Spending money on something far removed from cameras and lenses. And cars. And travel. But probably among the best long term "investments."

 I use the word "investments" in quotes because the word connotes that one will have a financial return on their initial outlay of money. In this case, today, nothing could be further from the truth. 

At my last routine, twice yearly dental hygiene visit my (unconditionally adored) dentist discovered that one of my teeth needed a crown. I hate getting dental work done but my dentist has an incredibly gentle touch when it comes to injecting numbing agents and she's really good at keeping me informed and entertained during procedures. This morning I had to be in the dentist's chair at 7:30 a.m. Sharp. 

You probably don't pay what we pay in Austin for various dental procedures. A porcelain/ceramic crown with preparation and build up costs about $ 2,000 per tooth and it's one of the things NOT covered by my health insurance. I'm sure if you live in a rural area where many people don't want to live you'd be able to get the procedure done for much less money. You can probably buy a house there for a fraction of the price you'll pay in Austin, as well. But we live where we live and if we want services provided with the top flight health care professionals in our area then.....we have to pay the going price. 

But to put it into perspective we're talking about 2/3rds the price of a nice but well used Leica M 240 rangefinder camera, first made in 2012. Or 1/14th the price of a brand new Subaru Forester (the base model) so the cost of a crown does give one pause. 

But not taking care of your teeth will age you faster than just about anything else. Keeping all of your original teeth in your mouth and in good working order is also a hell of a lot cheaper than outfitting your gums with implants! And a lot less painful. Or so I've been told. And since one of my clients is a big oral surgery practice I think I'll believe my source on this subject. 

I hate medical procedures but mostly because I am afraid of them. My brain always tends to go to the worst case scenario and set up camp there. Last night my brain was laying out the down sleeping bags and working hard to start up the camp fire so the worst case scenario would at least be comfortable. 

But looking around for a silver lining; any silver lining, I discovered that my medical procedure anxiety is really efficient at interrupting my sleep which, in turn, does a good job of helping me remember the dreams I do  have while getting small snatches of sleep. 

Last night I had a vivid dream. It was about cameras. Specifically it was about Leica SL cameras. In my dream I was whisked away to a lovely hotel in a city that resembled Montreal. I came down from my fifth floor room in the elevator. I was wearing casual stuff. Old, worn hiking boots, a pair of well broken in jeans. An old, faded and rapidly devolving green sweat shirt, and a pair of glasses I'd never seen before.

When I walked into the small and pretentious lobby of the hotel I was greeted and warmly welcomed by several tall, well fed German men, each of whom looked to be about 50 years old and had the bearing of happy marketers. They were there to present to me a test camera that I was expected to use for several weeks or months. The actual time frame was vague and slightly out of focus. 

We walked over to a bright red couch that was bookended by matching, ultra modern, well stuffed chairs, the likes of which would be fun to have in your own living room for maybe all of ten minutes before the insane saturation of the fire engine red fabric started to burn your eyes... Every one took seats and I was bracketed by Germans. Nice Germans. Germans bearing temporary gifts. 

One man stood across a coffee table from me. He reached behind himself and pulled up a stout, bulky black leather case --- about the size of a roll-aboard wheeled case for travel --- but with stylistic touches referencing train travel in the 1930s. The case dominated the light colored wood accents of the table and surrounding  furniture. The same man reached forward and flipped the steel latches on the case and then opened it towards me. In full presentation mode. Sitting in the middle of a black foam cut out was a camera body that looked nearly identical to the Leica SL2 I had sitting in a cabinet back home. At the urging of the assembled Germans I pulled the camera out of the case and examined it. It was outfitted with a 50mm f2.8 compact SL mount lens (which looked very business-like but at the same time quite adorable...). Never seen or heard of that one before...

I brought the camera up to my eye and while I was looking through it the assembled company-men sort of narrated my progress, telling me that the EVF used APO glass for a better defined view while the screen in the EVF was 10 megabytes or ten million dots.. Can't remember exactly which. But I acted as though it was one of the most impressive feats a photographer could imagine. I performed a half press on the shutter button and was amazed at the incredibly responsive focusing action. The "guys" explained that it was a result of the new phase detect AF module combined with three Maestro processors running in parallel for extra speed. I asked about the RAW buffer in the camera and they answered almost in unison ----- "unlimited!!!" I asked about video and they did a dismissive frown and said, "Not on this model. This is a supreme stills camera." 

I noticed that, compared to my own SL2, that this camera was much lighter even though the body was, as far as I could tell, exactly the same (perfect) dimensions as mine. The company men were downright gleeful. "All of the body parts that can be made so are made of titanium." They rattled off the differences in weight between this camera and the past generation but, hey, in my dreams I am not a 'numbers' guy so I determined not to remember. 

I asked about the resolution and the basics of the sensor tech and was in for a bigger surprise. They had throttled down the overall resolution to 36 megapixels. Something about achieving the optimum look for the files. Something about an on-the-fly interpolation mode possible by the three processors. "If you need more resolution  you can implement it on -the-fly via the menu. Pretty much the same tech as multi-frame res. but done at a speed that can keep up with any shutter speed up to 1/8000th of a second. Seamlessly." They then added, "After exhaustive experiments and analysis we discovered that 36 megapixels is the absolute sweet spot for a full frame digital camera sensor and, with the new processors running in tandem, we can also give you up to 142 megapixels of actual resolution with the real time multi-frame. The benefit? At 36 megapixels the high ISO lack of noise is breathtaking." 

I nodded a vague understanding. Just as they were about to hand me the camera and invite me to use it for an open-ended length of time my medical anxiety ejected me from dreamland so I could conjecture a bit about how often it might be that a novocaine injection hits and kills a vital nerve in the gum line... making it all but impossible to drink hot coffee in the future without dribbling it down the front of my shirt...

But I think, really, my subconscious was preparing me for the first quarter announcement, in 2024, of Leica's new generation of cameras. They will be priced more expensively, pound for pound, than an Hermes scarf or a Piaget watch. Only insane people will consider buying one. They'll be on backorder for at least a year. But after my visit to the dentist today I called Leica in Germany to see if I could get on a waiting list. The person answering the phone in Wetzlar was very, very confused....

Now slowly sipping lukewarm coffee while wearing an old, coffee--stained t-shirt, waiting to be able to feel the rest of my mouth. 

When someone builds a time machine I'm heading back in time to tell my college age self to brush and floss our teeth, maniacally, so later in life we can spend outrageous sums of hard US dollars on German cameras. Most needed for a happy retirement. Right? Of course, from what little I know about time travel I will risk disrupting the time/space continuum in some dangerous way. But ya gotta take a few risks if you wanna play with the new SL3. What's a little ripping of the fabric of time?

So. Teeth. Money. Tragic loss of potential capital for cameras. Oh the humanity!!!

And just a few days before my birthday....sniff....

A "New" lens that's older than my involvement in photography. Darn. These were pretty good !!! Blog o' the day. Methinks this one is on point. It's about something photographic....

 

Back in the 1970s when I was pursuing my studies at the University of Texas at Austin (which I fully completed and for which I acquired diplomas, etc.) I was sharing my parents' stretched financial resources with my older brother and my younger sister. We were all at universities at the same time with graduate studies helping to create a financially burdensome overlap into the bargain. While my parents stepped up and covered all of our tuition, room, board and books we were left to our own devices if we wanted to buy cool (but unnecessary) stuff for ourselves. Those splurges might have included ski vacations, fashionable clothes, and automobiles. For those things we were on our own. So you can see just how cruel our parents were.... In fact, neither I nor my siblings owned or had cars throughout our undergraduate careers. How damaging this must have been. 

One of the things I thought a university student desperately needed, besides stereo equipment, was a good camera with which to take photographs of my attractive and sometimes mostly naked girlfriend. This, however, was not on my parents' short list of scholastic necessities. Not by a long shot. And they were sharp enough to know that the expenses wouldn't stop with a camera. Nope, they'd stretch to lenses and, of course, endless rolls of film with attendant development and prints. They were wise to draw the line. After all, they needed to save some money to send my sister abroad for a lovely semester in Spain. And an extra dose of grad school for my dear brother... ( so as to pursue his lucrative career in the "Classics"; teaching Latin and Greek in some tony private schools). 

No. I am sad to say that the parents were not financially forthcoming when it came to my newly acquired fascination with photography. This, I believe, is what taught me the basics of becoming "resourceful". With an excellent GPA at the end of seven years of higher education it seemed easy, back in the late 1970s, to nail down a teaching position at the same university. But in a totally different college. Which I proceeded to do. Which paid for a decent apartment just West of the Capitol, a motorcycle and a growing inventory of cameras. 

But you have to start somewhere and for me it was with a Canon TX kitted with a 50mm f1.8 FD lens. I have written about that basic camera body elsewhere on the blog so I won't belabor a description of its charms and shortcomings here. Suffice it to say that I found it wonderful, freeing, almost completely indestructible and able. So what if the top shutter speed was 1/500th of a second? And, as a bonus, the the lens was great. 

Back then we didn't give a thought to not shooting wide open. We shot our lenses wherever they needed to be set based on the film speed and the prevailing light conditions. They delivered fun, interesting and worthwhile photos. At least from my point of view. I eventually had three or four lenses I depended on and snapped them up in intervals --- whenever I could afford them. 

There were several of the FD lenses that I remember as being superb. I owned an 85mm f1.8 that was really nice as well as that 50mm 1.8 I mentioned but at the time I didn't think about buying the deluxe versions of the lenses because I didn't feel that I needed them and I had developed two habits that slowed down my lens acquisition schedule at the time. Those habits were: Buying food for a regular routine of eating and not starving. A legal need to come up with enough money each month to make the rent payment on my super cool Austin apartment. Five minutes by motorcycle to the Fine Arts College.

Recently, maybe a year or a year and a half ago, I treated myself to one of those ancient "super star" lenses. It was the 50mm f1.4 FD SSC (Super Spectra Coating). I used an adapter to put it on a Leica SL2 and I was/am amazed at just how wonderful that lens still is. It's different in its look than current lenses with more layers of corrective glass elements but in no way is it really inferior to the wonder lenses of the moment --- just different. To this day I pull out the Canon 50mm f1.4 FD and use it to make certain kinds of photographs, the color and contrast of which I really enjoy.

As you know I tend to like shooting portraits more than any other subject matter and so my preference has always been for traditional, longer lenses. 50s are great general shooting lenses but the lenses that I seem to gravitate to are the short tele ones. The 85s and the 100s and 105s. Even 135mm is great if you have the room to get some distance from your subject to use it well. So, when I saw a listing for an older, used Canon 100mm f2.8 FD SSC lens in good physical shape and perfect optical condition for less than $100 USD I just had to snap it up. 

Since I rarely have the time or energy to procrastinate I immediately put the lens on an FD to L mount adapter, stuck the lens on a Lumix S5 and went out in the drizzle and uneven rain to test out the lens and see if my memory of how great the old FD lenses could be was legitimate or if nostalgia and time had goosed my memory of these old, iconic devices past their point of actual performance, Past their real value. 

I spent a couple hours downtown today trying to dodge the bigger raindrops and trying to keep my newly acquired lens from being drowned on its maiden voyage out of the studio and into the real world. I think I was successful. When the rain really poured down I ducked into the bank that handles my commercial account and grabbed a cup of coffee from one of the bank officers I happen to swim with. It was a good excuse to catch up but as soon as the rain let up I thanked him for his hospitality and got back out onto the streets for more shooting. 

I think long lenses like this one are wonderful. I had a student in several of my classes at the University who was extremely talented and went on to work for Dallas clients like Beauty Control and Neiman Marcus, and a number of national fashion and cosmetic clients in her career as a commercial photographer. She had one camera that she used for so long and so hard that it eventually fell apart in her hands. But she only ever used one lens. It was always the 150mm f4.0 Carl Zeiss lens on her ancient Hasselblad. You'd think someone consistently billing $6,000+ per day could afford a bevy of lenses and I teased her about this but her reply was simple and sensible: She loved that focal length and that focal length only. She did, eventually buy a new camera body. Same as the old one. Its operation was transparent to her by then...

So, how do I like my latest "big ticket" lens acquisition ($90 plus shipping)? I would say to see for yourself but some of you seem very, very resistant to looking at images on big, happy screens so I guess it's par for the course to write some descriptive copy. Which I hope to rewrite over and over again until the words veritably sing in perfect harmony to your eyes, and by extension, your  inner ears.

The lens, even wide open can be considered sharp into the center two thirds of the frame. By f4.0 everything is satisfactorily sharp. By 5.6 it's on par with most of the longer (short teles) lenses I have in the studio. The Sigma 90mm f2.8 Contemporary is very sharp across the frame, wide open, so, if you don't have a lens in this range it might make sense to buy that one first. The Sigma 85mm f1.4, version two Art lens is sharp everywhere at every f-stop so if you can only have one lens in this range and you desparately need it to earn your bread and wine, and you need the speed, it might also be your first stop. But....if you like the roundedness of the older lenses and the richer color of the older lenses the FD 100 is a nice lens for those times when you want to match a specific look to a specific feeling or style. 

It has a nice, long focal throw so it's a good lens to use for video and certainly is of high enough resolution to outgun most video frames. And there is a lot of pleasure to be had in manually focusing lenses as well. I love working with this lens and the Panasonic S5 because they work so well together with the combination of focus peaking and manual focusing operation. 

Or, you could ignore this lens and vilify me for spending money yet again on something that's more of a vague desire than a hard need. But I have to say that an occasionally cheap lens is a lot safer and cheaper than an ongoing heroin or cocaine habit. That's for damn sure. 

Try making the images below bigger. They are not great art but since most of them were shot handheld at f2.8 and f4.0 I think seeing the images bigger will give you a very good idea of their "in the hands" capabilities. You might hate the look. But as other bloggers might say, "that's okay as long as you don't hurt anyone....." 

The café at the main library was so plagued by homeless people that they had to close down.

Sad on many levels. I hope something else takes their place. I had many lunches and coffees

there over the last three years. 

look closely at the fabric on the side of the hat. The detail is there. And the color.

New mannequins arrived at one of the 2nd Street stores. I was delighted.

distance performance is good as well. 

"Dear God. Thank you for making Formula One in Austin last only one

short weekend. Also thank you for keeping the bulk of people mostly 

out of downtown and out of my favorite haunts. And, if I could ask for

one small indulgence, could you move the race to any other city in 

America next year?" Thank you. Amen. 

Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop is Lance Armstrong's bike shop here in Austin. 

It's been in a building downtown across from the Federal Courthouse on 

4th St. for at least a decade. I went by today and saw this notice. 

I need to go have a coffee at Manana Coffee this week and see

the new bike shop. It's just across the street. 

Full disclosure. Lance swims with us at Masters. He's a very, very

good swimmer. And these days pretty congenial. 

I no longer own a bike.

First draft. Sorry.

A couple more black and white portraits before I get called into the house for dinner....

 

Michelle has always been one of my favorite portrait subjects. She just radiates good energy and is more or less fearless in front of the camera. Our first sessions together were decades ago; probably as far back at 1988 or 1989. But we've kept up with each other through thick and thin. 

I wanted to test out a new camera a few years back and I asked if she could come by the studio over here in Westlake Hills. We used a Sony A7Rii camera and the Sony 70-200mm G lens. Could have used just about anything because Michelle brings her own magic to the shoots. I look forward to photographing together when she's 60, 70, 80, 90 and beyond. 

Originally shot in color and converted to black and white in post.

Notice to Austin area photographers:

This coming Saturday, October 28th, the Mexicarte Museum is hosting its annual Day of the Dead celebration downtown at 4th and Congress Ave. There will be the traditional grand parade with costumed dancers, floats and low-riders. Lots of costumes, face painting and great food. 

The opportunity for anyone with a camera and even the barest of people skills to come downtown and

make some fun photographs. I will be there. So will many other Austin photographers. 

Just sayin. 

Portrait done at Photo Expo in NYC.

 We were demo-ing the ill fated Samsung Galaxy NX camera at the 2013 Photo Expo when we started asking people who came to the Samsung booth if they'd sit for a portrait. This person agreed and we did a very quick portrait session with two cheap and cheesy monolights and two small soft boxes. I love the fact that the subject was so centered and calmly focused on me. In the middle of hundreds of bustling people, surrounded by booths of competing camera companies, we are able, at least for a moment to tune all of that out and make a portrait. 

Done with the Samsung NX fitted with a Samsung 60mm macro lens. Image converted from color to black and white back in 2013. 

Would I do anything different today? Probably not...

Black and white portrait from the "archives."

Vera. 

there was a portrait combo I really liked and I used it to make a small series of black and white, square portraits several years ago. The camera was the Lumix S1R and the Lens was the original Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens, made for the L mount system. 

I had been working with LED lights for well over a decade and when this image was done, back in early 2020, I was breaking in a new set of lights from Godox. Big, heavy, fan-cooled, monolight style fixtures with COB output devices. As is usually my lighting methodology I used a big umbrella as the main light and further softened it with a white diffusion cover. The ISO was 320. The shutter speed was 1/100th of a second and the aperture was f2.0. 

I used a lower powered LED light, also fitted with ample diffusion, on the background; for separation. 

The subject, Vera, was the owner of an Austin advertising agency. She called to schedule an appointment with me because she liked the style of black and white portraits I'd shot for other clients. 

That camera and lens are gone. They were replaced with the Leica SL2 and the newer version of the Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art lens. 

It's a "quiet" style of portraiture but one I really like. 

 

The problem with everyone getting a trophy is that no one learns how to get better. Being afraid to present a counterpoint diminishes everything.

 I wrote a whole, long post. Someone objected to what I wrote and posted. I took it down so as not to skewer the feelings of people who believe in always striving for happy consensus.

Consensus: 

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Margaret Thatcher

I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.

Tracy Chapman

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

Abba Eban

Why and How not to put things off... Take the first step. And the next, and the next, and don't stop till you've completed what you set out to do. It's that simple.

Artist out out showing the portfolio.

There are people who put important things off until the last moment and then pat themselves on the back for living in misery for days at a time, pulling their nuts out of the fire just adequately enough to prevent total failure. In my mind that's what people are doing when they write and re-write many drafts instead of just sitting down and writing a book. Or a script. Or a poem. Or a blog post. Re-writing endless drafts is a way to put off being finished with a project. A method for avoiding the fear of starting the next project. A project that's never complete is a project that never has to suffer failure. Why? Because chances are no one will see it.

In photography, commercial and otherwise, there is a concept called previsualization. It means that you have a visual idea of exactly how you would like an image you are attempting to create to turn out. The form, texture, colors, style, etc. When you start with the overarching idea firmly in mind you have a template to guide you through the process. You work to complete it and then, when the image is much like what you previsualized you are done and ready to move on. One has to trust their initial vision, not scout for it like a squirrel looking for nuts. 

Overthinking anything is a method of resisting getting real stuff done. Stuff like making successful career moves, starting projects, completing projects, getting paid for projects. It's the same kind of resistive thought process that keeps people "preparing" to start an exercise program but never getting around to the point of it all. Which is so simple. To exercise you get up every morning, tie your shoes and go for a run. Every morning. Every day. Every day of the week. Alternatively, you can get up and get to the pool every morning. And swim harder and further every morning. Every day of every week. If you are in piss poor shape you start by walking around the block and build from there. Every day.

Or, conversely, you can research running shoes, research the best ways to run/swim, map out prospective pathways on which to run, etc. and never get out the door to put any of it into action. It's the putting of things/plans into action that actually creates satisfaction and measurable success/results. No other way to do it. Only the work creates the results.

Want to have healthy teeth and gums? Brush at least twice every day and floss every day. No better way. And really, would you want to try the novel concept of doing all your toothbrushing just once a month for an hour or so? Do you think that's a good oral health solution? Probably not. Same with making art.

When we are young men we tend to drive fast. To take chances. To feel bulletproof. To stay up late and put things off. We delude ourselves into thinking that our innate brilliance (and luck, and privilege) will come to the fore to save us. As we get older we tend to grow more cautious. We tend to think more before leaping off the cliff or bingeing on Netflix when we have a project that needs completed. We know that putting things off compresses our safety zone dangerously. 

At my age I see two kinds of people. Those who've planned well for retirement and those who put off doing the work of preparing for retirement. The successful ones started saving decades ago and almost to a person it was the discipline of routine savings, month by month and year by year that translated into wealth (along with the power of compound interest). Enough wealth to buffer one from the shittier parts of getting old without resources. 

The team that puts everything off to the last moment, including saving, seems to find out, with growing alarm, that at a certain point in time it's nearly impossible to quickly, easily and immediately accrue anywhere near the same kind of wealth. And suddenly the future looks much bleaker.

And interestingly the ones who've planned for their futures also tend to be the ones who keep themselves in good physical shape. Pretty much using the same basic tool. Discipline.

It's the same with issues of health. The people I know who show up to the pool or the running trails every day and put in their miles, rain or shine, hot or cold, are the ones who don't have crippling sleep issues, problems maintaining optimal body weight, and have not developed the usual diseases of excess and overindulgence. Are not losing mobility. They are banking good health every day. They may not live longer than everyone else but they will live longer as healthy and engaged people than the general population. 

Depending on a diet or some regimen of supplements is no substitution. It is easier. But it's not nearly as effective. A good diet and exercise.... now that's the gold standard for longevity. 

I know a number of artists. I taught in a Fine Arts College at a big University. I worked in advertising. You meet these these kinds of people. I count as friends painters, sculptors, writers, actors, photographers and whatever other permutation of artist you might think of. The successful ones? The ones without pat excuses for their failure to thrive? The ones with art in galleries and museums? The ones who can afford to live at least as well as most other professionals? They have one thing the less successful artists lack. It's discipline. 

They tend to get up every morning. Mix paint. Chisel stone. Type for hours. Sling cameras. Print for publication or sale, memorize scripts, and, basically, show up. They do the work --- not sporadically or because a show is coming up. They do the work day in and day out because that's the only way they know how to be successful. 

When Stephen Pressfield finished writing it and sold his first book he rushed to tell his mentor. His mentor congratulated him and then told him to get up the next morning, pull out a ream of fresh paper and start writing the next one. 

No wild trips to Bali to celebrate, no week off in the Bahamas. You got the good news today and you start the next project tomorrow. No other way. A foundation of discipline.

And it's hard at first to develop the habits of always following through. Always finishing what you start. Always putting off immediate gratification for the bigger rewards that hard, diligent work engenders. 

When I talk to younger photographers about how to be successful we rarely ever bring up gear, lighting techniques, or style. We talk about the discipline to get up every day ready to market to people who can commission the work and have the money to support them. The discipline of concepting a project and following it through tenaciously. Delivering on time. Delivering early in case changes need to be made. But knuckling down and doing the work. 

Self Discipline never goes out of style. 

Please forgive my spelling errors. It's my first and only draft.

Future engineers. Working to completion.