I’ve owned a lot of cameras and lenses. More than average, I’d say. I’ve of course sold more than I currently own. With few exceptions, I regret selling any of them. Remember how the Nikon F6 printed exposure data between frames? Self-portrait with horse head. Nikon F6. Or how nice it was having aperture-priority auto-exposure on the Leica M7? Lobster Buoys. Mount Desert, Maine. ...
I felt guilty that the wonderful Leica APO-Summicron-L 75mm was sitting unused for a while, so I went into the backyard with Alice and snapped a few. ...
I’ve never loved editing photos in Adobe’s Lightroom (Classic). It does the job fine, and it has all the tools one might need, but it’s no fun. I prefer editing with Capture One Pro. As much as I enjoy the editing process in Capture One, it otherwise feels like working on an island. C1 has no way to sync photos, the plugin/extension options are very limited, and while it works with other editors, it doesn’t do it as seamlessly as Lightroom. And so on. ...
But just because we always come back to the barn with “results” doesn’t mean we got anything. When we get nothing, we have to have the discipline to know we got nothing, and not try to force it to be “something” Mike Johnston So much of the photography I see on the internet is made of snapshots that don’t work. Most of the stuff I post fails in the same way. One thing I’m doing to improve my self-evaluation is to immediately delete photos that don’t show me something first thing. This is riskly, but I’m betting that 99% of the time I’m right. This way I don’t spend hours trying to make something from nothing. ...
I haven’t been using film much this year, but once in a while it’s fun to get out and shoot a roll. I took the M6 out yesterday and finally finished the roll of HP5+ that I’d loaded into it a month ago. Here are a few from the roll. Most of these were shot while out walking around the neighborhood. Sorry, images were lost during a website move
I haven’t seen my parents in a long time, so we got together on Easter. Everyone is fully vaccinated (ok, technically I’ve only had my first shot) and it was wonderful being “with” people again.
I uploaded this photo of my daughter to Flickr on July 5, 2004. It was taken shortly after I got my first Leica rangefinder, (an M6 TTL), and I was practicing timing and focus. It’s still a favorite.
I’ve had this Minolta Autocord for so long I don’t remember where I got it. Or when, exactly. Mine is a model RG-2 from 1962 with the Optiper-MVL shutter. I don’t know much else about the camera other than it’s fun but challenging to use. I keep thinking about taking it out for a spin but haven’t done that in a few years. There’s more info about the Autocord at camera-wiki.org ...
I was supposed to sell the Leica SL once the SL2-S arrived. I almost did it, too. It’s technically still listed for sale in a couple of places, but I’m not ready to get rid of it yet. I mean just look at it. The Leica SL is five years old and still a wonderful camera. If I’m being honest, the brand new SL2-S is better, but not that much better. I’m keeping the original because it’s awesome and it’s worth more to me to have around than the money I could get for it. This calculus could change, of course, but it’s kind of amazing that I have an extra SL available. I don’t see the APO-Summicron-SL 35mm ever coming off the SL2-S, so it’s great that I can keep one of the M primes or the Zoom lens on the SL without having to switch lenses. ...
I watched the following video by Ramsey Spencer yesterday and I’ve been fuming about it ever since: What a load of elitist bullshit. I realize he’s just trying to make a name for himself so people “click Like and Subscribe, guys,” but grrrrrr! Don’t listen to him. Use what makes you happy. Use what makes sense for your photography and budget. If you’re like me, using Leica cameras makes you happy. I have spent an embarrassing amount of money on Leica lenses over the years, but I also use Sigma, Canon, and Voigtlander lenses on Leica bodies and they’re all great or fun or interesting or all of the above. ...
My last house had a proper darkroom. It was a little janky, but there was a big sink, room for three enlargers, a wet side, a dry side, etc. When I moved into my new house, I originally planned to turn an extra room in the basement into a shiny new darkroom. That didn’t happen, so I’ve been using the bathroom instead. It works fine. Here’s my fancy darkroom. ...
It’s not that I made a promise or anything, but I had no intention of shooting film in 2021. I put away my scanning rig, stored the chemicals, and placed the cameras on a shelf. I’ve been so excited by the new Leica SL2-S that I figured I’d just spend my time with that camera for a while. You know how I am, though. I picked up the M6 and saw that it was loaded with film and couldn’t help myself. That camera just begs to be used, once you touch it. ...
You’re lookin’ at him. I’ve been asking myself, “Who[sic] should I let manage my photos?” as a way to talk myself into letting Lightroom and the Adobe ecosystem take over the nitty gritty of file and library management. In the end, I couldn’t go through with it, so I remain in charge. Yes, it can be a pain to deal with files, folders, storage, backups, naming, and so on. But, managing things myself is the way I’ve always done it. One of the most important things I “own” are my photos. Why would I give up any control over them? For now, at least, I’m not going to. I’m back to my process of culling, naming, tagging, and cataloging with Photo Mechanic Plus and editing in Capture One Pro. ...
I have for many years kept my photos properly named and in a dated folder hierarchy on my hard drive: /2020/12-December 2020/2020-12-02-Alice.dng This requires that I import my photos from a card, then add metadata (Title and Caption), then rename them with the capture date and title, then put them into the proper folder, where they live forever. Whew! Another step later in my process is to “burn” a copy of each edited RAW file to a JPEG that lives right beside the original. I also create a copy of the best photos in my “Digital Print Archive”. The DPA is swept up and uploaded to Google Photos, Flickr, and my Synology, automatically. This gives me ways to share and organize them later. It also provides the content-based search and face recognition that is so handy. ...
When I first saw the Leica SL, I was amazed by its brutalist audacity. Coming from the M series, this was not what I pictured when thinking “Leica”. Leica SL, the brutalist beauty And yet the SL appealed to me immediately. It was powerful, flexible, beautiful, and very, very expensive. In fact, it was so expensive that I eventually stopped thinking about it. Then, when the SL2 came out last year it all came rushing back. ...