This small gallery contains images created with the following cameras: Panasonic GH5ii, Panasonic GH6, Leica CL, Leica TL, Leica M240, Leica M240-M-E, Leica SL2-S, Sigma fp. All good cameras. All good fun.

Photographer's self portrait with a Leica CL

It's a cloudy day here in Austin. One best captured, I think, in expressive, contrasty black and white. I've just wrapped up several assignments even though I hinted around that I was thinking of retreating from the commerce side of photography to concentrate more fully on my own work. But after 40+ years the habit of accepting work for money is hard to shed. Hard to kill off. And, when I do have more time I tend to ruminate over what exactly it is that I'd like to do with the time I've created. What images would I really like to make and how would I like to make them?

In the 1980s, 1990s and the early 2000s I thought the secret of exciting photography was propelled by constantly heading to foreign locations to capture life that looks different from life here. Life in my own town. Life in my own milieu. But those were times when so little photography was shared. Before the web exploded and before discount air carriers opened up the market to travel to and fro for bigger and bigger swaths of humanity. And it was a time in which everything over someone else's border looked odd, mysterious, different and sometimes very cool. But the last few times I traveled to places like Germany or Iceland I noticed that everyone who traveled in the preceding years had succeeded in homogenizing pretty much everything. Most urban environments echoed most other urban environments with the main differences being the ages and the styles of architecture. 

The most popular restaurant when I was in Reykjavik was a ramen restaurant. Or the famous hot dog stand. Polartec looks the same everywhere. Germans were just, for the most part, better dressed than Texans. And more intentional about which part of the sidewalks to walk on and which to bike on. But nothing was as striking to me as when I first went to Rome with my parents in 1963. Or later to Turkey. Or backpacking through France, Italy, Switzerland and Greece back in 1978. Everything has gotten more internationally local. 

So the imagery I see from Lisbon or Madrid or any of the other "cities of the moment" for tourism look remarkably the same. And that begs the question about whether it's the quality of photography and personal vision that matters most or just convenient and trendy content that drives the popularity of images. One of my favorite Instagram photographers is Marcel Mellema (Marcel.Mellema@instagram) from the Netherlands. His portrait work is nothing like mine but is beautiful and timeless. And completely independent of location. He works in a studio. But the work rises above the need for an "exciting" location as a background. As does the work of newcomer, Yvonne Hanson. 

I'm not a landscape photographer and when I was complaining to my son about not traveling enough lately with my camera (for personal, family reasons) he laughed and said that I had always told him "if you can't make a good photo in your own home town .... well, wherever you go, there you are." 

So, I'm working through what it is I really want to do instead of filling requests from clients. I'm lucky enough to not need the paid work now. What I really need is direction but don't bother making various suggestions because I'm really, really bad at taking advice when it comes to artistic direction. Just sharing where I am and what my mind is up to these days....

Pana GH5ii

Author with Pana GH6. 2022. 

Coffee with a TL2

Leica M240 + Tri-Elmar

Sigma fp with 45mm

Wrangling the &Artisans 50mm f1.8 AF for L mount into submission. Or maybe just walking around shooting random stuff that appealed to me while trying f-stops between 1.8 and 8.0.

Well here we are, back over 100° Fahrenheit and we're not even out of the month of May. This week has been the wake-up call for Summer. I used to take the hot temperatures in stride. The studio A/C works fine. The home A/C works fine, and we've got a rainy day account with enough money in it to replace a faltering A/C system should that happen. But the sad and frustrating reality is that as I get older I am less able to handle long periods of time out in the high temperatures and even less inclined to do so when we factor in sub-tropical levels of humidity. 

I went out today around eleven a.m. and it was already in the 90s. I spent a couple hours walking around on the sidewalks in downtown before I got hungry, tired, too hot and ready to head home. Stands to reason since downtown is a giant heat sink with lots of reflective buildings and mostly blacktop. It's generally 7-10 degrees hotter than the readings for the city in general. Not sure I'm pining for the days in the past when we spent a lot more time roasting outside. Still, the realization that with age comes less heat adaptability is sad.

I wrote yesterday about a new lens that had just arrived at the VSL World H.Q. It's a lens I didn't really need but one I wanted to try out. I've purchased a few of the early 7Artisan manual lenses three and four years ago and, while they were okay, none were stand outs or really anything to write home about. All of the older ones were manual focus lenses with no communication whatsoever between camera and lens and all of them were based on older optical designs reimagined for the digital age. The lens that arrived yesterday seemed important to me as an example of how quickly an optical company can get "up to speed" and become more integrated into the pantheon of acceptable lens choices. 

I remember buying Sigma lenses twenty years ago or even fifteen years ago and marveling at just how bad some of them were and how sloppy their construction might be. If we didn't keep trying them out and just gave up on all products coming from Sigma we would have missed out on their fabulous Art series lenses and many contemporary lenses that, if not best in class, are certainly tough and valuable competitors in the market place. Their contemporary line of primes for L mount and E mount cameras is easily among the top tier of interchangeable lenses for current state of the art cameras.!

So, what if 7Artisans came out with a really good lens at a really good price? Would our prejudices formed by their earlier products keep us from discovering that tipping point where they went from novelty to competitor? And would we miss a bargain in the process?

When it comes to the 50mm f1.8 AF lens I thought it would be a good test to see how far the company's products had come and whether it would work well on a high resolution camera like the Leica SL2. And it's currently only $228 here in the USA so it wasn't like blowing $6K on a 50mm APO Summicron SL from Leica. In comparison the price of the 7Artisans is a rounding error in the whole game. Another nudge came when I went back and watched a few reviews from people like Christopher Frost and Dustin Abbott who were quite positive about the lens; with only a few reservations. 

There are two things that I'm not used to on the lens which I want to point out. I'm not ready to say that these two things are "cons" but I mention them because I was surprised when I started using the lens to discover them in the first place. 

First, while the lens has a dedicated aperture ring which allows manual, physical setting of the f-stop the ring does not have detents. There are no click stops. You'll have to visually confirm changes in apertures. You won't be able to operate by feel. The work around is an "A" setting just past f16 and if you are in the "A" setting the aperture can be set by one of the camera's control wheels. There is a detent  as you switch from f16 to "A" but it's quiet and very subtle. If you are too quick to make the setting you might not feel the detent at all. Today I stuck with the "A" setting and used the rear control wheel on the SL2 to control the f-stop. Just as you would with a lens that has no external aperture ring. 

The second "anti-feature" of the lens is that it is noisy when stopping down to take an exposure and part of the noise is also made by the aperture blades snapping open again for viewing. It's not offensive and it sounds a lot like lenses from the film days but it is louder than most current lenses for digital cameras and so it has to be mentioned. At first I thought it was slowing down the shutter response but I did some test shots at higher shutter speeds complete with moving subjects and the sound difference had no effect on the exposure or shutter speed. 

The lens is very nicely finished from a cosmetic perspective. It feels solid and mostly constructed of metal. The lens has a 62mm filter size and comes with a petal shaped lens hood (plastic; but that's fine). 

The lens is a bit bigger and heavier than the least expensive 50mm lenses from Canon, Sony and Nikon. The one I got is for the L mount system but it's available in Sony and Nikon mounts as well. Not sure about other mounts. 

Here's where we get to what I find interesting about the lens. It's not just another rehash of the double Gauss designs which generally have 6 or 7 elements in 5 or 6 groups. It's a more complex design. It's got Eleven elements in nine groups and some of the elements point to a very modern design with higher degrees of correction. It's got two aspherical elements, two high refraction glass elements, and an extra-low dispersion glass element. That's a completely different complement of glass types than offered by the usual "nifty-fifty." Since the lens has electronic contacts it retains Exif data transference and allows for camera-based aperture adjustment (as previously mentioned). It also supports facial and eye recognition. I tested it and while it's slower than a dedicated Leica SL lens it does capture eye focus. 

In addition to the aperture ring the lens also has a MF/AF switch on one side for quick changes between the two. It focuses down to 1.6 feet. And, finally, it has a USB-C port on the lens mount to allow updates for firmware. Of course I have haven't had to update firmware so I have no idea how hard or easy that might be, but the inclusion of the USB port is a step in the right direction.

Now on to the actual performance. I used the lens for quite a few images at f1.8 and found it to be at least as good at that wide open aperture as the Panasonic Lumix 50mm f1.8S lens which I've owned since it's launch. Both are really good lenses; especially for the prices. The Panasonic lens is frequently on sale for as low as $297, brand new. So --- not much more than the 7Artisans. The later lens is smaller but heavier and feels a bit denser. If I could only have one I'd probably go for the Panasonic at a sale price but it's close between the two and my preference in the moment might be have more to do with an initial prejudice against the 7A... as a result of having owned some of their mediocre, older, cheaper manual focus "dumb" lenses. If the 7Artisans turns out to be a great performer over time I'll adapt.

I spent most of my shooting time with the lens set to f3.5 and the manual shutter speed set to 1/640th of a second. The ISO for the day was 50. I wanted to use 1/640th of a second to take camera shake or user shake out of the equation for my first evaluations. At f3.5 the lens is a great performer. I also took a few (several?) shots at f8.0 and was happy with those images as well. 

Why my sudden interest in autofocus 50mm lenses? In spite of the fact that I have six or seven really good M and adapted Zeiss, Canon and Nikon 50mm lenses to choose from? Well, the manual lenses that get adapted to the L mount cameras need to be focused at their full aperture and then stopped down to shoot. There's no auto-stop-down mechanism. While it's easy enough to see where focus lies when using wide open apertures or large apertures, because the depth of field is shallow enough to show what is and what isn't out of focus, and while focus peaking can help, the only really perfect way to get good focus with totally manual lenses is to punch in and magnify the focus point for the finest discrimination. But all of this is time consuming. With lenses dedicated to the modern AF systems the lens is focusing at the wide open setting and stops down on triggering. All the other steps are automatic. 

Which then brings us to focusing speed. In single point focusing (S-AF) the lens and camera do fine. As good as any of the other modern lenses I have for the system. In the manual mode the focusing ring is big and well damped and features a long focus throw which means it'll take a bit of time to go from minimum to maximum focus but it will be accurate. I never use tracking focus or even C-AF so I can't speak to those use cases but I have heard from various reviewers that it's slower than Sony lenses at tracking motion; if it can track motion at all. So far that's not my concern.

One thing that's missing from the lens is a depth of field scale but if you are manually focusing the lens and are using one of the magnificent Leica SL2 cameras you can keep a light pressure on the shutter button and as you focus with the focusing ring the top display of the camera will show you the exact depth of field in three lines. The top most line is the closest distance that will be sharp for a given focus point and f-stop. The middle line shows the exact focusing distance set while the bottom line tells you the furthest distance that will be in focus. Convenient and useful. And it's here I should note that none of the $5,000+ Leica SL lenses have depth of field scales either. So you can't really pull the "deal-killer" card on the 7Artisans lens given that it's in good company. 

I like the lens for one other reason. It looks better than the mostly plastic Panasonic lens. It matches the look and feel of the Leica SL cameras better. And comparatively it is "right sized." 

All in all it's a nice product for an initial foray into AF lenses dedicated to specific systems. Would I buy it again? Yeah. The look out of it is a bit snappier than the Panasonic 50mm and it's a look I like. And the price is not scary or excessive. It's a fun lens. That about sums it up. 

It has an initial stamp of approval from the Mannequin Corps of Optical Engineers.

Click on the images to make them bigger.....

The lens is very color neutral and doesn't shift warm or cool. 

Applies to so many hobbies. Yes?

I swam this morning and then got in 3 and a half or four miles of walking before lunch.

It's not an obsession, just the discipline to stay in decent physical shape.

Being healthy makes operating cameras so much easier.

A nice balance of tones.

This is a 100% crop from the frame just below. At f2.5. As you can see, 

the lens easily resolves lots and lots of detail.

Urban decay in Austin.

I was going to cross the railroad tracks and head down the hill on the hidden path to Mañana Coffee but I got blocked by yet another train that went on for, literally, miles. About 12 full minutes from the first engines to the last car. Whatever happened to Cabooses? And what a fun word!!!

Will the younger generations understand references to cabooses in the future?

And then, mid-train, there were two more engines...

F8.0

F2.5

 Really, really nice tonality all through the frame. 

Nothing excessive and nothing too contrasty. 

All of these images are Jpegs from the SL2 camera. 

 

Spent part of the day scanning medium format chromes from the 1990s and part of the day playing with new, cheap, great lens. Oh yeah....and swim practice.

Back in the late 1990s I was doing a lot of assignment work for Prevention Magazine. We did a fitness shoot for one issue and I recruited most of the fit women that I knew at the time to be models. I'd mostly forgotten about an editorial assignment from a couple decades ago until B. and I had a dinner recently with one of the models and her husband. She asked if she could get some copies of the images she posed for back in the day. 

I was worried that I might not be able to put hands on film files from at least twenty-five years ago but amazingly I was able to hunt down multiple sheets of chromes we shot for that one edition. I guess I'm not as unorganized as I thought I might be... All of the images existed as 6x6 cm transparencies so I needed to scan them for my friend and send them along as Jpegs. I grabbed the Negative Film Supply rig and got to work scanning the film. I think it holds up well for antique, analog work. I sent about twenty of the images to my friend/former model and she was delighted to have them. I was happy to see that we had mastered fill flash in sunlight way back then. I credit the leaf shutters in Hasselblad cameras of that time period. And big flash generators from Profoto. 

I had a call last week from a photographer friend who currently lives and works in Paris. It out of the blue. We caught up for while and then he asked me if I was still shooting with the Leica SL stuff. I said that I was and he said he had a lens suggestion for me. He knows me pretty well and knows how much I like 50mm lenses. He suggested that I look into a 50mm f1.8 lens, made for the L mount system, that's autofocus and cheap as dirt. It was the 7SevenArtisans 50mm f1.8 AF lens. It came out about a year ago and then was relaunched a few months ago with some operational improvements. 

I went to B&H's website, read a few reviews, looked at the price and ordered one. I figured that if it was complete crap I'd only be out $228 USD and I could pass it along to some young photographer who is crazy enough to plunge into the L mount system family. 

The lens came today. It's gorgeous. I mounted it on an SL2 and walked around taking photographs of just about everything in my environment. It works well with the SL2, focuses quickly enough for me and is very nicely finished. Good build quality. No "deal-killers" that I could see and, very sharp at f1.8. At least in the middle 2/3rds of the frame. I'll take it out for a walk tomorrow --- if the sidewalks have not become molten lava...

Love a good 50mm. Or two. Or three. Or....

Swimming continues to be fun, entertaining and therapeutic. Today was I.M. day ( individual medley) which just means that rather than focusing mostly on sprint or distance freestyle we paid more attention to butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke. The coach constructed a three stage matrix on the white board. The first set looked like this: 

8 x 25 yards butterfly on :30 seconds. 

6 x 25 backstroke

4 x 25 breaststroke

2 x 25 freestyle

200 yards pulling freestyle

100 yards I.M. (all four strokes) 

We go through this three times rotating strokes and numbers of repeats.

So the second set starts with 8 x 25 backstroke and then 6 x 25 butterfly etc. etc. 

I love sets like this. The brain work and the physical work combined makes the hour fly by. 

Yardage is good. Technique is better. Discipline is best. I am hardly obsessed. I spend less than two hours a day to get to the pool, do the workout, shower and get home. Then I turn off my swim brain and concentrate on something else. But where else can you find people in their early 70s repeating times (plus a few seconds slower) they swam in college? And if you are looking for chubby people you've come to the wrong pool. 

There is a pro level swim competition going on at the UT Swim Center today and tomorrow. A bunch of Olympians will be facing off. And we know it's one of the fastest pools in the world. Much better than football or baseball or basketball or, etc. etc. We have a saying at the masters: "fill in the blank with a non-swimming sport, is only for people who CAN'T swim."

Swimming or not swimming isn't the important thing. The critical takeaway is that to proceed well into your 70s, 80s and even 90s you need to exercise hard six days a week and have the discipline to always show up. Wanna get filthy rich taking photographs? Show up. Everything about success is about showing up every day and doing the work. There is no free ride. No unfinished projects. 

 

Disappearing by being in plain sight. Photographer as social chameleon.

 

Two Views on the Spanish Steps. Rome. Unposed. 

I like to read spy novels. Secret agent books. Covert action stories. One author I enjoy is Mark Greaney. He has written a series of action/spy novels that has come to be known as "The Gray Man Series." His protagonist is an assassin and a lone wolf character. Trained by the CIA to be an autonomous operator. And one of his well honed skills is the talent of fitting in anywhere by fitting in. The character is perennially on the lam from bad guys from major spy agencies and assorted other, sinister organizations. His ability to fit in keeps him alive. 

I'm not so far into the "Walter Mitty Syndrome" that I think I'm a secret agent or a something of that nature but I do find some truth in the actions of Greaney's protagonist. Especially when he arrives in a new city, susses out what people wear, how they walk, how much or little eye contact they make in social situations and little, habitual "tells" or mannerisms the general population shares. 

When Greaney's character arrives from a train or a boat in a new city he might go into a used clothing store, or a store that has day to day clothing the working class in that city generally buys. Right down to the right hats, jackets, pants and even shoes. Maybe especially shoes. By observing and tailoring his appearance to match the center of the distribution curve of local humanity he becomes, for all intents and purposes, invisible to random observers. 

I think, regardless of your literary preferences, Greaney is supplying a template for others who want to blend in to the local environment. Say, street photographers who want to work in public places without causing alarm or suspicion for the people they would like to document. 

There is a reason we instantly recognize stereotypes. It's because the stereotype has been repeated so often as to become a shorthand for whole swaths of new visitors to a city. One has only to sit in a popular public space for a few hours to see it over and over again. The stereotypes held by residents in other countries that apply to many (but not all) tourists from the U.S.A. go as follows: They are overweight. They are tragically under-dressed. They wear running shoes everywhere. They are the ones wearing short pants in Paris, Rome, London, etc. They have a deep affection for baseball hats with logos. They talk very loudly. They yell to each other across crowded railway cars, plazas and restaurants. They resist walking with the flow of traffic and, instead, block sidewalks by walking three or four abreast. Fat, poorly shod, poorly dressed and using the power of their voices to draw unwanted attention to themselves. And....one more thing.... if they are into photography they carry a big camera bag and have a big camera with a big lens on the front of it. 

I can imagine few other ways to build barriers to gaining smooth access and candid images of the people who live and work in the cities, natively. 

And there is no "one" costume one can buy and use that guarantees fitting in to every country, every city. There is no one size fits all. 

Seems to me that getting candid images in public places in most urban environments is facilitated by dressing like a native. Walking like a native. Being shod like a native and mirroring the bearing and attitude of a native. Fewer big, toothy grins. Less vocal volume in public spaces. More attention to good grooming. And using discreet cameras. 

When I took the photographs just above I'd been in Rome already for a couple of weeks. I'd purchased a few articles of clothing that seemed appropriate and popular for natives in my age demographic. Shoes were the most important selection. Sturdy leather shoes with laces are hard to beat. No fanny packs. No giant hold everything camera bags. No aggressive gear choices. No lenses longer than one's arm. And most importantly an attitude that I hoped said, "I am supposed to be here. I am supposed to be taking photographs. I am relaxed. I am not sneaky. I exist only as a non-threatening article in your peripheral vision. Nothing more." 

Once you decide what you want to photograph you might want to do the prep work; the rough focusing, the exposure setting and what not before you move into your shooting position. You know, so you don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself. You can intuit your composition if you work with the camera and lens you've chosen to use often in the recent past. When you are ready to shoot you don't rush it or act furtive; you just shoot. And you probably don't need to Winogrand/Machine Gun dozens of shots to get what you want. Photograph and move on. Most people who live in high population density areas probably won't even notice you and ......  that's exactly what you want. 

Fitting in is intentional. Giving up the idea of totally controlling a photograph is wise. Working without worry is essential. Wearing the right shoes is like getting a Christmas bonus when it comes to fitting in... 

OT: A fabulous adventure at my dentist's office. Lasers. Oh so good!!!

Emily at the Lake. 

I've always been afraid of dentist visits during which I needed to have some procedure done. A filling, a crown, a repair, anything was enough to having me fretting for days. At the very core of my fears were experiences over decades of having to have injections of Novocaine (or whatever it is these days) at the start of the procedures. For some reason I had a progression of dentists who seemed, philosophically, to feel that deadening the sensation for the actual procedure was much more important than any discomfort delivered during the slow and agonizing process of doing the injections. 

A new dentist took over the practice I'd gone to for almost twenty five years. That transition was about eight years ago. She was different. If Dr. Farahani needed to inject a local anesthetic to repair an old filling she could do so with a feather touch. It was a revelation to me. Almost, almost pain free dentistry. When I was in the office last week for a check-up and clean she noticed a worsening of an old, cracked filling we'd been watching. Time to clear it out and replace it with one of the new composites. 

We booked an appointment for today. I worried all weekend that the actual injection of a local anesthetic would be painful and this dredged up my memories and fears of dental (mis)adventures of the past. I was nervous as I walked in to the office. My blood pressure spiked to 125 over 70. I sat down in the chair and my dentist explained to me that today there would be no injections. No locals. And no pain. They'd be using a laser to clean out the old filling and prep the tooth for the new one. Being fearless at trying out new camera technologies but wracked with anxiety over anything new in the health field I approached my initial laser dental treatment with a full dose of cortisol rampaging through my veins. 

I need not have worried. My dentist is a master professional/super dentist; she and her assistant worked quickly, efficiently and with great regard for detail. I walked out of the office 45 minutes after walking in, with a big smile on my face and many questions about the technical guts and workings of the lasers dentists are now using. Resisting as best I can a plunge into those nuts and bolts. I hope to convince myself that this is yet another field in which I don't need to research... 

"How soon after the procedure can I safely drink coffee?" The perfect response: "immediately." 

Frickin' laser beams!!! Cue Dr. Evil in the first Austin Powers movie... Dr. Evil: "You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now, evidently, my cycloptic ..."

the photos of Emily at the lake have nothing to do with dentistry.

But at the time I was using what I considered fun, outdoor lighting.

A Profoto battery powered generator with a corded flash head.

Not as cool as a laser but....