Monthly Archives: February 2014

Rotation

Change is good.

I’m surrounded by large prints of my snaps on the walls here so that when I wrote about an easy, quick-release attachment method for mounted prints a while back it was very much with the intention of occasionally rotating my work.

A recent night outing in Carmel produced some attractive wall images so I set to printing these 18″ x 24″, whipped off the old wall prints, heat mounted the new ones on top of the old, and hey presto!


Before.


After.

The center image has not been published here before, so here it is in all its splendor. The others can be seen in the link at the opening of this journal entry.

My question to you is, if you are not surrounded by your own work on the walls, how do you improve? Display at home has one cardinal virtue – daily critique from the artist, and from anyone else passing by.

Nikon D3x, 35mm Sigma, tripod.

A prodigal son returns

The review you have been waiting for.

Long time readers will recall my tearful parting with the last of my film Leicas some eight years ago, after no fewer than 35 years’ hard use, since when I have been busily in denial extolling the virtues of Japanese digital genius while unsparingly trashing the geniuses in Wetzlar and Solms for their tired, overpriced toys.

Well, it’s time to confess that I was wrong. You can take a man away from his Leica, but you cannot take the Leica out of the man.

When that realization came to pass, and when I was forced to admit that the 2013 market left me with some pocket change, I did the only irrational thing possible and plumped down the coin for a couple of M240 bodies, and the full range of lenses. Yup, the whole megillah. Anyway, my accountant says I need the deduction.

Here’s my review at Amazon:

Readers will have become used to the byline ‘Panny GX7, 17mm Zuiko’ accompanying the majority of my snaps published here over the past two months and now the truth must out. They were actually taken on one of my two M240s with the 35mm Asph Summicron, and the Leica owners among you will have immediately spotted the Leica ‘glow’ in the images. It was a minor deception vested in the need to test the gear and confirm that Leica is the only camera for me, and I trust you will forgive me.

Note: I am being inundated with questions about the above. To get the answer, click the image and read the review then figure it out.

Instant update!

Proving there really is one born every minute, Anon writes:

This writer has been attempting to soil these esteemed pages since they started in 2005, and you can read more of his enjoyable, if cowardly, drivel here. And, yes, I can disclose he bought a GX7 on my recommendation and now wishes he had bought the M240 he cannot possibly afford. He’s actually a bearded 27 year old still living in his parents’ basement, bathes monthly, and still rues the fact that the world denies his contribution to computer code. His rôle model is Jeffrey Lebowski. Oh! and he uses Windows, of course.

And another – this guy was no coward as he used a name – but Home Econ hardly qualifies as an education, his protestations to a PhD (10 rupees, Bombay) notwithstanding:

He wanted his comment published. Noblesse oblige.

Saddest thing about these gear fetishists. No sense of humor.

Sundae

Mmmm…

The Ghirardelli Chocolate store in Ghirardelli Square, SF has moved next door to much larger premises and it’s one of my son’s favorite things. He always orders the ice cream sundae, as did these two lovely women seated next to us outdoors, by the fire grate.

Panny GX7, 45mm Zuiko at f/2.