A (very) short review of the Sigma 35mm L-mount lens
Sigma 35mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary Lens for Leica L
I bought a Panasonic Lumix S5 primarily for scanning film negatives, but since it also happens to be a fine digital camera, I bought a some lenses to go with it. One of those is the Sigma 35mm f/2 DG DN Contemporary. I kind of love it.
It’s a very good lens. It’s no Leica APO Summicron 35mm, but it’s in the ballpark. I find that it does a great job. It renders sharp, clean, and with decent bokeh. It seems well-built. I have no problems with how it looks or feels.
It has an aperture ring. All lenses should have aperture rings.
It cost nearly 10 times less than the APO Summicron.
That’s it! One day, I’ll probably have the Summicron again, but for now this little Sigma makes me happy because it’s so good and was very inexpensive compared to the Leica.
Here are a few snaps I’ve taken with the lens.
Hot Dogs
Stella
Alice
Friday, September 16, 2022
Leica M3 rewind knob
I think of synths as computers that have their priorities straight: Hit a key and a noise comes out
What Modern Humans Can Learn From Ancient Software –Paul Ford
I don’t understand the fascination with food/cooking shows.
It’s going on 3 weeks since I last published my weekly newsletter. I suspected this would happen.
Dammit, I’ve listed the Leica M6 for sale:
Leica M6 Classic for sale
Don’t miss out on David Foster Wallace’s piece on Roger Federer: Roger Federer as Religious Experience
Thursday, September 15, 2022
I still love Arc but its lack of support for bookmarklets is cramping my style. I may need to fall back on some Keyboard Maestro macros in the meantime.
We often fret over losing our “stuff” if it’s kept in the hands of some impersonal, privacy-invasive, cloud service. And yet, the only things I ever seem to lose are the things I’ve been personally responsible for.
Thinking about using Flickr embeds here rather than dealing with managing image files, links, etc. e.g. here’s one of my dad playing mini-golf on the Quest.
Dad playing mini-golf on the Quest
Embedded Flickr photos let me avoid the extra friction of managing files locally. They link to larger versions of photos and give access to longer captions, metadata, etc. “But what if Flickr goes away!?” you ask. Flickr hasn’t lost an image of mine in nearly 20 years. I’ll deal with that problem in the unlikely event that Flickr shuts down. I’m not worried.
I think I’m good with just these two film cameras: A 1960 Leica M3 and a 2021 Leica MP.
1960 and 2021
Sweet, someone made a standalone GUI app for Stable Diffusion on silicon Macs Diffusion Bee
Gruber, on last week’s Apple event:
There’s certainly more drama with a live presentation — with this format, entirely pre-recorded, we’ll never see an Apple feature demo fail again. That drama energizes a live presentation. Something has been lost.
I’ll tell you what’s been lost, my anxiety. I can’t handle live presentations. I worry the entire time that someone will screw up and I’ll feel terrible for everyone involved. I feel terrible for them in advance. This new format is much more relaxing for me and I hope they keep it forever.
I feel bad for all the Figma users today.
The Internet is now comprised of mostly cries for attention.
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Leica MP
Above is another reason I couldn’t sell the Leica MP. It’s just beginning to “brass”…by my own hand. Now it’s personal!
I’m experimenting with using Olivetti mode in Doom rather than Doom’s default Writeroom mode. Writeroom mode is a bit too aggressive. Olivetti just sets a readable line width by adding borders to the window. That’s good enough.
I’ve moved my book list to https://baty.net/books. It used to be in a Github repo using Github Pages to render a “website” but that’s overkill for my simple markdown list of books. Of course Blot makes it easier because it does the Markdown rendering for me, automatically.
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
With much help from David (Blot’s creator), I have now imported nearly all of the posts from the Hugo version of baty.net. I skipped some short posts and a handful of journal entries, but I feel like the important stuff is here now.
I withdrew the Leica MP listing. I just couldn’t go through with the sale of what might be the most beautiful camera ever made. I bought it brand new and I know that I would never allow myself to do that again.
This is handy: Emacs as an Org capture server
Also trying this for natural language searching of my Org files: Khoj
We’re having internet installed at our (empty) office building so us three remaining owners can work there. Why not, it’s just sitting there waiting for someone to lease it.
Monday, September 12, 2022
The critic whose downvote dropped Marcel the Shell With Shoes On’s Rotten Tomatoes score to 99% must be a heartless, contrarian asshole.
In less than a year, most blog posts are going to be littered with cool-but-unnecessary AI-generated images instead of stock or Unsplash photos as they do today. Oh goody.
Two rules in life: First, never sell a Leica. Second, never switch blogging platforms. (PS I never obey those rules and have come to regret it)
Roll-085 Leica M3
Here a few from a recent roll using the Leica M3 and the Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH.
Mom and Dad. Leica M3
Dad playing mini-golf on the Quest. Leica M3
Molly. Leica M3
Michigan Fucking State. Leica M3
Saturday, September 10, 2022
All of my notes are to remain in Emacs. I am so tired of looking for things in a dozen places where I might have recorded something. Was that in December? Oh, right, I was using Curio then. Sigh. Or at the very least I could use Emacs as the index in which I kept notes about everything and occasionally documented and linked to where the in formation can be found. That seems like a cop-out though. However I do it, the idea is that if I need to find something, I look in Emacs and it, or at least a pointer, will always be there.
I have no interest in “succeeding” in the same way everyone else seems to want to. If I can’t do it my own way, I’d rather fail.
I also have every intention of continuing to slow down in just about every way. Driving, moving, thinking, reading, eating. There’s no rush.
Friday, September 9, 2022
Phil writes glowingly about David Merfield and Blot and I couldn’t agree more.
Does anyone know, assuming I could generate a single HTML page with every post, if I could make a nice book out of it using something like Paged.js? I’d like to do that.
Saw John Mulaney last night and it was a “no phone” event meaning they bagged all phones and smart watches for the duration. I wore my mechanical watch and you wouldn’t believe how many people asked me for the time.
iA Writer vs Emacs
Emacs can be ugly, but it doesn’t have to be. Above we have the highly-polished and thoughtful iA Writer on the left and Emacs on the right.
I’m using Doom Emacs in “Zen” mode, which is basically a tweaked version of Writeroom-mode. My tweaks include using iA’s Quattro font as a variable-pitch font and a little spacing via line-spacing.
(add-hook 'writeroom-mode-hook (lambda () (setq line-spacing 0.5)))
iA Writer is wonderful for editing Markdown files. Might even be “nicer” overall than Emacs for that purpose. It’s just so smooth, you know? But, Emacs is Emacs and that’s tough to beat. I alternate between them. It helps that I’ve made them look similar.
I keep removing excuses to quit using Emacs.