SCHLOSS ELMAU GERMANY – Today was one of those better days. I switched equipment to shake myself out of yesterday’s doldrums. I gave color a try in the morning shooting with my Leica M and the lovely 24mm Summilux lens. Some of my best color for a while.
On this day last year: Hide the phones.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’ve got a lot going on, and on top of everything else today is the run up to a travel day – I’m flying th Munich tomorrow to meet Maria (who is at the Frankfurt Book Fair) to be her spa buddy for a week. I settled for some of our home grown tomatoes today (rotten spot and all), with a Leica Monochrom and Luxochron lens.
On this day last year: Pumpkins. Hmmm . . . this is a vegetables kind of time of year.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – My desktop. This lets you know where I am. Leica Monochrom and Luxochron lens.
On this day last year: Overpass. A decently high mojo image.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A very busy day so I approached the photo-a-day aspect of my life by putting my Sony RX100 in my pocket. I snapped away with it as I went about my business and was disappointed by the results. One tends to treat a small camera casually. Actually, to get good results you need to do everything that you do with a larger camera: see the opportunity; stop; pre visualize; consider depth of field and exposure; focus and compose carefully; wait for the magic moment; expose, minimizing camera movement. All of the foregoing steps take a few seconds but if you skip anything you get nothing of any worth. Here’s the one image that I liked.
On this day last year: Rain at dusk. A lovely image in lovely light.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – It’s time for a picture of cameras. I obviously can’t put all of them in the picture because then I wouldn’t have a camera to take the picture. Actually I took this with my iPhone, which I use quite regularly. So here are four the the six cameras that I’m currently using. The biggest is a Leica S2, a Leica medium format camera. Wonderfully suited for landscape and any thing else you want to render with perfect lenses and a lot of resolution. Sensational huge viewfinder. Downsides: heavy and poor high ISO, s problem endemic to the CCD sensors that all medium format cameras use. Next in size is my Leica Monochrom. A unique camera that shoots digital but only in Black and white. It produces remarkably detailed files and highly nuanced gray scale images. But it’s essentially a 1954 design (albeit a famous one) – it’s like driving a 1954 Porsche. Completely manual. People love it or hate it – I’m in the former category. Next is the highly-praised Fuji X100s – probably the best non-zoom (it has a fixed focal length 35mm equivalent lens) in its price and size category. The Fuji lens is outstanding and the level of intelligence built into the camera is comparable to a much larger SLR. Amazing performance in near darkness. Great for snapshots in situations where you can’t miss. Images are very good but lack the mojo that Leica delivers for much more money. Finally the little Sony RX100 II which some have called the best pocketable point and shoot ever. Images quality is comparable to the Fuji but it’s not quite as reliable in terms of focus and exposure. Not included in the picture is my Leica M which looks like the Monochrom but takes pictures in living color.
I’m a nut on image quality – each of these cameras delivers in its own way.
On this day last year: Dull image in the “take at least some kind of damn immage every day” camp.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – A bleak, poor light day in Warren. I caught this while lolling around the house with my iPhone in hand:
On this day one year ago: Look up redux.
TODI – A great day for photography here. A still life with an erotic eggplant; Maria; a flower pot; the pool. All with my Leica Monochrom and 50mm lens.
On this day last year: Villa Necchi.
