MANHATTAN – Dull day outside so I spent some time fussing around indoors with my Sony A7riii camera manually focusing my Leica Noctilux lens on it.
Day 3070 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day two years ago (day 2340): Metropolitan Museum
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Shot with my Leica Monochrom and 24mm f1.4 Summilux lens. The first image is shot wide open at f1.4 demonstrating this lens’s amazing “bokeh” – the creamy character of the out of focus portions of the image.
Day 2,780 pf pne photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day seven years ago (day 223): Carnegie Hall
WARREN CONNECTICUT – More work with bokeh – the quality of the out of focus portions of the image. As you may recall, my most used lens is a LEICA APO-SUMMICRON-M 50mm and that shooting at f2.0 I find the bokeh at bit jarring. Stopped a stop and a half to f3.4 produces amazingly creamy bokeh – just want I’m looking for. So the answer with this lens is f3.4 and be there.
Day 2,767 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day seven years ago (day 208) – one of my iconic images: Citicorp.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Excuse me while a take a break and shoot to resolve a technical issue: which of my lenses has good “bokeh”. The knife rack is my Leica f2.0 “Luxocron”‘ which apart from having near perfect behavior corner to corner also renders out of focus portions of images in a semi creamy fashion.
Day 2,741 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day six years ago (day 551): Hongkiao Railroad station
WARREN CONNECTICUT – This was a working inside kind of day – hanging pictures and cleaning out closets. I took a break from household drudgery to do a series of test images to assess the quality of the out of focus portions of the image (the quality of so-caled “bokeh”) for every 50mm lens that I own: a 1945 f1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar, a 1962 Leica f2.0 “rigid” Summicron, a modern Leica Summicron, a Summicron Asp. and an f.95 Leica Noctilux.
There was no clear winner but the rigid Summicron, Summicton Asp and Zeiss Sonnar excel, and the Noctilux has a very special character. In this context what I mean by “excel” is smooth transitions from the in focus and out of focus portions of the image, and a creamy quality in the latter. Images below are from the modern Summicron Asp. at f2.0 and the Noctilux at f.95.
Day 2,704 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day three years ago (day 1,608): Chambers Street
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I did some further work today understanding the capabilities of the native Sony and Zeiss lenses for the a7rii. Today I considered “bokeh”, the character of the out of focus portions of an image. Here are images taken with my Leica Monchrom with a 50mm “Luxochron” lens, which sets the benchmark for lens performance to my eyes (top), and a Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZA lens (bottom), which has lovely character both in front of and behind the focus point. In the Zeiss image the out of focus portions are more out of focus because it’s an f1.4, as opposed to the f2.0 Leica. The Leica bokeh is more “jittery” than the Zeiss, which puts in a very strong showing.
Day 2619 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day seven years ago (day 62): Citibank
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A good day out with my little Sony and the Zeiss Batis 25mm and 85mm lenses, which are profoundly good. I spent the morning around the Metropolitan Museum.
Day 2603 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
On this day last year (day 2237): Brick Church
