Blending in, with cameras, is nice. Sometimes you go straight in and other times you hold back and wait for it. Old prints. On fiber paper. Top one from Rome. Middle image from Siena. Bottom from either Rome or Siena. Can't remember and my GPS never worked right on my Hasselblad 500 CM...

 

For the younger viewer the headline included a joke. There was nothing electronic in a Hasselblad 500CM. Least of all GPS. Or Exif. Or AF. Or auto-exposure. You actually had to think about stuff...

And stay anonymous. And have fun. 

Dominique Ansel, Working on a batch of Cronuts in the Stephen F. Austin hotel kitchen. Just because a reader mentioned Cronuts.

 

Here's the Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronut

Surprised to see that his Cronut was granted a patent!

I was thinking about playing with the little Ricoh GRiii x until I realized that I already had the professional version of that camera and lens...

The little Ricoh GRiii x is cute and small and getting a lot of play on all the photo-influencer YouTube channels. People seem to finally be coming around to the realization that a 40mm equivalent lens is a wonderful focal length. Leica knew this when they introduced the original Leica CL film camera. It came with a 40mm f2.0 Summicron that was absolutely wonderful and so sharp it could cut your eye right through the rangefinder window. How they wound up with the 28mm lens on the Q2 will always be a mystery to me...

Ricoh had a following of folks who liked the original GRiii with its wider angle (28mm eq,?) lens so they did what I think is the logical step of upgrading it with an even more universally useful lens. The camera itself is small and light and happily devoid of excess buttons, switches and endless menu clutter. With a 40mm lens and a super low profile it started to look to me like a great walk-around, shoot from the hip, street shooter's dream camera. It lacks only two things; the ability to add an EVF and a full frame image sensor with all the advantages that can add to the mix. Still, I've stumbled into buying some things with far fewer things to recommend a purchase. I started reading reviews...

But one thing kept nagging at me. Didn't I already have the "professional" version of this camera courtesy a different camera maker? Seems I do. 

Sitting there on the edge of my desk is petite but bulletproof Sigma fp. I took off the optical finder and the grip, took off some big, hairy lens, mounted the Sigma 45mm f2.8 and marveled once again at just how perfect this camera feels in real use. As a professional point and shoot camera.

I took off the camera strap and attached a (Chris Nichols approved) wrist strap, tossed the lens hood and cap back in the drawer and all of a sudden I had a great street shooting camera in my hands. Almost as dinky as the Ricoh.  But with the added benefit of one of the cleanest (noise free) high ISO performance capabilities of all the 24 megapixel, full frame cameras on the market, coupled with addictive color science, and the final miracle feature: interchangeable lens capability. Even nicer? I already own it. 

Not everyone likes the fp. Maybe it's an acquired taste. Maybe it's the squared off corners. Maybe it's the added friction of using a camera which requires more care to focus or one which sucks through battery juice with reckless abandon. Whatever the "deal-killer" parameter is for other people I've yet to find anything about the camera which is bad enough to outweigh the potential it provides for wonderful photographs that look different (and to my eye better) than nearly all the other cameras on the market in that category. 

I've got mine set (not converted to) today for black and white. I add some contrast and sharpness to the mix in camera. I use the yellow filter setting. I put an extra battery in my pocket. Wrap the wrist strap around my right wrist and step out the door to photograph things so I can see what they look like photographed. It's a pleasure. 

Looking out the kitchen window at the studio/office west wall. 

Nice day for photography. But what day isn't?

 

OT: Austin's severe food deficiency.

The inclusion of this handy donut themed photograph is not a ringing 

endorsement of Tim Horton's donuts or their coffee. While it would be nice 

to welcome TH to Austin these are not the masterpiece quality 

donut products that Vancouver has in spades......

 My visit in the Fall to Vancouver revealed to me a gaping hole in Austin's gastronomic scene. We have a paucity of high quality donut resources. And, to a lesser extent, sources of good pastries and baked goods. Sure, there are the usual cheap donut shops with inventories of greasy, sugar coated industrial donuts but in the popular downtown, S. Congress and Domain areas one only finds the ever present Starbucks shops with their "back from the depths of a backroom freezer case" icky "baked goods." Each sealed in plastic and just waiting for a trip through the microwave-broiler oven and into a white and green paper sack. 

I've found one or two real, locally grown, well run donut establishments that could go toe-to-toe with shops in Vancouver but the difference between the two cities is that Vancouver delivers a great donut shop,  where donuts are the hero and coffee is the side kick, on every other block in the downtown area. Wonderful shops with a seemingly endless selection of clever and traditional donuts, in some cases surrounded by pastries and, as an afterthought, sandwiches. While in Austin if one wants to get outstanding donuts at the two or three establishments across the whole city you'll likely have to get into your car, drive through lots of traffic, find expensive parking, pay dearly for your donut and then eat it in a small, dark room which was clearly an afterthought. 

A standout in Austin is Salty Donuts on South Congress Ave. It's a clean and well lit place. The donuts are ample, well portioned, fresh and delicious. The coffee is up to snuff even if you prefer espresso based coffees. The dining room is small-ish but welcoming. 

But here's the sad thing. We have maybe one or two donut establishments of this caliber in all of metropolitan Austin while a city like Vancouver is blessed with at least one really good donut place within a short walking distance of anywhere in the downtown area. Ample, professional, delicious locations filled not with just a few "greatest hits" donuts but really sinfully wonderful choices made with top shelf ingredients. 

Sadly, I fear that even with all our growth and the construction of enormously tall towers, Austin will never become a first class city with an enviable lifestyle if we cannot or will not address the lack of both incredible donuts and places in which to enjoy them along with proficiently brewed coffee. An oversight which I hope developers and the city council members will move to fix as one of the highest priorities on the agenda. Sad to be considered a "cool" city without the basics of the good life for its inhabitants. 

Just an observation that hit me right between the eyes on my last walk through our donut deprived downtown. And, just to be clear, Voodoo Donuts and their over-the-top shocker donuts aren't cutting it. They've gone full Halloween with their offerings. A parity of deluxe donuts with all the sugar and fat but none of the subtle and captivating allure of a really well thought out and well produced donut. 

Austin. Too many cars. Too much thought given to making more and more parking spaces. Not enough attention being paid to critical donut theory. Dammit. 

What some people do to celebrate the arrival of a new year. No alcohol involved. Or cameras.

Jan. 1, 2023

 The neighborhood was quiet this morning. The pre-dawn was a steely gray. I woke up at seven and headed to the kitchen to make myself a large coffee. Organic Columbian, roasted yesterday. Medium roast. I also smeared some peanut butter on two slices of hearty "super" bread for the protein and carbs. Swallowed a .81mg aspirin then grabbed my swim suit and towel from the towel rack in my bathroom and headed out to the car. The sun was rising as I left the driveway. I got to the parking lot at the pool at 7:50 and changed into my swim suit. Blue swim cap. Goggles resting across my forehead. 

The crowd around the pool was energized and boisterous. The coach was writing the special, New Years Day workout on the whiteboard with a marker. When he finished he turned to the crowd of swimmers and explained the workout. 

We would hit the water at 8 sharp. No warm-up. No screwing around. Our only set was 100 x 100 yards with each 100 yard swim completed and ready to go on the next one in one minute and thirty seconds. Total. 100 x 100s on 1:30. A daunting pace for a lot of us in the pool. Not too dramatic for the former Olympians and All Americans. They swam faster. They got more rest between 100s.

We got moving at 8. We swam without a break, making our intervals, until 10:30. If you needed to get out you got out. The pool was warm. The coach walked up and down the deck passing out bottles of water and encouraging us to stay hydrated. Most of the elite swimmers had their fill by 9 am and started leaving; a few at a time. More people came at 9 am to join those already in progress. 

If you completed the whole cycle you got in 10,000 yards. It's not a bad way to start out the new year. I don't recommend this kind of workout for new or first time swimmers. ( wry humor implied ) This kind of event really does require some pre-training in order to sustain and finish a set like this. 

Our reward, besides getting in 10,000 fast, hard yards, was breakfast tacos paid for by the club and delivered just in time to coincide with the final few hundreds. 

I might need a nap later today...

It's a new year. Let's get moving.

Happy New Year 2023 !!! Go out there and have fun.

 From all one of us here at VSL H.Q. here's hoping you have a great New Year and plenty more to come.

Looking backwards. Looking forward. It's all good.

 

Ben. Circa 2008.

I've been cleaning out hard drives today. It's amazing how much stuff accumulates in those anonymous metal boxes over time. I've tossed away at least a terabyte of old, unneeded client files but also at least two terabytes of personal junk. Many, many repetitive "test shots" of downtown street scenes, multiple tries at graffiti documentation and many, many old videos that were a blend of personal art projects and also videos made for non-profit clients who were aiming squarely at social media. I tried not to trash photographs of people unless they were included in project files for clients who have fallen out of favor or whose companies disappeared at some point in the last five or six years. But I can't bring myself to cull out very many images of people I like or people from companies that I still work with. Just can't feed everything to the little trash can. Not yet.

The image above, viewed at the end of a year that was good for me (2022), reminds me that we don't need much at all to do images that we can really like and cherish. This photo of Ben was done a long time ago. It was done with a flawed digital camera and a cheap, consumer MF lens. The lighting was one 1K tungsten light aimed through big layers of soft diffusion and nothing else. A classic one light portrait. 

The camera was the ill-fated Kodak DSC-DSLRn. A 14 megapixel, full frame camera that had more firmware updates than I have cameras. The lens used was an ancient Nikon Ais 135mm f2.8 manual everything lens. It was small and had a wonderful focusing ring but it was sure a pain in the butt to focus on the SLRn camera. The focusing screen in that camera was definitely in NO WAY optimized to make manual focusing either easy or accurate. But in the end the combination of trial and error and persistence worked. The eccentric lighting worked. The weird sensor worked and was actually really good for portrait work. Sadly, that was one camera that fell apart in my hands. I don't mean that it physically disintegrated. 

No, it was more discreet than that. It would just...hesitate and die from time to time. Then, after a while, it started randomly introducing artifacts in the files. Then... well, you get the idea. After a while Kodak figured out that they couldn't fix it or wouldn't fix it and so after two years of my use they bought it back from me. I was glad to see it go; from a business point of view. I was sad to see it go from an artistic point of view because the files really were nice and it did have one superpower. It was the first digital camera that used focus stacking/image processing to create super resolution, super low noise, low ISO (down to 6) files. 

I did a series of 4x5 foot, point of purchase, color prints with the camera using that low ISO mode and they were super sharp, bereft of any visible noise and had perfect color. Now...they did take a long time to shoot and everything you shot had to be very still and the camera had to live on a stout tripod. But hey, most of the photographers in my age and proficiency cohort cut their teeth on 4x5 view cameras in the beginning so it was hardly unmanageable. 

But then again, the darn camera did stop working after a while. 

I think about things like this on days like today which inspire both wish lists for the future and assessments of the past. I've watched a few videos on YouTube where well know Tube-O-graphers talk breathlessly about Sony adapting the new AI AF module into the next generation of cameras. How Fuji must MUST update their product line to stacked sensors and then turn around and update all the lenses to match the resolution of the new sensors.... How Leica will shortly introduce either an M series body with an EVF or a Q body with interchangeable lenses. God, I hope they are still L mount lenses for that mythic interchangeable lens Q3..... but I'm sure not holding my breath.

But the conjecture is so tiny and weak. The merchants of lust are talking small potatoes updates and tweaks but nothing that will really reach out and punch you in the face as being new and super exciting. We're in the mature stage of digital now. Time to deal with that. 

And, the photo above reminds me that we supposedly got into this racket because we loved making the photographs. If that's true and we've already squeezed most of improvements we "needed" out of camera technology then who will lead the charge back into the thrill of making wonderful photographs?

Or will we all just become really diligent camera collectors?

My message to reviewers, blogger and internet "experts" :

Show more work. Not less work. Every blogger and YouTuber should have to prove their work to their customers/audience. Prove that they know what they speak about and what they write about. Show me the work. Not the camera but the work. And once I've seen that you know what you are talking about...then you have permission to show me the camera. No more empty influencers. No more last century experts. No more golden agers. Just show us what made that camera you are reviewing better.

But mostly show us how it helped you make better photographs. That's supposed to be what we're interested in.