Summer has been slow in coming this year. Lots of rain, and all of my attempts to turn off the furnace have been thwarted. Ah well. Could be worse. Haven't seen a snow flake or patch of ice in weeks. I'll take it. :)

Took a nice drive around the peninsula over the weekend. Summer is almost here. Mid-June. Funny weather.  :)

Please join us for the opening reception on June 14th, and hope you enjoy the show!

So, those of you who've followed me here and/or on dearsusan.net are familiar with my recent format change.

Well, 'change' is probably a bit strong, but I'm seriously considering a new camera format. I very seldom shoot professionally any longer, and even less often feel like hauling around a 20lb backpack of pro gear...hoping for a shot worth stopping the car, and inconveniencing the family.

With this in mind, I recently began looking at a smaller format camera for travelling, and chronicled that decision on dearsusan under the guise of 'A Camera For Paris'.  The article is here: 

We are indeed planning a trip with the boy in 2020 to visit my wife's favorite European city, and I immediately started making my plans from a photographic point of view. Something small, light, and unobtrusive was clearly called for.

Fast forward a month or so and I'm now shooting with a Panasonic Lumix GX85. I bought it mainly because it was on sale, with two lenses to get started. I figured that if major issues surfaced early on my exposure [ha] was small.

Turns out I'm fairly well impressed. The kit 12~32mm came highly recommended, and for good reason. I'd gladly take it on any venture, and the pancake design makes it perfect for travel.

The kit telephoto was less impressive but perfectly serviceable, so I had a full e-24~300mm system for not much more than $400 all in. Pretty sweet.

Results were positive enough to add a Leica 15mm f1.7 [e-30mm] lens to the nacent m4/3 collection, and the results above speak for themselves.
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Looks like I've finally found my new, digital, Leica-esq walk-around camera. I will likely add a couple of zooms to round out the kit, but this combo alone is just fantastic. And, add to that, I'm able to fit my two existing Leica M-mount lenses to this body very easily! More on this later, but so far, so great.

I sold my Leica D-Lux Typ 109 to fund this as chronicled in the article above, as well as the X-Rite ColorMunki. Full comments available to anyone who's interested in that decision.

It's very possible that a 'full sized' Lumix body [ha, they're pretty small] will join the stable, and someday [perish the thought] the heavy-iron 5DS and L lens collection will go up for sale.

​We'll see.

Ran out to the water this morning, dodging rain drops as seems to be usual this Spring.

This image represents in many ways exactly what I'm usually looking for...a unique take with some depth and intimacy of a scene that could easily be a simple snapshot.
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Loving the new way of seeing that seems to be developing [ha, almost said 'focus', didn't, and came up with 'developing' later in the sentence anyway.]

My little man doing his best music video impression.

Early morning light. Pretty boats, and a working waterfront.

I'd taken off early, before sunrise, with just the camera and one lens. It's liberating.

Looking forward to the coming warmer weather here in Maine. :)

Golly gee, guess who finally got out of his winter rut?

After months of navel gazing, lens fixation, and a general malaise, I finally got out of the house this morning and took the camera for a drive around town. Wow. Turns out it's beautiful out there.

These panoramas are a new thing for me. And, much as I hate to admit it, it's all thanks to technology. Time was that stitching together digital images required specialized software, and the results were still kinda iffy.  Nowadays Lightroom just takes care of things for you, and the results are really spectacular.

It's not apparent viewing these images on the blog, but they are comprised of up to seven 50 megapixel files each, resulting in .dng's as large as 900MB. The detail is fantastic. 

Great. Got over any urge to purchase lenses, and now I *really* want to consider a bigger printer. Stay tuned. :)

Two posts ago I referenced an article on dearsusan.net by my friend Pascal, where he discussed his recent platform switch to the estimable [and uber-expensive] Hasselblad.

As I sat house-bound and cabin-feverish his discussions had me thinking of past loves. The quirky primes of my misspent youth. The Leicas, Zeiss T*'s, Bronica-mounted Nikkors, the Schneiders on Koni-Omega Rapid bodies. The list is goes too far back in the mists of time to recall.

So as I said, I did the obvious. I re-purchased a Voigtlander 20mm lens I'd loved in a past life. I've posted about this. I'd owned it, loved it, sold it in a purge, and missed it.

How did it go? Not well. The lens was great at first, and there was a lovely reunion. Then the aperture blades started sticking, error codes popped up, and that was that.

Buying and selling through Amazon is bittersweet. As a seller you accept predatory pricing; and unwarranted, at times, returns. OTOH as a buyer you have the full faith and credit of the corp. That's what happened here. The lens failure was within their 30-day window, and I returned the lens and received a full refund.

Full. As in Full Stop. Done. 

Repeat after me. The. Lens. Doesn't. Matter.

​The photos above were taken with a 30-yr old Canon 20-35 zoom. Film era. No longer supported on their site, nor recognized in Lightroom. I love it. It's fine. More than fine. It's perfect.

Get out and shoot. Practically any lens and camera you have up to your eye will produce a good image if the scene is worthy.

That's where you come in. Get out there, and put yourself in front of some great images. The hardware will take care of the rest.

We here in Maine are coming down with a bad case of Spring [or 'Cabin'] fever. We can feel that Spring is just about to be sprung.

Temps over the weekend reached into the 50'sF and the annual great melt is underway. It's still below freezing most nights, so we have a ways to go, but we can feel it coming.

On Saturday we cranked up some jazz, got the wood stove blazing, and opened up one of the French doors to the backyard for the afternoon to let in some fresh air. It was exhilarating.

My son enjoyed it so much that he asked to do it again today. But we only got to 33F, so the window has passed. 

Photo/technical notes: These images were taken with my 'poor man's Leica Q'. aka my Canon with a 20mm f3.4 Voigtlander manual focus lens. It's not the fastest lens, and not the fastest to use either. I'm still re-learning the predictive manual focus skills of my youth. The shot of him dancing is not as sharply in focus as it could be, and the shutter speeds as the light faded got pretty long. But I really enjoy the image quality of this setup, and you'll probably see a lot more of it in weeks to come.

Funny thing. I owned this lens for a while up until two years ago, and took many of the photos on this site with it. At that point I went through a cleansing, I've spoken of it often, where i came to the realization that 'equipment doesn't matter', and so forth. With this in mind I got rid of all the oddballs in my kit and attempted to focus on a few core, flexible, pieces of kit. But I missed this lens for it's unique qualities, and jumped at the chance to re-aquire one.

Hmmmm. I remember an old axiom that said something like 'If you love something, set it free. If it returns, it's yours forever.' Guess that's apt here. :)

You'd never get away with telling a Leica or Hasselblad owner that 'the equipment doesn't matter'. Maybe they have a point. I do enjoy this particular lens quite a bit. We'll see what else, if any, returns to the flock.