Do I really take my camera with me everywhere? Is that just hyperbole?

Julie needed a photograph of herself swimming breaststroke...

I think nearly every photo writer of note brags about taking their camera with them everywhere. And what they really mean is that when it is convenient, and they have ample time to attend to their camera, and they might need an expensive piece of jewelry to accent their carefully chosen artist outfit, they toss a camera over one shoulder and sashay out of the house. But as soon as the cellphone beckons or they are off to a social engagement, doctors appointment, audit, or nice dinner out, the dedicated camera gets tossed by the wayside.

Oh dear! What would their seemingly endless supply of mentors have to say about that? And why is it that the least interesting photographers have seem to have the most ample supply of mentors and inspirational role models? And could it be that mentors, teachers, workshop leaders and the usual suspects are actually a net negative for anyone trying to build a truly personal style? For someone who professes to have a unique vision? I'll ponder that in a future post but the more I read about someone's "interesting" role models the less interesting I find their finished work...

Here's my favorite quote of the day from writer, Ken Dixon: "W is for workshop. A two-day, three-dimensional version of a one-hour YouTube tutorial.”  

(more here: https://www.orartswatch.org/a-photographers-alphabet-a-to-z/ ).

I think it's funny that something as logical as camera operation requires some sort of advanced level of rigorous preparation; a long, long runway of instruction and practice. And it's funnier (more funny) to presume that a "teacher" can authentically convey to students any sort of rational framework for making something new and exciting. Just go to a faculty show at a university if you want to see how orthodox the work of most people who have survived the day in, day out routine of instructing in academia can be... It's amazing how abruptly their "real" work stopped; usually within months of landing a teaching job. And these are the folks who pretend to be able to convey anything meaningful about the aesthetics of new, artful photography? 

Anyway, everyone talks a good game about making their camera a permanent appendage. Grafted to shoulder and hip. A closer relationship than a spouse or child. But how many of them really follow through? I often wonder when I run into fellow "photographers" out in the wild who profess to have left their cameras at home because it's not a "work" day. 

I went to swim practice this morning and it was good. My friend, Julie was there, swimming in lane three with her usual crew. She reminded me as we were finishing the last set that she needed a photograph of herself swimming breaststroke for an article she wrote for a swim magazine. Did I happen to have a camera with me? Would I take some photographs?

I got out of workout five minutes early, dried off, put on some pants, a shirt and a pair of sandals and walked out to the car. I pulled a Leica SL2-S off the front passenger's seat, looked at the settings and walked back to the pool. We spent ten minutes making photographs. We got some really good, useful shots. I walked back to the locker room, tossed the camera and lens into a cubby and took a quick shower. Then I got dressed, tossed the camera over one shoulder and headed back to the car. I also took the camera along with me to get coffee this morning. Last night I took my camera to my friend's, Will and Mary's, house for a dinner party. I photographed Will carving a turkey he'd been cooking out in his hand-built smoker in the back yard. My spouse was wearing really nice, black linen dress so I photographed her engrossed in dinner table conversation to show off both her brilliant expressions and her casual but near perfect fashion sense. 

The camera went with me yesterday to the car wash, and to the grocery store. It will accompany us to our favorite hamburger joint at lunch today. The camera doesn't languish on the floorboards of the car, nor is it relegated to the back seat, unattended. It's at my place at the dining room table when I get up for swim practice and it's still dark outside. It keeps me company when the house is quiet and I'm having coffee before swim practice. It's there on the desk in my study when I check my email before bedtime. And there's always a camera sitting on the dresser across from me in the bedroom. Just in case I hear something outside during the night that might need photographing. It's there at every doctor's appointment, dentist's appointment and coffee meeting. 

Sure, there are long spells when no pictures get taken. No shutter play. No immersion into this or that. But the camera is steadfastly there...ready... bestowing a constant reminder that the potential to make an image is always there. Always a possibility. Because most of the good stuff in life and photography seems to happen spontaneously. 

Mentors tend to be as valuable as random opinions about the weather... I don't believe in them. Better to spend time making photographs and learning from your own instances of satori and inspiration.

 

A first "test" walk with the Voigtlander 35mm f2.0 APO-Lanthar lens. Wearing my much maligned Tilley Hat.

 

I wanted to go out yesterday and put my new lens through its paces. But after swim practice, chores and packing for an upcoming location shoot I had waited too long and the afternoon temperatures were oppressive and  brutal. Being a wimp at heart I decided that a heat index of 105° would just make my hands sweaty, my viewfinder clouded with misplaced sunscreen and my mood...apprehensive. I chose grocery shopping and office work instead. 

Yesterday evening I went to the dress rehearsal of "The Wizard of Oz. An Immersive Twist on a Beloved Tale." I went not as a photographer but as a civilian. I watched the next generation of photographers and videographers work the show from a static position and silently wished them well. 

The show was a big production and part of the idea of "immersion" was that the stage protruded into the house and there was also seating around the entire periphery of the stage. It's something I think many regional theaters are toying with in the moment. The idea that audiences will be thrilled to sit in absolutely close proximity with the cast and the set. I'm not a fan of the concept but I was a fan of the cast, the show, the music and the lighting. They lost some very seasoned crew when the theater shut down during Covid and they still have a ways to go to recover their complete mastery of audio. It takes time. And every venue is different. The main issue with the audio last night was not enough volume separation/differentiation between solo singers and the orchestra which muddied the delivery of some of  the lyrics... 

But all in all it was a very fun way to spend an evening. And since I seem to get invited to every dress rehearsal it's a very cost effective dose of culture for me. I'd forgotten how wonderful parts of "The Wizard of Oz" could be. And how much fun live theater usually is.

After my morning "compulsories" I judged that the day wasn't going to get any cooler as it wound on so I was in downtown rambling about by nine o'clock. I put the VM 35 APO on one of the M typ 240 bodies and set up the camera for raw shooting, aperture preferred auto, ISO 200, Daylight. It was hot and humid and I kept smudging the viewfinder window and the smaller rangefinder window with my clumsy hold on the camera. I'll work on that. 

A common complaint about the M 240 is that the live view screen on the back is low contrast, not very color accurate and very low res. I agree with all of these things. At first I was hesitant about the cameras but after the shooting, when in the throes of Lightroom, the files reveal themselves to be just fine. If you don't blow highlights you'll pretty much nail your image if the rear screen shows you an image that is even remotely in the ballpark. I can only imagine that M11 screens are cheery, bright and accurate but if you absolutely need that in a camera you might want to pass on the M 240s and go straight to the most modern M Leica you can get your hands on...

While the M240 uses a relatively old 24 megapixel sensor and isn't a low light/high ISO champion it does a beautiful job at ISOs from 200-1600 ... if you nail exposure. Which should be second nature to you anyhow. I use the M240s mostly in the .DNG (raw) format these days because memory and storage are cheap and you never know how you will end up using a final image. Especially if you circle back to something years from now and have new applications to feed. 

Something to be aware of when using a Leica M camera with a 35mm  or 28mm lens is that the lower right section of the viewfinder will be blocked by the lens itself. If you are fussy this is an issue but it's been a consistent "feature" of M series cameras since 1954. Most users are pretty good at anticipating and interpolating or guessing what's hiding in the corner. I thought this would bother me with a 35mm lens so I acquired a Carl Zeiss 35mm Brightline finder from a friend and stuck it in the hot shoe. I shouldn't have bothered because I became "acculturated" to the viewfinder "feature" in about a day. After that the bright line finder in the hot shoe was more of a nuisance than a help. With a diopter on the eyepiece and my glasses off I can see all the other parts of the finder frame quite clearly and I find that I rarely put anything vital in that lower right corner. If you have the opposite mindset and DEMAND to see every micron of the image before photographing an image you can choose the auxiliary viewfinder, or use live view via the rear screen, or buy an EVF-2, put that in the hot shoe and look at the frame at its 100% accurate self. I've tried it every which way and will say that it's lens dependent. 

With a 50mm or 75mm I'm totally happy just using the viewfinder as it was intended. With the 35mm it's more important for me to use a diopter on the eyepiece so I can lose the eyeglasses and better see the bright frame lines, corner to corner in the viewfinder. With the 28mm I use an auxiliary bright line finder in the shoe for quick shots in conjunction with zone focusing. If I want to do a "perfect" shot with a 28 or 21mm I reach for the EVF-2. Your mileage will vary. 

I found the Voigtlander 35mm APO to be a great lens. Mostly invisible in actual use but providing wonderful results when I toss the files into Lightroom. There is even a lens profile available for that lens in the Adobe program. It makes the files look even better. And it manages the vignetting very well. Sharp at f2.0, sharp at f11. And everywhere in between.

Here are some samples I shot while walking around this morning. In my white Tilley hat. Nobody laughed at me but one person said, "Good morning sir." Go figure. 

Ruscha-ism.

Stoller-arity

Eggleston-ality

The city of Austin built a big, beautiful and highly functional convention center way, way back in the late 1980s. It's been the home for Dell, Inc. shows with 6,000+ attendees, tons of other corporate shows and a yearly event called, South by Southwest (SXSW) which, if you believe the fictive metrics of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city during a two week long marathon of music, tech, film and education. And delivers hundreds of millions of tourist dollars into the tax coffers and the pockets of local restaurants, bars and hotels. 

But some snake oil consultants have been making the rounds in Texas convincing every city with a population over 50 that the one thing holding them back from being the next Dubai is a new, giant, state of the art convention center. Our city council bought the pie-in-the-sky fantasy lock stock and barrel and they are now in the process of demolishing our right in the middle of downtown fully functional convention center and already starting work on their new, gleaming, magic project. Oh, but of course there is no other venue big enough in town for the shows that put our city on the map and the project is expected to take three more years. So, those merchants and tax collectors will just have to patiently cool their heals until the Wizard of Oz reveals the new tourist magnet to the public. Yeah, Austin city residents will be on the hook for the now 3 billion dollar project. Should  be interesting to see what the final price tag will be. I'm guessing 6 billion dollars. Or enough to pay everyone in Austin not to work for a year or so. Build it and they will come... 

I do like the double entendre of the signage. They are currently breaking or breaking down the old convention center. I'm always a bit amazed at the idea of saving money by spending more money. I should run that concept by the CFO on my way to a Leica store....

Yes. There will be road closures. Count on them. 

Meanwhile...over on historic, crumbling Sixth St.... business as usual. 

Tomorrow I'll be spending my day wrangling some big LED light panels and cajoling seminary faculty and staff to look intriguing, bright and welcoming for the camera. Given the demographic -- off color jokes probably won't go over very well. I'll try to act earnest, mature and reserved. It's a big ask.

Sorry for all the posts at once. I'm just happy the "data scrapper" episode seems to have resolved for now. I've been replacing all the posts I took down. Thanks for coming back to what has mostly become a daily blog with resoundingly quick comment moderation. Welcome. 

Voigtlander 35mm f2.0 APO Lanthar lens for M series. Yes. Thank you!

 

I have the perfect pair of lenses now for my M Leicas. Just two of them. But just right. One is the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO and yesterday it was finally joined by the Voigtlander 35mm f2.0 APO. And both of the lenses are wonderful. I've installed each one on its own Leica M rangefinder camera.

I don't have much experience yet with the 35mm but have owned the 50mm since 2023 and have many great photographs from it. I've done some preliminary shooting with the 35mm and it seems just as good, wide open, as the 50mm. 

Why the Voigtlander APOs? They are both made for M mount cameras and as such are direct competitors with fabled Leica M lenses of the same speeds and focal lengths. There have been many reviews written about both of the VM lenses since their introduction and the through line in nearly every review is the assertion that the Voigtlander lenses deliver as good or better performance in the real world  than their Leica competitors and usually at something like 1/6th or even 1/10th the price. 

I get called a "Leica snob" from time to time but I'm still rational enough to know a very, very good value proposition when I see one. The Leica 50mm M APO comes in around $10,000 USD. The Leica 35mm M APO comes in at around $9,000. And while I am sure they represent the "state of the art" for rangefinder lenses I'm equally sure that spending $1,100 each on the VMs and getting 99.5% of the juicy goodness on offer is a legit bargain. 

One thing I am reasonably sure of is this: If you spend $10,000 on a lens for your camera you won't ever lose it...accidentally. 

I have two different 28mm lenses for the M cameras but I don't enjoy using them on that camera system. I use them instead with a Leica adapter on an SL2-S or SL2 camera body. They work just fine on those cameras and composition is much, much easier. Same with 90mm lenses that are made for rangefinder cameras; they are just much easier to focus and compose with on the mirrorless cameras. So why do I have the 35mm and 50mm lenses in M mount? Because when I look at all the photographs I've taken since I started re-buying M cameras a couple of years ago the vast majority of the images were done with 35 and 50mm lenses. 

I've tried out and still own the Zeiss 50mm and Zeiss 35mm lenses for the Ms and they are very, very good performers but the Voigtlanders have a nicer look to the files. A fuller look. Richer looking? I also have the 35mm f1.4 Nokton Voigtlander for the M system but while I like the extra speed there's really nothing very special about that lens. It's surely not bad but in the range of f2.0 to f5.6, where I like to shoot, the Zeiss is better and the VM is better still. 

While the M cameras and lenses are good they are neither quick nor so much more stellar than other systems that they are "must have" lenses for working photographers or advanced hobbyists. Civilian artists. 

When I give people who ask for my advice about cameras my two cents worth I generally tell them that they will have a higher hit rate and more success with the best stuff from Canon, Nikon and Sony. Why? Because rangefinder focusing is an acquired taste. Because people raised on comprehensive automation find mostly manual cameras a bit vexing and because most current applications for which people buy and use cameras don't require ultra expensive stuff to do the actual work well. 

So why do I buy them? It's mostly nostalgia. I bought my first rangefinder Leica in 1979 along with a 50mm Elmar f3.5 collapsible lens. My next Leica, purchased a few years later was an M3. I shot a lot of Tri-X with those two. And there's a lot of sentiment and fond memory tied up in the images from them. About 46 year's worth...

I used a progression of Leicas throughout the film days but usually as a secondary or fun adjunct to my more regular photo tools. I even made a run at going fully over to Leica SLRs with a pair of R8 cameras and a selection of R lenses. But now I know I could have done the same work, and the same quality of work, with the Nikons and Canons that seem to have rotated through the studio.

But I buy the M digitals now because it reminds me of where I started and how much fun it all was at the time. Our kid is through all the college years. We paid for college. The house is paid for. The cars are paid for. There is no reason I can think of not to buy and play with the cameras from the company that brought me into my love of photography in the first place. And these two lenses seem just right for me. 

What a nice, trim travel package. Two matching rangefinder bodies. The two lenses I use almost exclusively with that system. It's so well sorted. At least in my mind. Today. 

B. Leica M9 with 35mm f1.4 Aspherical.

A giant "Street Photography" portfolio. From an earlier post...

 https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2023/06/well-shit-who-gets-to-decide-what.html

Go see.

Prepping for a different photo assignment on Thursday. Finally going to get some use out of three LED panels I bought on a whim. And why...

 

the protagonist of this story. Grasping a camera in the heat of the day...

As part of a series of questionable choices about work I agreed to do two jobs for clients this month. Both are "ten year plus" clients. I worked on a real estate project last Saturday and I've agreed to work on a portrait project for an Austin seminary this Thursday. While it's always pleasant to have cash flow I'm financially ready to retire --- but not turning down paying work is a hard habit to break. 

At least Thursday's job will take place indoors and we have control over the thermostat so while I'm working in the temporary portrait studio it will be chilly. Thursday's job is pretty much the same as one I did for the seminary about a year ago. I'll set up lights in their smallish video studio and photograph a number of faculty and staff people during the middle part of the day. I'll use a neutral background with the goal of separating the individual subjects from the studio background and adding each person into one of a number of location backgrounds that we shot last year for the original project. 

Once the lighting and composition are set  in the studio I'll welcome each person, get them comfortable on the set and then photograph as many frames as it takes to get a flattering but honest portrait of each subject. 

Last year I used flash equipment but because I'm about the farthest from being a creature of habit as you will find I'm switching up the camera, the lens and the lighting from what I used last year. There wasn't anything wrong with last year's results it's just that I hate repeating myself. I really do. There's a certain joy in mastery but there is a certain thrill in trying new stuff. And that's my intention for this project. 

I haven't settled on a camera yet but I'm thinking of using one of the rangefinders with a 75mm lens and also a 50mm lens. Choices, choices. I'll bring an EVF to check on stuff but mostly I'll use the camera in its most bare configuration. The part of the project that's more random will be the lighting. More following the image just below: 

A younger version of the protagonist fitted out with an ancient Leica M3.

Heading to Europe in a grand 747. Ah, the good ole planes....

The lights I think I'll use are all LEDs. Last year I bought three of the Nanlite Compact 100-B panels. They measure about 16x20 inches and are set up for vertical operation. They have ample output for studio portraits and have a completely diffused front panel. Color temperature control from 3200-6500 Kelvin. The output is steplessly adjustable from 10% to 100%. I like to use them close in so they look softer. 

Here's what they look like: 

This shows one of the units with a fabric grid spot on the front.

It keeps light spill to a minimum for more control. I have grids for all three lights. 

this is the rear view and shows how very simple the controls are. 

An on/off switch, a power adjustment dial and a color temperature setting

dial. Easy as can be. And no sync to worry about. 

As you are probably aware I like working with continuous light sources because, for the most part, what you see is what you get. And with LEDs there is very little heat generated, one doesn't need flash triggers and they don't misfire in cellular phone rich environments... I'll also bring a round diffusion disk that's about 48 inches round if I want to make the main light softer. But we'll see. I like things a bit crisper lately...

I'll arrive at 8:45, drag gear into the studio space, set up and be ready to welcome the first person scheduled right at 9:30 am. There will be a marketing person from the seminary to keep the schedule, find tardy participants and keep up with the logistics of getting people in front of the camera. I'm sure the schedule will be fairly loose so there will be gaps which are perfectly filled by the quest for coffee. And later, the search for lunch. I'm pretty sure we'll be finished by mid-afternoon so I'll be able to dodge the vicious rush hour traffic on the way back home. At least that's the plan. Everything is always subject to change. Flexibility is a good trait for photographers working on location. That, and patience. 

The continuation of the film "scanning" saga. Images from Paris in 1978.

Afternoon tea at the park.

L'Opera.

Tuileries. Reflection.

Sarah. Ready for an evening out.

Currently shooting with an antique Leica digital camera and liking it a lot.

I woke up and staggered to the kitchen this morning and while I was pouring water to make coffee I turned around and saw a shaft of morning sun shining through two decorative bottles B. had placed on a credenza in the dining room. It looked cool to me so I reached for the closest camera to photograph the scene. I knew in a few minutes the shaft of light would move further to the right and the fun reflections and bright colors would be gone. 

The only camera in reach was a Leica M typ 240 that was on the dining room table. It had a 50mm Carl Zeiss ZM Planar on the front. Not exactly a still life camera set up but as Texans say: "You dance with them as brung you." Loosely interpreted to mean that the camera at hand is the one you'll use.

I spent all day yesterday with a big, modern, mirrorless camera and a fat lens and as a result I was looking for something more fun, less intimidating and slower to use. The M240 was just the thing. The M240 that was on the table is my oldest and scruffiest one and since we Americans profess to root for the underdog it's just natural that it's the one I reach for most often. The 50mm Zeiss lens was on the front because it's a nice lens that's small and unobtrusive while having high contrast potential and good optical performance even wide open. 

I spent most of the day yesterday in the heat so it was only natural that, after swim practice and a late lunch today that I should lather up with more sunscreen and head over to South Congress Avenue to buy a donut, some iced coffee, and take a walk around the area with that camera and lens. 

Today I did something with that camera that I rarely do. When I went to photograph in the afternoon I put the EVF-2 finder in the hot shoe and used it with live view to compose and then to check the results. It's slow going but it's a nice way to be certain you got the shot you wanted. The screen res is nothing to write home about but the framing is exact. And the color is decent. The newer Leicas can use newer EVFs which are multiples better in terms of resolution and color accuracy but, again: "you dance with them as brung you." 

I ran into my friend, David so I didn't get a lot of photography done. That's okay because he is so well read and so interesting to talk with. But I did manage to get a few shots and while they show the M240 in the best light (pun intended) they're not that special. Still, I love the process of photographing with rangefinder cameras so I will persevere. 

the files do make for beautiful, clean, Texas skies.... (ISO200) 

At Jo's, the epicenter of South Congress Ave. 

Love the Austin Hotel. Need a pool? Get a day pass. And not at all pricey. 

I'm sure it's a fad everywhere to stencil stuff onto sidewalks. I just think it can be funny or sweet.

This is David. We had enough of the heat and we were heading back to our cars. 

His was that way. Mine was this way. This is where we parted ways. 

blue truck under a blue sky. Skewered by a huge utility pole. 

But only as an optical illusion.

I have heard that the M10 is a much better camera. A less noisy sensor. A thinner, lighter body, an improved rangefinder and an improved viewing window with more optical offset/eye relief. But I don't want to look through the finder of an M10. Or an M11 for that matter. It would be like test driving a much better car than you can afford. You'll always want to upgrade. I've convinced myself (ha!) that I'm satisfied with the M240s. We'll see how long that lasts...

 

Way over-prepped for today's job. I ended up using one camera, one lens and one flash for the whole day. All 944 exposures.

 

The image just above has absolutely nothing to do with the content of this particular post. I just like the look of this tumble down building, next to the train tracks, near the middle of an ever bustling city. Leica SL2-S + TTArtisan 75mm. 

Today I was part of a four person team. Two photographers and two videographers. We paired up to gain a lot of coverage for our client --- a big, new, rambling real estate development in the far east corner of South Austin. In addition to the camera jockeys we also had in tow someone from the client side and a producer from the advertising agency side along with seven different talents/models and a couple of small children.

It's August, it's hard, bright sun all day long, so of course all the shots were exterior shots. The crusty veteran content producers showed up with big, floppy hats, long sleeve shirts and glistened with layer upon layer of luscious sunscreen protection. The less experienced among us chose ball caps or came head naked, wearing shorts and t-shirts. By the end of the shoot the red faces of the less experienced looked like they'd been lit by color gels. Red color filter gels. 

We photographed people walking to school, visiting a retention pond, coming out of their spiffy new houses, walking through a pedestrian underpass and so much more. Some swimming pool shots. Some pickle ball courts. Lots of new homes with bright color touches, etc. My videographer partner did some testimonial interviews. He also spent a lot of time flying his drone. I don't know what the other crew did because we separated after our brief logistical meeting; a meeting complete with client supplied donuts, kolaches and other odd pastries, and wee didn't catch up with the other team until the clock ran out on the models and we wrapped the shoots. People were starting to run down...

When I started out at the location this morning, around 8, it was already flirting with the 90s. Typical humidity in the morning caused clothes to stick to skin in an uncomfortable way. When we wrapped up the project around 2 pm the ambient temperature was already over 100° and climbing. The temperature on the black asphalt of the roadways clocked in over 130°. Just another August day in Texas...

When I started planning my part of the project my biggest two concerns were reducing the light contrast on people in sunlit settings and keeping myself safe in the heat and extreme UV environment. Two bouts of surgery for skin cancers on my face is more than enough for me right now....

I tested and then packed a set of Godox AD200 Pro II strobes and an accessory that allows for them to be joined together in one fixture to power two bare tube flashes in one Bowens reflector. At full power they can toss out 400 watts seconds of flash. Used in an umbrella it's a nice fill light. Used directly with the 8 inch reflector you can go toe-to-toe with the sun; as long as you are close enough to the subjects. 

Along with the powerful light came a big light stand, a sandbag, some back-up batteries and a dedicated trigger for Leica. With the flash trigger and these lights I could do HSS flash (high speed sync) and shoot beyond the usual maximum sync speed of 1/250th. Nice. But you know what? The big flashes never came out of the car. So much for the hour I spent on Thursday testing them in the afternoon, out on the driveway... We were moving too quickly and nobody wanted to wait the five or ten extra minutes I might have taken to move a lighting rig around. 

Instead I depended completely on the HSS output of the Leica SF64 flash unit. An oldie but a goodie. And it's a true EV flash. No magnesium is burned. No flash powder. No green house gases emitted. And after several months of daily, hourly, minute-by-minute research I found a battery charger that plugs into the wall of my own home and re-charges the batteries for the flash for free. And really, the research into flash battery chargers is the most fun part of photography. So much more fulfilling than the process of problem solving, building rapport with talent or using all the stuff to make photographs and to make some real money over the course of a day. The SF64 takes double A batteries. Don't even get me started on my near endless research to find the exact right batteries. And at a budget I could afford!!!

It feels good to have all the bases covered so I packed with purpose. A primary shooting camera. An identical back-up body. A Leica Q2 camera with a leaf shutter for those ample shots that might need a puff of light from a flash while zinging along at a high shutter speed. A big ass, very expensive zoom lens. A couple of back-up lenses for the very expensive zoom lens. Endless batteries for everything. Even a back-up Leica flash for the Leica flash. 

Wanting to be prepared for the heat I bought a white photo backpack and that's one thing I did use all day long. I also clipped a small, white towel to the backpack to wipe the sweat off my hands and off the camera as well. SPF 50 sunscreen on every exposed piece of Kirk flesh. A variety of hats...

But here's the kicker: when you work in the heat with talent and ad folks who spend their lives in air conditioning you have to move fast, work close to shade areas in order to give the talent breaks, and proficiency and speed take precedence over fine-tuning the details. So I ended up using one camera, one lens, and one flash for the entire day.

The camera I used was the Leica SL2. I shot it in the raw .DNG format so the person doing the post processing would have the widest dynamic range files possible. If you are careful with exposure you can have really great dynamic range and possibility of recovering lots and lots of shadow detail. Even more so if you are shooting around ISO 100 --- because of the brilliant sunlight. Even with fill flash there are times when the overall contrast of a scene is overwhelming. Fill flash helps but being able to "lift" the shadows in post is like free money.

The lens I ended up using, exclusively, was the Leica 24-90mm zoom. The wide range of focal lengths is just right for a fast moving job and the comfort of knowing for certain that whatever f-stop I chose would be bitingly sharp, but with a pleasing rendering, was great.

The off-white photo backpack I wrote about last week performed quite well. The gear inside stayed relatively cool and the compromise between padding and intelligent use of space was well thought out. I'm very happy to add this one to the inventory of bags and anticipate getting a lot of use out of it. I had a water bottle in one of the side pockets and the flash in the other side pocket. The pack fit me perfectly. A bargain at forty something dollars. Now I will laugh at all the expensive Peak backpacks I see people tote around. 

So, here's an interesting question that I just was asked at Sunday morning swim practice: "I thought you were going to retire from commercial work! Why did you take this job? Why spend a day in the heat?"

Frankly...I was getting a bit bored and in a moment of weakness I accepted the job. In retrospect, having lived through it, I probably would and will turn down future projects like this. While the budget was fine I'm no longer working in the realm of having to make ends meet with work. I'll likely fritter the money away on better coffee and prettier lenses. I guess I was trying to prove to myself that I could still handle the constant movement, the harsh heat and the day long mental focus as I could in the past. Chalk part of my acquiescence to nothing more lofty than ego. 

And, I guess I felt a certain allegiance to the client since they've been a loyal partner in the ad game, in one form or another for nearly 30 years. Through thick and thin. The reliable source of ample billing...

Plus the chance to see whether work looks different now that I'm nearly seventy and the agency people were all less than half my age. But in that aspect things were as neutral as ever. No one seemed concerned about the age differences. No one treated me differently. And in return I took care never to reminisce about "how we used to do this kind of stuff in the golden years...."  Or to offer unsolicited advice of any kind. 

During the course of the day I downed two liters of water. I wasn't hungry until I got home. B. got a text that we'd wrapped and when I got home she was returning from a restaurant called, Cava, where she'd gotten me a big bowl filled with veggies and strips of spicy chicken. Pita bread on the side. After lunch I was ready for a big coffee from Trianon.

Revived by food and coffee I spent the next few hours unpacking, battery charging and looking through the files I'd shot. I backed up every shot to both SD cards in the SL2 and since the agency offered to do the post production I gave the art director one of the cards at the end of the shoot. I'm keeping the other one safe until I hear from the agency that they were able to pull the images off the card and back them up properly. 

This particular agency is very, very tech savvy and I trust them to do even better post production on the images I shot than I could do. Plus they know the specific way in which they want to use them. They also have ready access to influencers in their market niches and are becoming very fluent with A.I. so it will be interesting to see how they use the work.

It's nice to keep up the connection so I don't lose touch with what's going on in the industry. 

And that, in a nutshell, is how I spent my day on Saturday. In the evening we spent a couple hours at an opening at one of our favorite art galleries. One we've been frequenting since the 1980s. Ran in to several artists whose work we've collected and marveled at the huge crowd size. No photography in this show. All paintings and sculpture. By 50 artists. Celebrating the gallery's 45th anniversary. A fun capper for the day. 

This morning? Just swim practice and quick lashing at the keyboard to type out this post. 

Hope you have a great week planned ahead. I'm going to a play at Zach Theater on Tuesday and on a different day I'm doing yet another photo project I should have turned down. At least it will be inside, in Air Conditioning. And yes, Air Conditioning should always be capitalized....