten batteries to get through a day. And I never really wanted to have the 250 page .pdf of the manual on my phone to try, while out in the field, to unlock the secrets of some control which seemed straightforward on every other camera brand's cameras. The photos were fine....

I could have lived with Panasonic's first generation of S1 cameras. They worked well. But they were a bit noisy (file noise at higher ISOS) and the focusing could have been better. At the time I traded them for Leica stuff they seemed not to be making much forward movement and like immobile sharks I thought the brand, Lumix, might stop breathing and die. The Leicas were expensive to buy and it may be that the sheer expense has kept me anchored to the brand. Who wants to spend a small fortune only to abandon the brand and switch yet again to something else?

I even had a flirtation with a Pentax camera. It was the K1. The original K1. And from a handling point of view I'd still have it. But, again, the scourge of DSLRs. Variable front and back focusing reared its ugly head. Still, the camera itself was mature, charming and almost sophisticated. Sad to see it go. Now that I think about it I'll start wishing that Pentax would take that body and use it as the platform for a really great mirrorless system... Not going to happen. Sorry. 

But the one brand I haven't mentioned is probably the one brand I would go to if I were to replace the Leicas, and that's Canon. There's a lot to dislike about Canon. But then again, I used the 60D, the 70D, the 5D and the 5Dmk2 cameras back in the day and when I revisit those files I still like em. A lot. The handling of the full frame cameras was comfortable and I never worried that the files would be compromised by focus issues, noise issues or skin color issues. Sure, there's no real prestige value to a camera system that every weekend warrior uses for weddings of all stripes but you can't really count that against a brand. I also owned one of the big 1Dmk4 cameras they made for sports shooters and liked it a lot. Sure it was big but what good camera back in the pre-2010 days wasn't? The beauty was that cameras such as the 1Dmk4 were practically indestructible and well formed to spend a day in one's hands with little to no strain. 

I shot with Canon SLRs back in the film days. My first real camera was a TX. Replaced by an FTb, augmented with an EF and then an F1. When Canon switched to the EOS mount from the FD mount I switched with them and had the EOS-1...which was a wonderful camera. I paired it with the 85mm L f1.2 and, except for slow focusing (torturously slow) it was an amazing lens. 

I haven't kept up with what Canon is doing in the mirrorless space. Once in a while I'll hear about a camera they've introduced that has heat issues with not only video but also with photos. Then I'll hear that it's been fixed but it has seemed like a brand in such flux that I guess I decided I didn't have the bandwidth to keep up with their strained campaign to move, seriously, into the mirrorless space. 

I guess the Canon camera that would interest me the most would be the R5mk2. More than enough pixels. Seems like they worked out the thermal issues that plagued the original model. It seems advanced enough to do just about anything I need and I'd couple it with basic 24-105mm L lens (not the Z model). There are a few cheaper models that could serve in a pinch for backup but I haven't looked into them. There is a super cheap, full frame model called the EOS RP which you can pick up right now, on sale for about $800, new. Clamp on a kit version of the 24-105 (f4-something to f7-something), add a flash and you'd be ready to go shoot a wedding or an event. But really?

I can't imagine changing stuff right now. If I found the Leica stuff just too pricy to go on with I think I'd just default to the Panasonic S5 series cameras and their cheap as dirt line of prime lenses. At least I'd be able navigate the menus, having used the original S5 since...forever. 

It's been asked on other blogs but I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask here: If storm troopers tossed you into the street and burned down your house with all your camera gear in it, and you needed/wanted to start over again in photography, what system would you be looking at???? Presuming you got to keep your basic wealth and the insurance paid for your losses (house, gear, etc) after the overlords figured out that you actually weren't the terrorist cell they anticipated???? Sorry dude! Mistakes happen.

Just a few thoughts on a Monday.

Bricked. The wall. Not my camera...

 Q2 in 35mm lens camera mode. 

I'm constantly amazed by people who complain about not having enough money and how expensive everything has gotten and then, in the next breath, call themselves out for being lazy, not sticking to anything worthwhile, going through life unmotivated and disengaged. Wealth almost seems like math to me. Work smart and work hard and you can charge commensurately. Spend your hard earned money on crap and you'll stay economically fragile. Save and invest and you'll do okay.

It's all a matter of discipline and follow through. But what do I know about all this? I'm just a freelance photographer... sigh.

I was pretty upset when I found out that my Leica Q2 was actually a 35mm lens camera. Not just a 28mm lens camera!!! The horror.

 

It's funny. When Leica incorporates a "feature" into a camera people don't know how to respond. Take the ability to engage frame lines in the finder of the Q2 to show you the accurate crops for 35, 50 and 75mm lenses. Take the photo at, say, a 35mm crop and that's what you end up with if you are shooting Jpegs. A photo with a 35mm angle of view. The framelines are a good indicator that you're actually doing some cropping. You won't get to use every pixel you paid for.  It set the web on fire at the time of the camera's introduction. How dare they make in-camera cropping a thing in an over-priced, red dot, Veblen photography product. And then call it a feature!!! IT'S JUST CROPPING! I CAN DO THAT IN POWER POINT!!!

But stick the same capability in a newly announced Fuji medium format camera and you'd think you just bought tickets for the second coming of Christ. 

Out for a walk today with the Leica Q2 camera. Trying to decide, by using this camera all the time, if I could really just buy a Q3 with a 43mm lens on it, keep the original Q2, and get rid of every other camera, camera body and lens in the entire studio. Gone. Trashed. Sold. Liquidated. Sure would make packing a lot easier. Two cameras and good coverage from 28mm to about 90mm. With enough resolution for everything. But..inertia. Common sense. Conservative constraint. 

I liked the way the light played across the bench and also created shadows of the leaves. It was well suited for the 35mm focal length. And since I was shooting Jpegs I thought I'd just push the little button on the back and engage the frame lines. Turn the camera into a 35mm lens camera. The push of a button. 

I've been playing around with the cropping feature for days now. It's elegant and reminds me of the frame lines in any M series Leica camera. You can also see "outside the frame" which I think allows for better compositions. The ability to see what's in and what's out.

Sad to think I'll have to settle for "only" 30 something megapixels when I use that 35mm crop mode. I guess there are worse things to contemplate. 

Ah. First World Veblen Problems...  FWVP.   Never learned about that in prep school. 

OT: Adaptation and empathy. Why society in general will never work. Another glorious photo walk.

 You know how it is. You've been driving around in your enormous pick-up truck, running errands, honking at cute girls, flipping off people who are driving Prius cars and trying to figure out why, if you voted for your guy for president, the price of your eggs keeps going up and up and you might have to start paying for your mom's healthcare out of your own pocket. Because, you know, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. You might never get all the money you deserve!!! It's kind of like when you pay taxes to support the biggest military in the history of the Universe and they won't even let you ride in an F-35 fighter jet. The jets your taxes are paying for...!!! 

But so anyway you're driving around and you decide you need to drop by and visit with someone in a downtown building. But there's not enough parking space behind this darn mail truck (Don't worry, they'll be cancelling mail delivery shortly...) and you're in a hurry cuz you are always in a hurry and you decide instead to just put half your truck up on the side walk. But you're a swell guy. You left enough space so people can  squeeze by. Well, but maybe not if somebody is using a wheel chair. But hey! You deserve to make your own space and nobody should deny that. Besides, I heard they are going to make yelling at obnoxious pick-up truck drivers an act of Domestic Terrorism. A hate crime. Sure wish they made Cyber Trucks with diesel engines. I'd get me one. They'll let you park those anywhere.

Thoughts conjured up while dodging pick-up trucks in the process of owning the sidewalks... safety first. You betcha.

Ancient lens test. How does a 55 year old short telephoto lens stand up in modern times? We check it out on South Congress Ave. Used Gear = Tariff Proof.

 

This is the full frame.

I've always had a soft spot for 135mm f2.8 lenses. And single focal length lenses at 135mm are getting hard to find new. The only "modern" 135mm I've found in the L mount systems is the huge and heavy Sigma f2.0 Art series lens. I owned one of the HSM versions and used it for theater work on a Panasonic S1 but it was enormous, dense and .... very slow to autofocus. I traded it out for the Panasonic 70-200mm but have been on the lookout ever since for a classic, prime 135mm. Why? They are smaller and lighter than the big, f2.8 zooms that cover the focal length and...just because I think it's a very cool focal length. 

When I was shooting with film cameras I owned several Leica R, SLR film cameras and a collection of Leica prime lenses. One of them was the 135mm f2.8 Elmarit-R. Those were the times before punch in/magnification fine focusing and way before in-body image stabilization. For some reason I always thought that the Leica R 135 was not particularly sharp. Which was odd for a Mandler designed prime lens made for a top tier camera system. The build quality always struck me as "off the charts" good and the focusing ring was like butter, but were the images created sharp with the aperture wide open? I wouldn't have said so... Now I'm here to acknowledge the possibility that there might have been a bit of user error. It happens to the the best of us. Or...maybe I can blame the SLR focusing system and optical focusing screen in the cameras that were a joint venture between Leica and Minolta... Yeah. That's a better fit for my fragile ego.

Recently I decided I really wanted to try the 135mm Elmarit-R one more time. Mostly to see if image stabilization coupled with high magnification focusing would tip my opinion from: "Soft lens from yesteryear" to "Wow! This is so much better than I remembered." When a very clean and well cared for one turned up at Leica Store Miami (no affiliation/no reward) popped up in their used Leica equipment listings --- and then soon dropped in price by $100 --- I took it as a sign from the photo gods and bought it. A whopping $395 for a lens made back in 1970. Predating even my own fledgling interest in anything photographic.

It's a version two. An improvement over the original optical design of the 1960s and was a consistent and long tenured design right up until the lens was discontinued in 1991. The lens is not big at all but it's dense. It weighs about 700 grams or a little over one and a half pounds. The lens features a solid, all metal, built-in lens hood and anti-features a close focusing limit of one and a half meters...a tad under five feet.

The manual (only) focus ring travel is long, long, long but it's easy to fine tune focus because this. 

Lens in hand I decided to use it with my favorite work camera (written about yesterday), the Leica SL2. I tossed the lens on an Urth brand adapter, set the focal length in the lens profile menu (to get good I.S.) and headed out on a sunny day to see just exactly how the lens would acquit itself fully 55 years after it was constructed, along with 1999 other ones, for the original Leica SL2 (a venerable and non-biodegradable, bullet proof film camera) cameras. I mean, you can read all the shit about it that's been written but the only true test of a lens is how well it works for you. In your personalized method of use.

All lenses ( or "most" lenses ) perform pretty well at f5.6 or f8.0 but that's not much of a test. I kept the camera mostly at f4.0. I figured I could give it one stop in honor of its long tenure in the field...

TL:DL (Too long, didn't look at the samples?): I find the color to match modern lenses quite well. None of the overly warm or overly yellow looks that many older film era lenses can sometimes show. The contrast, even at f4.0, is well balanced and, in fact, much contrastier than I would have anticipated. And sharp? Yes. It's quite sharp as long as I focus it correctly. As it was a sunny afternoon I kept the shutter speeds above 1/250th of a second to try to minimize operator induced movement as much as possible. 

Take a look at the images and see what you think. I really like the lens but I'd jump on a modern version with autofocusing in a heartbeat. When shooting older, manual focus, wide angle lenses depth of field is your friend but, conversely, when shooting with longer, moderately fast aperture, manual lenses the lack of enough depth of field can be your enemy. Still. Focusing quickly and accurately was a challenge but where would the fun be if taking images with 55 year old lenses didn't have a little friction involved?

I've added some captions where I thought appropriate.

this is the 100% crop from above. The lace is very clearly defined. As is the satin fabric.

A great job for a lens shooting through the thick glass of a shop window.

the full frame...

100% crop. Fabric very clearly defined...

a wolf dog up for adoption. This is the 100% crop. The full frame is just below.

Near the close focusing distance of the lens. The color and texture is perfect.

A sample of a scene shot across four lanes of traffic. F4.0

Very nice edge acuity.

Hundreds and hundreds of scooter and bike riders.