It's probably not a good idea to eat donuts...but it sure is fun.

 

There's a shop on South Congress Ave. called, "The Salty". I don't know why it's called that because what they specialize in is donuts and well made coffee. I was finishing up a walk up and down S. Congress and heading back to my car. I'd parked just down from the donut shop. I normally skip donuts, especially in the afternoon but for some reason a bunch of fried white flour and sugar seemed like a really good idea. I walked in an immediately ran into Keith. An old friend who runs a very professional digital imaging lab in Austin. We spent a few minutes catching up and then he was out the door with his wife. 

I looked through the assortment of donuts but skipped the inventive, whimsical and over wrought selections and instead chose a huge, luscious looking, standard glazed donut. Throwing caution to the wind I also ordered a cappucino. I secured these treasures in the car and headed home to enjoy them in the quiet solitude of my studio. The donut was great. The coffee was good. The experience of "The Salty" was nice. 

Yesterday I spent time photographing with the 35mm lens on a rangefinder camera. I have many more images from the outing but the takeaway for me is that the 35mm lens and the sensor in a twelve year old camera are both pretty much perfect. 

Everyone loves to bitch about prices of gear these days but there is a simple solution, if you can pull your ego and binary thinking out of the process. You can source used equipment that's perfectly good, capable of wonderful imaging potential, and very accessible for fractions of the cost of new gear. If you are looking at Leica rangefinders as I did recently you might find that a $2400, perfectly nice M240 is just as much fun to shoot with as a brand new, ten thousand dollar model. And there exists a good range in between these choices. It's not a binary choice. 

Where lenses are involved I think I've gotten just as nice images and much more joy out of small collection of used Zeiss ZM lenses that were made for rangefinders and introduced  along with Zeiss's attempt at success in a renewed rangefinder camera market, starting around 2005. The ZM 35mm f2.0 Biogon lens I was shooting with during my walk was purchased used and set me back about $500. Not $5,000 dollars. From everything I can see it's a wonderful lens and I can't imagine how much more performance one could expect ---- even if budget was no object. 

I'll post some more pix a bit later. My coffee is getting cold and needs a warm-up.