A cool, wet and windy day for a swim. Thoughts about work.

Permanent truss at the Zilker Hillside Theater. Austin, Texas

Yesterday saw our weather transition from warmer and partly sunny to cooler with lots of rain overnight. It's raining right now. We may not get into the 50s today. And we may not have many dry spells.

When I woke up it was dark outside. You could hear the rain relentlessly pounding the roof of the house. My bare feet were chilly on the Saltillo Tile floors. I don't own "slippers" and think they are only for lazy people who won't take the time to put on shoes and socks before meandering through the house for coffee.  Breakfast in pajamas seems to me like something hospital patients do... I looked out the window to the north and saw nothing but rain and more rain. I tossed on a hat, put my camera under my jacket and trunched out to the car. It kicked right over but I sat there in the driveway for a few minutes till the heater got working and the windows cleared. 

It's the day for garbage pick up in the neighborhood so everyone has their plastic garbage cans out in front of their houses, lining the curb. One that was too close to a curb with rushing water. and probably not too full, was starting to float away on the current running down hill. I stopped to pull it out of the flow. 

The main road was busy and a checkerboard of driving styles. Some, newly fearful of the wet streets and driving rain were going slow and cautiously; hesitantly moving forward. Others, as usual, were in a hurry to get to their offices and cubicles and were driving with the same reckless abandon, peppered with self righteous aggression, as usual. Performing a graceless ballet of tailgating and then roaring around the more timid drivers.

It was still pounding cold rain when I pulled into the parking lot at the pool. I gathered my towel and swim gear from the hatchback of the car and walked briskly to the locker room. Pulled on my jammers, found my favorite swim cap, grabbed my hand paddles and goggles and then headed out across the 200 yards to the pool deck. I was struck by the same old argument: will you get less wet if you run or will you run into more raindrops more quickly than if you walked? I dropped my extraneous gear at the lip of the pool and jumped in. 

The water was a warm and hospitable 82° degrees and it was odd to feel warmth on the submerged parts of myself but then to feel little hard drops of cold water spatter on the parts above the water line. Once in the water the hardest part of the workout would be getting out. 

My lane mate was Jane. She's also one of our coaches. She's faster than me so I go second in the rotation. We swim in circles; up on the right, flip and then back on the right. You could go all day in a circle like that if you and your lane partners could pace it right. Jenn was our coach today. She's the coach who believes strongly in hard work. And when we swim with her guidance she pushes us to share in that belief. Today was no different. 

Jenn stood on the deck, wrapped in a long swim parka, outfit completed with lined boots, and holding a big umbrella against the on-again-off-again torrents of icy rain. Calling out sets, go times, encouragement, steely discipline. We huddled down in the water between sets to keep warm. We pushed through 3,000 yards in the industrial grayness of no-dawn and then we were done. We'd put in our hour. Done our yards. The next struggle was getting out, soaking wet, into the rain and wind between us and the (slightly) warmer locker room. Hot showers beckoned. But the lure of staying in the warm pool and out of the elements was strong....

I was the last one out of the pool. The last one out of the locker room. I spun my swim suit in the centrifugal suit dryer, glanced out at the rain and then trudged to the car. Now to start my day. On a search for good, hot coffee. I would have looked further afield but I knew I could make a great cup at home. I walked  into the house just in time to see B. making a skillet full of migas. I knew I'd made the right choice. 

I'm just now putting off responding to an email from a client who would like me to do a portrait for one of her clients but who is bulking at paying more than she did for the same kind of service/product that she did a year or two ago. It's one of the few times I procrastinate. I want to say "no" but I'm trying to figure out a nice way to say it. I can tell you all the reasons why the service should cost more now. And then there are unspoken reasons such as it requires more promise of reward to motivate me to action that it used to. 

I'll figure out how to say what I want to say before lunch time. And after lunch I've promised to join an old friend for coffee at a close by coffee shop. She was one of my favorite portrait sitters nearly thirty years ago. I'm looking forward to seeing how her appearance has changed. I'm sure she is anxious about the same thing. 

I was indifferent to the idea of work for the first three weeks of January. I wasn't sure if I'd toss in the towel and do something completely different. Just thinking about it was giving me anxiety. But then I got an email from the client that gave me my biggest and most challenging (but fun, fun, fun) job last year. We'd been out of touch since the completion of the project in mid-November. I was worried that something was glitchy from the job although I'd inspected each and every one of 1200 frames and hadn't found a fault. Still, I'd put off following up. Rationalizing the holidays, etc. 

The email was wonderful. According to my client the results were "perfect".  The launch campaign was better than expected. The print materials looked "gorgeous," And the capper: "Stay tuned! We've got a ton of projects to do this year." I stopped my usual second guessing and sighed a sigh of happiness and relief. It was a sign that I should stick it out in the crazy business for at least another year...

But maybe with more emphasis on a few big projects and less attention to smaller projects; the ones with too many annoying, moving parts. And maybe pay a lot more attention to my swimming.

A detail of intersecting walls at the Zilker Hillside Theater. 

And yes, the base ISO of the Leica SL is indeed 50. 

I only swam five days last week. It was enough. I tossed in enough long walks, enough strength training and the usual dosage of flexibility exercises. I'm going to stop encouraging people to exercise. Everyone I know went to college, knows how to do basic research and has heard about the benefits of exercising over and over again. If they've hit their 60s with other priorities I'm not going to change them now. 

But it sure feels good to feel good. Have a great, warm and dry day. Drink nice coffee. Chat with friends. Life is unpredictable but it's better than ever. 

 

I dropped by Barton Springs Pool today to make some photographs to remind me of what the pool has looked like since I saw it first in 1974...

The Leica SL and the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 seemed magnetically attracted to each other from the minute I put them in the same room together. I did menial accounting work this morning and then broke free after lunch to commune with this swimming pool. 

I can't quite put my finger on it, can't quantify what I'm seeing, but I think these shots are quite different from my usual landscape-y work. 

The sensor in the camera is pretty unique. I think it is only shared, in part, in the original Leica Q camera; not the Q2. I love the way it handles colors and contrasts. I tried, mostly, to make images at its native ISO, which is 50. 

The lens has a wonderful hard and soft combination which makes me smile every time I use it. If I zoom  in there's endless detail at any point on which I've focused. And, just inches in front or behind, a mellow falling off. 

Had so much fun photographing with this combo I almost forgot to swim. 

I love that the railings on the ladders that help swimmers exit the pool are so...graceful. I believe these railings to be the originals but I have no proof of that...

Many fast lenses from the 70s, 80s and 90s got bad raps. They were dismissed as being soft when used wide open. I'm started to think a whole lot of reviewers committed user error. Egregiously.

 

When I buy a used, manual lens from the time periods mentioned in the headline I'm generally impatient to see how they perform. If they work well wide open then logic suggests that they'll be even better stopped down. I recently put an old, mid-1970s, Canon FD 50mm f1.4 on a Leica SL camera body and performed one of my quick and dirty tests. I opened the lens all the way up, aimed the camera into a mirror and shot a portrait of the lens. Handheld. No IBIS. No crutches. No cheats.

To my eye the critically focused part of the image, just above (the ring on the lens with type), is nicely sharp. Good sharp. Happy sharp. And yet, looking back at articles, blog posts and even YouTube videos reviewing this lens at various points in time, you would think those reviewers and I had quite different lenses. They suggest the lens is soft wide open. I suggest user error.

I was an early proponent of mirrorless cameras. I wrote extensively about them starting back in 2009. And I've never stopped. Since I am a steady user of many manual focus lenses the top feature I like on mirrorless cameras is the ability to look at a composition through a good EVF and then punch in and magnify the image in the finder a lot so I can dial in perfectly sharp focus. By that I mean the point of sharpest focus corresponds exactly to the point I want in focus. The point at which I was aiming. 

But I've had decades of experience focusing with SLR and DSLR cameras that lacked these features and I understand why reviewers keep saying that "such and such 50mm f1.4 lens from 197x is "dreamy" (meaning unsharp and lacking contrast) when used wide open but sharpens up nicely from f2.8 on up."

I think it's because, at the time these lenses were "tested" most "reviewers" were flying by the seat of their pants. Didn't spend hours everyday practicing their focusing skills on the job, and were robbed of the chance to become manual focus proficient by the almost complete acceptance of auto focus lenses. And autofocus cameras ---- which, incidentally, are not engineered to help photographer manually focus.

Today I worked with an almost new, manual focus, Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF lens, with a lens adapter to allow this Nikon F mount lens to work on my L mount Leica SL. When I went to focus I discovered just how sensitive that lens can be in respect to focusing technique. Even at the highest degree of image magnification in the 4.4 million dot EVF you have to be careful while focusing and be keenly aware of that exact focusing plane. At least you have to if you intend to use the lens at its widest aperture....

Almost every well made 50mm f1.4 MF lens from Nikon, Canon, Zeiss and Leica is capable of very good performance when used wide open. At least that is so in my experience. You might not brag about the corner sharpness or the edge acuity but they are nearly all adequately sharp where it counts. Right there in the center of the frame --- extending out and covering at least two thirds of the frame with good optical performance. The spot in which most subjects are found.

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record player playing the same groove over and over again but.... you have to test your gear yourself. The way you use it. And if you are new to manually focusing lenses please be aware that it's not a thing most people immediately master. Good, accurate manual focusing takes some learned skill as well as a good camera with the ability to assist you in getting good focus by magnifying a smart part of the overall image for you to work on. 

I'm beginning to think people who review lenses in exchange for views or money are uniformly poor at the task. If you want to know about the real capabilities of a lens then test it yourself or find someone who uses the lens in which you are interested and look through their work. Seeing is the best test.

It can be frustrating when reviews are flawed but I guess the silver lining is that bad reviews damn good lenses to low prices. Oh.....Wait!....I see how that could work well for me.

A fun and zany video that answers the question: "Why do I choose the cameras I do?"

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb1ABLu8w3A

Weird Lenses Can Be Happy Lenses.

 

I went on a vacation last November and I took a deep breath and only took one camera and one lens. It was a stretch; especially for a guy who has enough lenses to outfit a camera club. I wanted to travel light, pay more attention to my best friend and partner, and really just experience the city directly. Sometimes the gear can really get in the way. It becomes a focus and then a burden. 

It all sounds good, the minimalization of gear, when you are discussing it with another photographer/friend over coffee on a rainy and bleak afternoon. But then, the day before you leave, you find yourself packing and re-packing. Pulling stuff out of your luggage and replacing it with something else. I probably did five rounds of choosing the day before we were scheduled to fly out. 

Zooms seemed too big and too wishy-washy. As in "make up your mind already!" And if I chose wide angles I'd spend the trip seeing nothing but long shots. If I took a short telephoto lens I'd spend the trip dreaming of normal lenses. And then there is the whole issue of cameras. If I'd had the Q2 at that point it would have easily been my camera of choice because 30+ megapixels at 35mm and 15+ megapixels at 50mm would have been fine and dandy with me. 

In the end I chose the Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 lens made for Leica M mount. I used an M to L adapter to fit onto a Panasonic S5. It was all just so perfect. 

Having no choice but what I had in my hands my brain stopped wishing for other focal lengths (and other camera bodies) and just got down to business. It was a good exercise in giving up control to a great extent. I'll do it again soon. But I'm still going to go through the packing decision overload trauma drama the night before we leave on the next adventure just for the hell of it. It was kind of fun; in a masochistic sort of way. 

No filters on the lens. Just filter settings in the L. mono. D profile in camera. Juicy skies were my reward.

Woke up in a weird mood and went eccentric on my camera and lens choices today. But it was....fun.

 

I took the day off from everything today. Slept in. Skipped swim practice (there will be hell to pay!). Ate a late breakfast. Rummaged through the gear and decided to spend my late morning and early afternoon moseying around downtown and S. Congress Ave. with what might seem like an odd combination; a Leica CL camera and the intriguing Sigma 65mm f2.0 Contemporary lens. The "equivalent" focal length in 35mm-speak would be about 97mm, so a delicious short telephoto length, which seemed just right for a gray and plodding day. 

I've enjoyed using the lens in the past on full frame and thought it would be a hoot to use it wide open for most of my downtown dalliance. I did get conservative a time or two and stop down to f2.8.

It was a long walk in new hiking boots. A bit dumb. My two outside toes on my left foot were screaming by the time I got back to the high performance studio limo (Subaru Forster). 

The CL is not optimized for the Sigma 65mm, or vice versa, so when you mount the lens and turn on the camera you get a message warning you that the battery meter/indicator/scale will not be accurate and this implies that the combo will burn through batteries quicker...than a bunny. (Couldn't help it...).

I banged away for about three hours with one battery but when the battery tossed in the towel I thought the timing was fortuitous and decided to toss mine in as well. 

Stepping out of character I brought along extra stuff. Not that I ever used it or needed it. But I wasn't sure I'd be happy shooting everything at the long end. I've been getting used to the 28mm lens on the Q2 and bouncing up to a 97mm I thought would be a bit jarring. So I took along a very small backpack packed with a lightweight rain jacket, a handkerchief, an extra hat, my phone (weird to carry that around !!!), a Sigma fp with a Voigtlander 40mm, a Sigma 35mm f2.0 and a Sigma 24mm f3.5. Some bail money...just in case. My Kershaw Leek, Black Wash pocketknife, and my copy of NWP 3.05.2 Naval Special Warfare SEAL Tactics guidebook. Just for some light reading --- if I had to wait on my coffee order. 

I didn't use anything in the backpack but it was nice to know everything I might need was close at hand.

This was basically a day for just getting out and walking with the idea of testing the CL+65mm thrown in as an afterthought.  Still, it was really nice to see how well the Sigma and the Leica played together. It's a great combination for portraits in the APS-C format. I'll need to remember that. 

Electric Scooter Tours. A motley crew today...

checking out the blue response. Not bad. Not bad.

I like most bandit posters that get put up around town.

This one got plastered on a wall at the building that my favorite ad agency, Hixo, used to 

occupy. And a runner up agency after that, The Sherry Matthews Agency. 

Now purchased by someone else and empty. 

No idea who Annie Bing is but not motivated to Google it...

A big thank you to the Yeti store on Congress at Riverside 

for the generous use of their well appointed and sparkling clean 

restroom facilities. And a clean mirror with which to facilitate 

selfie-izing myself. Nice hat.

There were two lines at this location today.

One was waiting to do photographs in front of the "I love you so much" 

grafitti on the wall of Jo's Coffee. 

The bigger line was actually for Jo's Coffee. 

Yes. Jo's Coffee. To go. 

One bystander who found both the coffee enthusiasm and the adoration of wall

grafitti a bit boring... Ready to go do something else....

Selling hats from the back of an old 1969 Chevy pick-up truck. 

Cyclist not looking at the camera.

Cyclist looking at the camera. 

The human fetish for offering strange dogs their hands...

Crossing the bridge over the lake/river that separates downtown from S. Austin.

Angle one. 

Angle two. 

Yes. Of course. Austin is known for the healthy habits of the inhabitants...

Practicing self surveillance. Hard to run an SDR on yourself...

An exceptionally stupid shot in which I try to make the idea of the closest work light being in focus and everything else out of focus seem somehow interesting and poignant. And failing miserably.

Last shot of the day. Why this? Because I think the 65mm was begging for a chance to show me

how much better it is than the other less stellar lenses I've used to photograph exactly the same scene and so that some critic can chime in and tell me he hates my abandoned building shots. 

Can't wait to pillory the perpetrator. 

And that's the afternoon in a nutshell. 

The cure for sore feet? slip into your Birkenstocks and become 

painfree in moments. Wear them with socks to torment 

the fashion fixated. 

Earlier today I showed a gallery of color images from yesterday's adventures in the neighborhood across from the UT campus....

 

...and I mentioned that when I was photographing I had the camera set to record both a DNG file (the  color version) and a large Jpeg file (the B&W version). Instead of using the color controls in Lightroom to make conversions from the color files it was my intention to use the direct-from-camera black and white Jpegs when making a gallery. And that's what I've done here. 

Some of the shots may look familiar because they are captured at the same instant to the camera but each version is representative of either the DNG file or the Jpeg. 

I have applied a basic preset to them because the one thing I think most out-of-camera black and white images need is a bit more contrast --- especially in the middle ranges of the tone scale. That, and a bit of opening for the shadows --- which is handily taken care of with the shadow recovery slider in LR.

I figured that since I was capturing in B&W and seeing the potential images in B&W in the EVF it would be a good idea to share them with you. There's a lot of detail in the files so if you can be sure to look at them on a monitor instead of your phone. It's a better way to see what my actual intention was......

Funny to be able to make three cogent posts out of an hour of photography; and to also come away with a group of images that I like...