NEW YORK, NEW YORK – So here I am on Park Avenue, lurking with my Nex-7 and 35mm Summilux lens in gorgeous morning light, capturing the run up to St. Valentine’s Day.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I finally go out with my camera (Nex-7 with 24mm Summilux lens) after a full day of meetings. Captured this on Lexington Avenue. Oddly, last year’s picture on this day was taken at night a block away. With film! A brief, not very successful, fling with film.
On this day last year: Park Avenue at night. Note the scratch running most of the length of the photo – something that I commented on extensively last year.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We hosted a dinner party for our friend Jonathan Galassi as a benefit for the Pen America Center (Maria is on the board and Treasurer of Pen). Jonathan read from his new book of poetry – not out yet but Maria had arranged for Jonathan’s publisher, Knopf, to send bound galleys out to guests before the dinner.
I worked through the party with my Sony Nex-7 and a 35mm Leica Summilux. For an event the lens worked much better for me than the Sony Zeiss 24mm: I’m familiar with the feel of its manual focus and manual focus was faster and more accurate than autofocus with the Zeiss because of its tendency to “hunt” in poor light. I didn’t get a picture that I liked of Jonathan. Here are a couple of other friends.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I equipped my Sony Nex-7 with my Leica 35mm pre asph. Summicron (v.IV), which I’ve previously identified on these pages as the “Bokeh King” (“bokeh” refers to the quality of the out of focus image). I took it to the office on the subway (“riding with the king”) and then walked a bit in really good morning light. The camera is very, very responsive in terms of shutter lag – I was able to catch a person standing on the platform as a train sped by.
On this day one year ago: A picture of our firm’s logo. Taken with the Bokeh King – the out of focus portions of this image really are lovely. Another from the “King and I” series.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – The times they are a-changing. This evening we went to a book party for an “enhanced e-book” version of a book about Bob Marley. Really fun. “I Shot the Sheriff” running in the background, a good bar, terrific food and a great looking crowd. Here’s a pose for the camera captured with my Sony Nex-7 and 24mm Sony Zeiss lens. About 20% of these are out of focus because the lens hunts so badly.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Well, well, well. Here we are on Super Bowl Sunday and New York has a horse in the race. One of the great surprises of the regular season. We had a dozen or so friends over to watch the game and eat chili, corn chips, salsa, empanadas and so on, and to drink a dozen obscure varieties of beer (once again I found some Full Sail IPA) and some pretty decent wines. I shot the festivities with my Nex-7 and the 24mm Sony Schneider. As you will see from the image below ambient light was not all that low, but it still hunted like the devil focusing. A big problem at events. But the image quality is very nice.
From earlier in the day. Taken in Warren with m Alpa Max and 72mm Schneider lens. Two frames stitched.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Still working the kinks out of the Nex-7. I spent the morning shooting familiar things in Connecticut, including a small barn on our property that I use as an informal resolution test. Here I’m shooting it with the 24mm Sony Zeiss lens, which produces a superb result (at least in terms of image quality).