Bricked. The wall. Not my camera...

 Q2 in 35mm lens camera mode. 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

This is the full frame.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've added some captions where I thought appropriate.

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

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

the full frame...

100% crop. Fabric very clearly defined...

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

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

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

Very nice edge acuity.

Hundreds and hundreds of scooter and bike riders.

The camera I keep coming back to for work.

 I have owned and used a Leica SL2 for work since the fall of 2019. About five+ years now. Newer cameras have come out that have "better" specifications such as more pixels and better high ISO/low noise performance. Newer Leica SL models have come to market that weigh less and are (slightly) more compact. The biggest "improvement" seems to be the idea that phase detect autofocus is infinitely better than the contrast detect autofocus in the older camera. So why is it that I am loathe to change from the SL2 to something..."better"? Newer?

Over the years camera buyers have talked about hitting "the sweet spot." Which basically means a combination of parameters beyond which there are ever diminishing returns for future improvements. I conjecture that for me the SL2 and the SL2-S have hit the sweet spots I value. But the SL2 is the model that magically finds its way into every camera bag I pack for work. 

The camera is big and comparatively heavy but then again this profession doesn't promise a "no sweat" career. Carrying around whatever camera does the best job for you is part of the working equation. If you don't do this for a living you can toss whatever pixie weight camera you like in the pocket of your Dockers... 

There are several things I like a lot about the SL2. The first is the "goldilocks" resolution. It's 47 megapixels. Enough for any size project I've done since the camera launched. But a secondary benefit of the 47 megapixels comes when I'm shooting something that requires a longer lens. I mostly use the camera with the Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4.0 zoom but sometimes I need a bit more reach. An example would be photographing a keynote speaker at the podium at an event, from the audience. 90mm is the long end of the zoom when the camera is used in its full frame configuration but I can hop into the menu and select the APS-C format instead which then gives me a 22 megapixel file at 135 mm. I also have a Leica 135mm lens which, in the APS-C mode, gives me a 202.50 mm focal length. More than tight enough for event work of all kinds. So with two lenses I can pretty much cover everything --- as long as I remember to use the crop mode where necessary. 

It's the same idea in other applications as well. I might show up to a fun event and have just the camera and a 50mm lens. But I find that I want a tighter composition; more like a portrait perspective. Again, switching from full frame to APS-C gets me a 75mm lens instead. It's very convenient and, for most of the stuff we do with cameras, 22 megapixels is just fine. Absolutely fine. 

While some find the SL2 big and dense/weighty the flip side is that the camera is nearly indestructible. And highly weather resistant. The camera, when used with weather resistant, L mount lenses provides incredible confidence when you need to use the combo in harsh environments like pouring rain. Or the occasional west Texas dust storm (just don't change lenses until you've gotten home and cleaned everything off). 

The EVF finder on the SL2 is still highly competitive with all the top cameras from other brands. While some boast higher resolutions in their finders there are always caveats. Like, the finder resolution on one brand drops dramatically as the camera is shooting. Not so with the SL2. And unlike nearly every other top of the line competitor all the lens elements in the Leica EVF are made of high precision, optical glass instead of press-molded plastics or resins. All in all, coupled with a very east to set diopter adjustment, the view through the EVF is superb. 

Reliability? I've had my original SL2 for over five years and have never had an issue. No downtime. No round trips to the factory. Nothing glitchy. And I have shot well over 100,000 frames on this particular sample. 

When I first got the camera I was using an inexpensive Panasonic camera as a back-up. Last year I picked up an SL2-S; the 24 megapixel BSI sensor counterpart to the original SL2. It's a great camera and when I need to shoot in near dark conditions it's a wonderful tool. But for some reason I mostly still reach for the SL2. It's a security blanket for a photographer who lives in fear of ever not being able to deliver to a client because of a camera issue. So much so that when prices dropped on used SL2 bodies during the introduction of the SL3 camera I didn't hesitate to source a mint, used SL2 to add to the kit. Now I have an identical back-up to my favorite work camera. System complete.

The only minor quibble I had and still have with all the Leica SL variant camera models is the short battery life. The cameras do a lot of processing and high res finder optics also take their toll. The original SCL4 batteries were introduced back in 2015 with the original SL body. Batteries have gotten better. Now we can add between 20-25% more power to the mix with the new SCL6 batteries --- which are fully backwards compatible to all SL variants (As well as for the Q2 and Q3 variants). I have about ten of the SCL4 batteries and four of the SCL6 batteries and I find the new batteries to be a nice step up. Along with power conservation updates in firmware extended run time is no longer an issue. At least not compared to the way the camera consumed power at its introduction. 

In all I am pleased not only with the SL2 but with the ecosystem of the L mount products in general. There are lenses from Sigma that are fantastic. Like the new 85mm f1.4 Art. Or the contemporary series 35mm f2.0. And the 45mm f2.8 continues to impress me when I least expect it.

Currently very good condition SL2 bodies are selling used for around $2200 to $2400. A couple of bodies and a handful of lenses could make the basis of a superb studio and location advertising system for a price of around $6,000 to $7,000. A little more if you want all fast glass. 

Here's the one last and, for me,  very compelling reason to own the SL2 and SL2-S cameras: The sensors are designed to work well with rangefinder/M mount lenses. There are even profiles for nearly all the post-1970's Leica M lenses built into the camera menu. Even if you are not using a Leica lens you can still program in the focal length of the M mount lens you are using in order to get the best performance out of the camera's very good image stabilization. What you'll get when using a typical, wide angle M lens on a Leica body, as opposed to a competitor's body, are sharper details in the corners and on the edges of the frame. Less or no color artifacting across the frame. And better color. Much better color. 

The SL2 just works for me. I know the menu forward and backwards now. I've built an ecosystem of lenses, flashes, batteries and peripherals for the system and I can't imagine that other current products would make a difference in my final products. Especially now that nearly everything we shoot is destined for the web. 

Prices on new Leica stuff can be tough to swallow. $9,000+ for a new Leica M11. Nearly $7,000 for a Leica Q3 43. $7,000 for a new SL3. And, incidentally, the SL2 is still a current product and it too has a seven thousand dollar price tag if purchased new. But if you really want to shoot with a Leica on a budget the used market is currently filled with lightly used SL2 and SL2-S bodies along with the older but still mostly great, original SL body. And you don't need to sell a kidney to get lenses...if you are willing to dip into some of the really great glass offered by Sigma and Panasonic (the 85mm f1.8 is currently on sale for $397, new, at B&H). 

A great strategy is to splash out for the Leica lens in your favorite focal length. The FL that you use almost all the time. And then fill in the blanks with fun and great lenses from the L mount consortium partners. Over time you'll find the other spots in which you'll want to splurge and buy "up" on lenses. 

They say you "date the cameras but marry the lenses". I find that to be deceiving. A mostly  monogamous relationship with a favorite and comfortable camera can be just the thing. At least that's my perspective five years in....

A super expensive, Veblen purchase. Way over-priced !!! You're paying the extra Godox logo tax for these !!! Elitist swine.

 There it is, sitting on top of a mirrorless camera. The thing I spent every last penny on. But at least all my clients will know I mean business when they see this bad boy. And every photographer who sees this, but doesn't have one, will be jealous and ashamed. 

Yep. It's the Godox iM22 flash. The flash everyone craves. Endlessly on back order? An article of extreme desire. Bust out the kids' college funds because this is a game-changer. In the future there will only be two kinds of photographers; those with an iM22 mounted on their cameras and those who don't have one. And you don't want to be in that second camp. What if you need that perfect burst of flash and all the Profoto or Broncolor stuff just ain't doing it? You'll cry in your beer when your competitors come busting in with the flash of the century. And it could have been yours....

Sure, it's a Veblen item. You can tell by the attention to design and detail. The minimal user interface!!!! Just three buttons. No weird function buttons. Nothing to confuse the hard working pros amongst us. And no accessories to fuss up your carefully packed Billingham Ferrari Junior camera carrying system (aka: camera bag). You'll have to scrimp and save to get one...if you can buy your way onto the waiting list. 

Well. Maybe I've overstated this just a bit. Only I've been reading another blog that convinces me that everything in the world right now is overpriced...

Let's back up. On Tuesday this week I was having coffee at Trianon Coffee (just around the corner from the office) with my very good friend, Frank. We solved most of the problems of the universe and were about to wrap up our visit when he pulled out a little leather pouch and asked me if I'd seen this little flash. It was a Godox iM20 flash unit. A compact and tiny, square flash unit. Sister to the iM22 you see above. The iM22 sits vertically in a hot shoe while the iM20 sits lower; almost like the one above if it was positioned horizontally instead of vertically. 

The iM20. A different but equally Veblen orientation...

These small flashes have no automatic functions. None. They have an on/off button which also doubles as a flash test trigger. The other two buttons let you toggle through five power settings. From "just a little bit" to "a tiny puff of light." The only other thing on the flash is a USB-C port for charging the built-in lithium battery. There is one center contact to the camera. Did I mention that there is nothing wireless or otherwise automation oriented on the flash? You either have to go by trial and error or do your own tests and figure out how big a pulse of light you'd like to add to the scene in front of your camera.

The internal battery charges in about an hour and ten minutes. At full power the flash recycles in about 3 seconds. If you use it at max power you'll get, maybe, 400 flashes (haven't tested that yet). 

The price for either the iM20 or iM22 models? Thirty bucks. $30. USD. About the cost of a good, sit down lunch. Or a reasonable bottle of wine. About half the price of a haircut in Austin. There is a bigger and pricier model called the iM30 and there are two big differences between that model and the 20 and 22. First, it has seven settable power levels and second, it has a "slave" setting that will allow you to trigger the iM30 from the pulse of another flash. Seems like nice stuff to have but there are also a few downsides to the iM30 model. Things that have to do with batteries. 

Unlike the 20 series flashes the 30 uses two replaceable triple "A" batteries. So you'll need to source some AAA Ni-Mh rechargeables or you'll need to buy a box of AAA alkalines. As a result of the difference in batteries the recycle time is a bit more than half a second slower at full power in the 30. And you get half as many flashes to a charge, or a battery change. No boost in power. No other pros or cons. 

I was so excited by the product (iM22) that I bought two of them. I'll use them constantly as fill flash units in outdoor shoots and in dark spaces that require higher ISOs from my cameras. Why 2? It was a suggestion from Frank, who is, I'm sure, trying to impoverish me.... Since the iM20 and 22 units can be recharged in a little over an hour it would make sense to have one in use while the other one recharges. Even I probably won't shoot 400+ frames in a little over an hour so ... with two in the bag I will always be prepared to flash. 

I use my "event camera" ( a Leica SL2-S) at 800 or 1600 ISO when I'm shooting most inside events. With those ISO settings even small flashes perform bigger than I expect them to and these are no exception. They're really cool. Grab an off camera cord (hot shoe to flash shoe connection) and you can certainly go off camera with these if you need to raise the flash enough to discourage red eye. 

I got mine from B&H today. I've already played with them. They are fun. They are not 5500° Kelvin. More like 6200° Kevin. But they are amazingly consistent. 

Get yours today. At the local Hermés shop or wherever Veblen goods are sold. Be prepared for a waiting list. These pups are going to be hotter sellers than a Fuji  X-100VI...

The normal doldrums of early Spring are over. Work is raining down again ( along with the actual rain... ). Shooting every day.

 

My friend, Paul, who is a professor in the computer science college at UT, has known me for nearly 30 years. About ten years ago our families were sitting at one of the comfy tables at Sweetish Hill Bakery on a Sunday morning. We met there nearly every Sunday morning. While the adults drank coffee and nibbled at pastries the kids played together and it was all very relaxed and fun. 

On a visit in March Paul asked what I was currently working on. What projects did I have on the books? I answered glumly that I had...nothing. That I might never work again. That clients had stopped calling. That we were destined to became destitute. Woe is me.

Paul laughed. He said, "For as long as I've known you when January, February and March roll around, you are always filled with doom and gloom. You always go to the worst case scenario. And then, like clockwork, we hit April and your new complaint is that you are always too busy. It happens every year."

Sometimes we need external reminders. 

Several weeks ago things were slow. Work microscopic. Whatever income I had was from my own savings. Now? Booked again. Just as Paul predicted. 

Yesterday I was downtown making portraits for a law firm that's hired me to photograph every single one of the 73 new hires that have come through the doors in the last ten years. These are not "cattle call" sessions. No lining up subjects with a gray seamless background behind them. Nope. They are environmental portraits and we do them on a "unique" schedule: When a new associate or partner is onboarded to the firm the manager reaches out and books a portrait session. Usually it's for one person. Occasionally two people in one day. It's the way I always dreamed that portrait work could be. Unhurried. Photographer directed. Pleasant. Collegial. And the partner I work with is a big photography buff. Loves photographs. Imagine my surprise when, one day I walked into the law firm's lobby and there on a dedicated book stand was a huge and absolutely impressive copy of the Sumo production of Annie Leibovitz work. An amazing thing to find in the lobby of a company...

I got up early and went to swim practice. I stayed for some more yardage in the second practice. Then I headed home to eat breakfast, swill coffee and pack for the shoot. We had one person to immortalize. 

Over the last month I've been experimenting with working lighter and less encumbered with gear. Yesterday I packed one 300 watt COB LED fixture, one light stand, one camera and two lenses. Also a 60 inch umbrella. And a regular umbrella because it was pouring down rain. It's the first time I've done a commercial shoot with only one camera in the camera bag. But I did cheat. I had a Leica Q2 in the car. 

All the gear fit in a roller case and the stand and photographic umbrella fit in a soft bag. It felt weird not to drag the heavy duty equipment cart around. 

I tossed the stuff in the trunk of the car and headed downtown. Traffic was miserable. Texans absolutely can't drive well on rain, or snow, or ice, or dry roads in sunny weather or..... at all. The roads were newly wet and people were traveling bumper to bumper at 70 mph in the 50 mph zones. Every mile fraught with peril.

I pulled into the adjacent parking garage, dragged my stuff out and headed in. Up to the 23rd floor. The set up of one light and one umbrella was quick and easy. The camera was a Leica SL2-S and the lens I ended up using with the 75mm f1.9 Voigtlander Ultron. I shot every frame at f2.8. No tripod --- just a complete dependance on image stabilization and a faster than usual shutter speed. Not a problem with the almost noise free SL2-S. 

The new hire was a really sweet guy, just turning 40 and very comfortable in front of the camera. He arrived right on time and we worked together to make about 150 exposures with lots of little changes and tweaks as we went along. Twenty minutes later I was packing up to exit. I was out of the garage in a little less than an hour from my arrival. It felt... refreshing to work so unencumbered.

Back to the office where I pulled selected files into Lightroom Classic. I edited down to about 40 files, checking focus on the subject's eyes as I sifted through. I made basic batch corrections for exposure and shadow lift, then I used one of the presets to enhance the portraits. The preset smooths skin and balances it a bit, enhances eyes and makes just about any portrait look better. There's a slider if you think the preset presets are too...dramatic. After the 40 .DNG files were close to perfect I output them as full res Jpegs and put up a gallery on my Smugmug account so the client and the new hire could collaborate on a choice of images that I'll do a final retouch and enhancement on. There is a light switch panel and a door knob that I'd like to excise from the final image. And a spot on the subject's necktie. 

I dropped the bags in the studio. Put the camera battery on a charger and headed out to lunch. A good morning, a decent fee, and a continuation of a good working relationship. Nice.

In the afternoon I got back into doing some composites for a different clients. A really fun A.I. start-up filled with young, smart people who love portraits that are a bit outside the box. I'll outline it in an upcoming blog post. 

Hope you guys are staying as busy as you want to be or having as much fun not being busy as you'd want to be. See you on the next one.