Late Supper

Took the day off from the office and worked around the house. Filled out and filed all my insurance claim forms (all one of them) over the robbery. Six items (two bodies plus vertical grips, two zooms) can cost a lot of money if you want to replace them with current gear. If the insurance company cuts me a check minus our deductible then I'll have a decent (for me) unexpected windfall to replace everything with contemporary technology. The question is with what.

After a day of just doing house chores my wife and I went out for a late supper to a place on International Drive. I like I-Drive because I can exercise my crazy style of photography and nobody bats an eyelash. After all, I-Drive is the heart of tourist country, and tourists are always snapping something. Later on in the restaurant I saw no less than three groups taking photos of themselves, and one of them had a Canon digital Rebel (model unknown). What was interesting is that none of them were using flash. Contemporary cameras now have decent enough high-ISO performance that flash isn't a necessity any longer, especially for the latest consumer DSLRs.

I left for supper with the Olympus E-PL2 with the Leica 25mm in tow. That combination can work in just about any light, usually at or just above base ISO. Because it was late afternoon/early evening light, the deepening shadows and colors were all the more deeper and richer, especially around the restaurant. I love the combination of camera, lens, and light, and with a little extra effort in Lightroom I can actually get pretty close to the original colors, such as the blue neon zig-zag in the top photo. I also love how sharp that Leica lens is wide open, yet I can still achieve a decent fast shutter speed at ISO 200, the E-PL2's base and best ISO.

I tend to wait outdoors for our name to be called. I can wander about and practice photographic "sketches", little experimental vignettes of light, color, and composition that don't really have to do anything but please me. As I was walking slowly down the sidewalk I came upon this huge yucca plant where untold numbers of visitors had carved their names into the succulent's leaves. Every leaf out of the hundreds growing on this one plant had a name crudely carved in it, some with dates. Such mindless vandalism makes me a little sicker every time I see it. How are we as a race going to save our planet and ourselves if we keep going through the world and insisting on carving our names into everything?

It shows what kind of lemmings we humans are, as I'm sure some huge crowd didn't just show up one day and do all this damage to this poor plant. No, someone started it, and as time went on others came by, thought it was cool, and added their own names. This is human destruction against nature, major and minor, perpetuated.

These cacti, growing at different locations, provided an interesting layered effect with the Leica. Once again the Leica at f/1.4 is an awesome optic on the E-PL2. Being able to quickly move around and compose by looking at the back is very fluid and easy. Unlike some critics tend to note, I didn't look like I was holding a stinky baby diaper out in front of me.

Once seated I ordered something simple, soup and salad. My appetite has been lackluster lately, and I tend to eat sparingly and infrequently. It might not be the best nutritionally, but it will certainly help the waistline. The young woman above was our waitress. I was experimenting with the camera inside the restaurant where the sun had finally set and interior lighting was on. The interior was dim, yet the Leica was bright enough that the E-PL2 only raised the ISO to 500 at f/1.4 at 1/60s. Because of how far away she was I heavily cropped the original photograph. I feel this photograph turned out pretty well, at least by my amateur standards.

The Leica 1.4/25mm might be the most expensive prime in my µ4/3rds collection, but it's been worth every penny.