Faster recovery than I imagined it would be. Ice packs work? Or...I was just bored having a sore, achy hand. Caution: This post safe for mannequins. And office buildings.

Modern urban sculpture or railroad tech?

As work becomes less and less relevant, or as I become less and less relevant to work, my taste in cameras is rapidly changing. I'm so uninterested, day to day, by things like megapixels, frame rates and the idea of having every focal length from ultra-wide to long telephoto covered. In fact, since I passed on the mantel of live theater photography to someone else, locally, I don't think I've handled a 70-200mm zoom or anything longer than 90mm in over three years. Just not interested. 

Over the last two years I've gotten re-acquainted with rangefinder cameras and have quickly reconnected with why I like them so much. First off, I find it a lot easier to compose using the bright line finder frames for the 35mm, 50mm and 75mm focal lengths. Seeing "outside" the frame seems to be critical to the way I like to put together photographs; compositionally speaking.

The other reason I really like using my current rangefinder cameras is the way they forcefully limit one's choices; both of subject matter and also when deciding on which lenses to use. If one really wants to leverage the best of what M series rangefinders have to offer it will almost certainly be done within the focal lengths I listed above. And, for a lot of people, also the 28mm. 

I read about several new cameras that Canon just launched. The R1 seems to be their once every four year Olympic Games standard bearer. And I'm sure that all the picture agency photographers who use Canon will be/are already well supplied with R1 loaners for the games. It's pretty much an easy guess as it smells like a halo product. One everyone with a photo vest and an I.D. card on a lanyard will praise, lust after and write about while few of them will find a real use for the catalog of features this new camera might offer. Michael Johnston, in his column Friday, and Thom Hogan recently, have been wringing their hands and bemoaning the downsizing of various Canon marketing staff members; including one who many traditional photo writers depended upon for test cameras, better parsed information about new cameras, and succinct details that could form the backbone of previews and reviews for their sites. 

It's not just the camera makers who are changing, and re-orienting their human interfaces, it's marketing in general. The focus, going forward is not on what the gray beard photo mystics of our generation pine for (dear God, Ethernet in a grip is actually a desired feature? Really!) but instead it's my kid's generation that needs to be communicated with, coddled and brought into the fold; if that's still possible.

Websites are so beholden for content that camera makers no longer have to make it easy for reviewers or twist their arms to publish lots and lots of words and speculation about the newest cameras and lenses. The online photo-publishers are dying for any new content they can get their hands on as their own market for their stories is quickly evolving as well. The relevance of new camera features is now completely secondary to the newest magic beans of post production. Generative A.I. Neural Filters. Advanced noise processing, etc. And yes...video.

I'm convinced that in the photography markets we're also seeing the same kind of division as we see in financial demographics across the general population. There is a small (but not tiny) segment that can afford to buy the latest gear for use in business or just for their pleasure at the drop of a (Hermés) hat. On the opposite side of the demographic segments is a much bigger group of people who we used to call "middle class." They buy a new camera once every three to five years and they are apt to be hard bargain shoppers --- looking for a camera that gets them the features they think they need while hitting a budget goal they need to match because they are extended or over-extended financially by day-to-day worries. Rising interest rates. Rising inflation. Housing that's getting more expensive and the cost of daycare mimicking the cost of country club dues. 

The folks at the top have voted with their extensive wallets. That's why so many people in the top 5% or even 1% who want cameras are able and willing to buy Leicas and Hasselblads as well as medium format Fuji cameras. They don't actually care about price nearly as much as having a fun camera with a cool pedigree. And they don't care about price because it's becoming a less and less significant percentage of their own wealth. Interesting that dollar for dollar Leica now boasts the highest profit margins in the entire industry....

On the other side of the hedge are the people who are very price conscious and don't drop money on a quarterly basis to enhance what is for them just a hobby. I read it here all the time. We have some readers whose camera collections make my tool kit look as though someone is just cobbling together used stuff on an extremely limited budget. Others are mystified that I might really be thinking of adding another very cool M Leica to my kit. Everyone's financial situation is so different but the majority of people in our current culture, especially the ones with kids and college loans, have to watch their budgets and are cognizant that cameras and lenses are, for them, rare splurges and not just the cost of doing business. Or something fun to play with in the moment.

In MJ's analysis it's all a zero sum game. He's seeing less and less guidance to the consumer, and, more importantly, to the experts used to a personal interaction with companies like Canon and assumes that they are making up for a lower marketing headcount and its negative effects on the quantity of sales by increasing the prices of their top cameras. Fewer sales but higher margins. He posits that this raising of prices creates a death spiral in which fewer people will be disposed to buy the pricier and pricier cameras and when sales inevitably drop the makers will/must again raise prices to compensate for the fall off of quantity and preserve their margins. And this price inflation caused by dropping market share but increased pricing will happen over and over again. But let's be rational for a minute and look at pricing history for Canon's "halo" sports cameras. Since that's the current burr under the saddle for these photo bloggers.

In 2010, if you were a sports photographer who shot with Canons and you wanted the flagship sports camera (as opposed to the high resolution camera model in the same dress) your choice at the time was the Canon EOS-1D Mark III body. It cost $6499. IN 2010 !!!!!!!!!!!!! Inflation in the period from then to today was 66.8%. By any financial metric that would put the cost, in today's dollars, of the 'antiquated' 2010 halo product at around $9700 USD. Seems like we're being offered quite a bargain and not at all an overpriced or increased price model in 2024. It's priced at the same $6499. Add in all the new performance features and one can easily see that the current sports photographer is getting a huge increase in actual value for the dollars over the old model. And for thousands of dollars less! While I don't know of anyone who needs to have 40 fps, with no black out between frames, to take good photos I have to admit that no one is asking me to head over to Paris to shoot the track and field events for publication. But in real dollars it's looking like a better and more modern camera is being offered at the extreme discount of about $3200. If that's an indication of a pricing spiral then it's certainly spiraling in the right direction for professional camera users. And well heeled buyers.

I can make the same kinds of comparisons where Leica's SL line up is involved. The original SL was priced at $7499 USD at its introduction in 2015. The SL2 was launched four years later, with several refinements and double the resolution for......wait for it.....$5999. Let's say $6,000. Inflation in those years was averaging around 2% so we'd factor in about 6% inflation to the price of the original SL and voila! We have a $2,000 discount for the newer, more sophisticated camera introduced four years later. Still spiraling, by my accounting, by a great amount, in our favor (us being the consumers). 

I imagine that others are seeing a change in media management personel (Canon's declining high touch headcount) through different colored lenses than me. But the truth is, and I see this in my own blogging metrics, that written blog sites and review websites have consistently lost readership and engagement as younger, more media savvy content producers have rushed to create stickier video programming on YouTube to replace the traditional text only websites. The viewers that remain on traditional sites like mine are heading into retirement or already comfortably seated there. Their need for ever newer and more powerful cameras is statistically heading into a reasonably logical decline. Also, their incomes, for the demographic majority, have dropped --- especially among those retired from profitable work. With no pressing need for nose bleed new features in a camera, and a more limited budget for acquisitions, their uptake of cameras is in a natural decline. Time creating its own spiral. This has nothing to do with the warm handshake and free information hose of human interactions with the companies who sell the products. 

I can see this in my own practice. I no longer want to go after the bigger, multi-day jobs. They are complex and can be frustrating, and also layered with opportunities for nail-biting. But when the big jobs go away so does the bigger budget and the rationale to rush out and buy the latest camera gear. And we used to buy the gear because we might be able to convince ourselves that we'd amortize it easily and that it might make our work more profitable by dint of added capabilities (see: video. the sink hole of art). We never really need a steady flow of new stuff. 

I've been buying and employing used Leica M 240 rangefinder cameras for just about everything I do these days. Part of it is nostalgia for a time from 1990 to 2004 when I regularly used a brace of M6 cameras and the delightful little lenses for the bulk of my event work, done regularly in fun locations. Another part of the appeal is that most of the pre-owned cameras I've bought cost half of their new price...or less. There are so many cool, smaller but equally sharp lenses for the M system, across a number of brands. I seem to favor the Zeiss ZM lenses which can still be had new for various fractions of the cost of their new Leica counterparts. All of the ZM lenses I use were bought pre-owned. Some much less expensive than even their lesser performing Sony or Canon counterparts. 

I'm booked to do an environmental portrait in a law office on Wednesday morning (after swim practice). I'll do the job with an M240 and the 75mm f1.9 Voigtlander lens. Maybe I'll also experiment with the same company's 90mm f2.8 lens. I'll bring a far smaller lighting kit and lean more on my winning personality and depth of experience to make it all work. It will be fun. And I will give them a portrait they'll appreciate as much as the last 60 or so I've done for them. But the need to arrive with a huge medium format camera system, big lights and a retinue of eager assistants has vanished. My clients don't need the show and I don't need the logistical burden. 

I guess the long and short of it is: If you aren't lucky enough to be in the 1% of people with the highest net worth you might never buy an extensive, new Leica system, complete with back up cameras bodies and every Leica lens imaginable. You'll probably never be able to justify dropping the cash for an Aston Martin or a Bentley automobile either. But you will be able to buy really nice and totally competent cameras and enjoy the actual purpose of the camera: to make photographs that you enjoy and might treasure. 

Cameras are not getting more expensive. Not if you look at the math of inflation. It's just that we've figured out so many more ways to spend the money we have and it's now spread over so much more stuff. Like $50,000+ SUV vehicles (two per family), a couple hundred dollars a month in streaming services, TikTok-worthy vacations for the whole family in exotic places, new phones. New phone services. Bigger houses than ever before. Pricier child care. Most of which are elective choices. And just as health insurance doesn't usually cover elective procedures you alone get to decide for yourself where a good amount of your cash goes. Nicer cars or better cameras? More meals outside the home or cooler lenses? etc. etc.

If you are one of my luckier readers basking in the 1% please, please, please, buy --- and then get bored with --- more and more Leica rangefinder cameras. And lenses. The prices for the used ones are just right. 

All of this was written quickly because I am so happy that my damaged hand seems to have made a great recovery from yesterday and I am back able to type with all ten fingers and a larger part of my brain. (Pain reduced cognitive power by about 19% yesterday!). 

Anyway, I took one of my used cameras (the black enamel M240) along with the used Carl Zeiss 50mm f2.0 ZM lens for a morning walk today. I thought the blood flow would be good for my beleaguered hand. It was. The walk also gave me the opportunity to reacquaint myself with this particular 50mm lens. It's one of two 50s I have for the M system. The other is one of the few I've purchased new. It's the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO lens. I really like the Zeiss version. It's not quite the performer the VM is but it sits nicely on the camera and it's both sharp and mellow at the same time. 

I was so happy to be in the zone with a favorite camera and lens that I photographed mannequins even  knowing how much you despise them. My advice? Get over it and look at how the lens works with the subject. That's the intention of most of the photos here. This is not a fine art gallery. Not by any stretch.

Takeaway: Hand better. Thom and MJ see the camera market differently than I. Used cameras are fun. It's better to be a rich camera collector than a strapped one on a budget. But when it comes to using cameras it seems like there is a regression to a common denominator. We all put our cameras over our shoulders one strap at a time! The best photographers I know?  The ones with the most comfortable shoes....

Click on the photos to make em big. Really!

Murals everywhere in Austin. 

If you go out to photograph in the 13th best city in the world (latest statistic) to live in, filled with Gen Z people. Remember that few of them get up on the weekend days before noon. You have the place to yourself before then. 

You knew you were missing the mannequins. Right?

The mantra I say to myself as I leave the camera store...

It's been so long since I've seen one of these. I didn't know they still existed. Wow.

And it looks a bit sinister, doesn't it? I know I wouldn't stick a credit card in there...

Does anybody still use cash? At all? Maybe just tips for the valet parking guys...

Another new building right in the middle of my usual walk. 

Can't believe I'm just noticing this. 

A cynical approach to domestic tranquility?

the right hand it back at 90%. I found out that even though I am very much left-hand dominant I do use that right hand for a lot of stuff. The world seems to be designed for right-handed people. 

I guess I'm talking to the 93% of right handed people here. 

Anybody else a "lefty"?