NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Third Avenue and 55th Street with my Leica and 12mm Voigtlander lens.
On this date last year: Truffle dinner at James Beard.
Tag: New York
Categories
Tuesday November 30, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a reception for James Beard Foundation members this afternoon at Má Pêche, David Chang’s midtown outpost. Here’s a link: Má Pêche, and a link for the James Beard Foundation. I caught this in the mens’ room with my small Panasonic GF1. The lighting in the main room was interesting but poor for photograph. You can see that I was getting desperate.
One year ago on this date: traffic at Columbus Circle. One of my favorite images of the past year.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Walking to the office.
On this day one year ago: Litchfield Congregational Church
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – So today’s post is a tale of a lens. I’m a gear head, perhaps even a gear whore, but I don’t often talk about cameras and lenses here because it’s politically correct to downplay the gear one uses – after all a great photographer can take great pictures with anything. The later statement isn’t actually true – many luminaries in the photo world have selected their gear with great care – often finding the best technical solution for the types of images they take: Ansel Adams and his 8×10 Deardorff, Cartier-Bresson and his Leica and Lee Friedlander (in his later years) and the Hasselblad Superwide. I’ve proven on these pages that I can’t take a decent picture with an iPhone.
Leica has issued a new version of it’s 35mm f1.4 Summilux. It replaces a lens that I owned but sold when the rumor of a replacement circulated – essentially to raise cash to pay for the new lens, which is bizarrely expensive. The lens it replaces is famous for being bitingly sharp and having remarkable contrast corner to corner at all apertures. The former Summicron had “bokeh”, the character of it’s out of focus image, that made it unique. Unfortunately it also had a tendency for the focus point to shift as it was stopped down, resulting in very slightly out of focus images in the range f4.0 to f5.6 or so. This trait, which was not visible with film but is visible in the more demanding digital realm, drove me nuts. The new lens retains the character of the original but has solved to focus shift issue. Here are some links to reviews: Irwin Puts reviews the 35mm Summicron. Steve Huff on focus shift. The new 35mm Summilux has been back ordered for about a year. My copy finally arrived today.
Today I’m posting a picture of a pair of Venini vases (I collect Venini) drying in our kitchen, together with a close up crop to illustrate the character of the out of focus image. This was shot at f1.4. I’m also including a picture of the building that houses the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and a crop, to demonstrate the biting sharpness and contrast. This building was originally built as a residence for George F. Baker Jr. by Delano & Aldrich, the firm that became the ‘society architects” in New York after Stanford White’s murder in 1906. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is a splinter of the Russian Orthodox Church formed after the Bolshevik Revolution – it is now reconciled with the main body of the Russian Church.
The vases:
A crop from the vases illustrating the characteristic “bokeh” of this lens (note the circular highlights):
Here’s the Synod:
A crop of the Synod – again illustrating this lens’s special character, but also the Leica’s tendency to blow saturated yellow highlights:
On this date one year ago: The day before Thanksgiving near Harlem Fairway.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner with our friends Kimball and Patrizia Chen. I’m using my Panasonic GF1 now in situations where the light permits. Here’s Kimball declaiming on a bottle of Gaja Barbaresco (I think a 1997).
On this date last year: Guggenheim Museum, New York.
This is one of several not very successful images of this iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building that I’ve attempted over the past year.
Categories
Monday November 22, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I promise that I’m going to quit this. I mean the wide angle thing. Quit it real soon now. Maybe it’s becoming a crutch. Or worse. My name’s Woody and I’m a wide angle junkie. But later. Maybe. For now I had my Leica and my super wide lens in hand as I walked by the Guggenheim earlier today. If you’ve been following these pages closely you’ll know that the Guggenheim is the one icon that I’ve been struggling with. Well today with Mr. wide I caught it – the first image of the museum that I’m really happy with. Here it is (this is another one of those shot straight up images that could be oriented any of four ways, but I prefer this orientation):
On this day one year ago: Warren Congregational Church.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’m exploring other daily photo blogs – I’m working on a page of links and critique that I’ll post here when its finished. There actually aren’t many of them. The one I like best is one polaroid a day over an 18 year period, to the photographer’s death. Someone has lovingly scanned and uploaded the 7,000 odd images, and built a very nice flash gallery. Here’s a link: hughcrawford.com. Anyway, I’ve been doing more in Manhattan in the early evening with my ultra-wide 12mm lens:
On this day last year: Telephones at Grand Central shot with the bokeh king.
