NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the street with my Noctiflex on my Leica. Let me know when you get tired of out of focus backgrounds. At some point I’m going to need to move on.
On this day one year ago: after the rain.
and
Tuesday May 29, 2012
Category: Urban
Friday May 25, 2012
WARREN CONNECTICUT I drove up here in time to catch the late afternoon light on some astilbe with my Fuji.
On this day one year ago: Sunbather.
Wednesday May 23, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m approaching the end of three intense months of meetings in my day job. This has been a major distraction from photography (and everything else). As I wind down over the next few weeks I expect to return to a more centered and focused approach to this work. Today I spotted myself on a cylindrical chrome column in a building that I was meeting in. I shot it – of course there was massive distortion. The image is a fish eye in the horizontal dimension and is normal in the vertical dimension. I stretched the horizontal axis in Photoshop to approximate real perspective – at least in the center of the image. Shot with my Leica M9 and the Nocti.
On this day one year ago: Still life. The flowers are from our garden in Connecticut. This was the run-up to a party.
Tuesday May 22, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – More interesting public art. There’s a new installation of a work by Dan Colen called “A Crack in the Clouds” in front of the Seagrams Building. It’s a bunch of Harleys that looked like they’ve been knocked over in parking lot. I spent an hour exploring them this afternoon. Here’s a sample, taken with my Leica M9 and the Nocti.
On this day last year: Rocks and ferns.
Sunday May 20, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I shot my Eleventh Avenue project today. Based on the yesterday’s scouting I started at 11:00 and worked through 3:30, taking a break for lunch during the period when the sun was directly overhead. I shot with my Alpa Max, 48mm Schneider/ALPA Apo-Helvetar (the Swiss seem to prefer long names for their lenses) and Phase One IQ 180 back 28 exposures, two per block on both sides of the street, from 40th Street to 47th Street. Here’s a sample. The approach is dead frontal documentation.
On this day last year: Rain.
Saturday May 19, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK = I’m embarking on a new project: I’m documenting both sides of 11th Avenue from 40th Street or so to 50th Street or so. The idea is to shoot frontally, with medium format, two frames per block. I’ll use the light on either side of mid-day to catch long shadows.
I went scouting for the project today using my iPhone. The Viewfinder Pro app lets me sort out lenses and points of view, and the Theodolite pop helps me with documenting GPS and other similar data. Here’s a shot from Theodolite:
On this day last year: Tom Barry.
Tuesday May 15, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – As you may have noted I’ve been working a lot recently with my new Leica Noctilux lens. It’s large and expensive but shooting at f.95 it has a unique look and character. I use a three stop neutral density filter (.9) in daylight, which permits wide open shooting. Without the filter it can effectively see in the dark – very cool for events and street at night handheld with no flash. Stopped down past f2.8 or so it has a character very similar to the Leica 50mm Summilux, which is very good character indeed. I’m looking at this lens as an experiment, but with no economic downside – Noctis are back-ordered by a year or more, are highly in demand, and I could sell it for substantially more than I paid for it (which was several times the cost of my first car). It’s the third version of the Nocti made by Leica – I’ve owned all three. I sold version 2 several years ago because of difficulty focusing it.
I’ve been shooting it on my Sony Nex-7 but have found that the Sony contrast detection focusing system isn’t up to the task of dealing with the skinny depth of field of an f.95 lens. In actual use roughly half of my images with the Nex-7 and Nocti have focus issues. Disappointing. So I’m now using it on my Leica M9. I’m astigmatic in my shooting eye, which makes the Leica rangefinder difficult to use in poor light. The solution is to switch shooting eyes. Not ideal but it works – shooting wrong-eyed with my M9 roughly 90% of my images are keepers from a focus standpoint. I’s also a relief to use it on a camera with a “full frame” sensor, with no focal length multiplier, so the lens can fill the focal length niche that it was designed for. Anyway a couple of images with the Nocti.
Here’s a picture of my M9 with the Nocti, taken with my iPhone.
On this day last year: Spring sucks
