NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent the day with my Leica with my 12mm Voigtlander lens attached. That’s right, 12mm on a full frame camera. This lens is really, really wide. Int’s a miracle that it even forms an image. You don’t need a viewfinder – just assume that it gets everything. What’s in focus? Everything, because of the extreme depth of field. I put a small level on the camera when I use this lens – if it’s only slightly off level vertical lines converge wildly because of the extreme wide angle perspective. This lens has a serious issue on a digital camera: there are wild color casts across the frame, and there are two plus stops of “cosine vignetting”, light fall off toward the edge of the frame. I’ve learned how to solve this problem with my Alpa – that’w why I reached for this lens.
WESTHAMPTON, NEW YORK – More with the Leica and the 50mm Summilux. I’ve been shooting a lot in the past month with Alpa and a 35mm Schneider which for a number of reasons facilitates images with a lot of depth of field and corner to corner sharpness. The Leica lets me rebel from that a bit. today (and yesterday) I generally shot with this lens wide open at f 1.4, producing large far out of focus regions. Steve’s house seemed to call out for this treatment.
Like most modern Leica lenses the 50 mm Summilux has optimum sharpness at its widest aperture, f 1.4 (lenses from other manufactures often need to be stopped down two stops for maximum clarity), this is one of the reasons why these lenses are so expensive. The out of focus portions of the of 50mm Summilux images have a lovely, creamy character, a quality that is referred to as “good bokeh”. I also like the way it renders colors. I don’t often write effusive praise for lenses. I guess I just got carried away by this one.
By the way, sorry about the dog. You know how I feel about pictures of dogs and cute kids.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Back in bed with the . . . flu. This is getting boring. I caught this with my Panasonic GH2 and a 14mm pancake lens. “Caught” is an overstatement. The scissors weren’t moving very rapidly.
Scissors
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Fair warning here, we’re going to hit a rough stretch. I arrived back from italy with a severe case of the flu characterized by a high temperature and an overwhelming feeling of lassitude. So what happens to “one photograph every day” when I get sick? The answer (I hope) is “Keep on shooting – no excuses.” Anyway, I used my few waking moments today to take a focus stack image of some porcelain that we brought back from China. It’s not perfect. It may not be the best idea to try a technical project like this when I’m delirious. Six focus stacked images with my Leica M9 and a 90mm lens.
Chinese procelain
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Another session trying to optimize the performa of my Hasselblad digital back on my Alpa TC technical camera. I shot the fireplace in our living room fussing with varius settings. I’ve included a crop to give an idea of what the image looks like printed large. The glass is mostly Venini
HomeAt home crop
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Some days I go out to photographs a specific project (often after having scouted it); other days I try to meet my phot0-a-day by carrying a camera as I go about my other business. This was one of the latter kind of days. The risk of course is that I don’t see anything of interest, never get in the moment visually, and have to settle for an image that’s only ok or worse.
This, by the way, is my 608th daily post, without having missed a day.
Today the James Beard Foundation had an event for members at Lincoln, Jonathan Benno’s fabulous restaurant at Lincoln Center. This was was with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A lazy day, photographically. We’re gearing up to a have a large party tomorrow; I brought flowers back from Connecticut last night; Here’s an arrangement. Taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 camera and an HC 100 mm lens.
Party preparation
