photography

New Lens Tryout: Canon EOS M 32mm f/1.4

It’s been a while since I purchased a new lens. The truth is, I really have all I need, even though the Canon R system keeps tempting me.

For my mirrorless system, I’m sticking with my trusty Canon M. Forever, I’ve had the EOS M 22mm attached to that camera. I see in cropped 35mm on that camera.

So when Canon had a fire sale on refurbished 32mm f/1.4 prime lenses for Black Friday, I thought, “Now’s the time to get something new.” 

(My other plan is to upgrade the camera itself, since my faithful M is almost 10 years old now. But we’ll see what next year brings.)

The 32mm is a 51mm equivalent on the M system. My comfort zone is in that 35-50mm range, but the extra F stop adds the opportunity for some shallow depth of field on a near-portrait fixed lens. All these years, I’ve been limited to a 35mm view on the M. This new lens was my chance to put another option in a camera I use 75% of the time.

And what a lens. It took some time to get used to this new field of view, but after fiddling with the unique focus system, I got the hang of it. When we went Christmas tree shopping this weekend, I saw it as a perfect chance to take the lens for a spin on a chilly, sunny midwestern December day.

As with the other M lenses, the 32mm is tack sharp. It’s stunning what these little, lightweight lenses can do. It does stick out from the front of the camera more than the pancake-style 22mm does, so getting the grip and balance just right took some time. It was also weird not to look through a viewfinder and see that 50mm field of view – the M has a touchscreen and touch-focus system. 

These are minor getting-adjusted points. It’s a great lens, and I can see building a truly lightweight, mirrorless system out of this, the 22mm, and maybe a wide-angle M lens paired with a new M camera. 

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Artist vs Content Creator

In Terrible Simplicity

“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to decide if you’re a content creator, or an artist.”
– Gozer Goodspeed

Gozer’s tweet thread (via Jeffery Saddoris) is great to think about if you Make Things – either as a content creator or artist. 

I wonder all the time, watching my kids view YouTube video after YouTube video: is all this content artistic? Or is it entertainment? Is there anything wrong with either approach?

A few thoughts in reaction to Gozer’s thread:

  • Content creation is a conveyor belt – art is a walk in the woods.
  • Content creation seems more about business. Not that making art can’t be a business, but content creation, as Gozer puts it, involves “relentless output” to feed an algorithm hoping someone will discover your stuff.
  • Art is at your speed. Content creation is at the speed of an audience’s appetite. 
  • A lot of this speaks to artists as business owners (music in Gozer’s case) – but I bet a lot of hobbyists see “content creation” as their ticket to the big money. Actually making an income from your artistic hobby can be very, very difficult for most people.

I consider myself someone who makes and shares the things I make, at my own pace, for a very small audience. But I do it for me, not them, and I certainly don’t do it to feed a social media platform. 

And then there’s the language that gets thrown around in business and entertainment and just about everywhere: do you make “content?” Or do you make photographs? 

 

 

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Autumn Around the Neighborhood

Our new neighborhood is filled with trees – trees of all kinds. This fall, we’re watching them turn magical. Even the oaks, normally a drab brown, are a brilliant orange around here.

Luckily, we had a few nice days this week after a dreary, wet, chilly week last week. So I went exploring to see what I could see. 

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Fall Things

This weekend we did fall things.

In October, it’s like this all over the midwest: pumpkins, apples, cider, and donuts. Some of our local cider mills are now so busy that we have to go looking for quieter, more intimate places. We found that at Red Egg Farm, just outside of Jackson. It had all the traditional autumn stuff we wanted – cider slushies, hay rides, petting zoo – without the busy crowd of some other places.

We also visited Adams Farm to pick up actual apples (for cider) and pumpkins (for carving) to bring home. 

We did fall things, because it’s that time of year. 

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Clearing the Backlog

Get The Broom

About two years ago, I fell out of using Instagram – something about the way it had become a photo-centric Facebook, and how it shows ads every third or fourth post, turned me off.

Thing is, I have an incredible backlog of iPhone photos waiting to be shared. There was something about that daily rhythm of posting to Instagram that kept things moving. 

So now, two years later, I have a ton of stuff to share, and I jumped back on Instagram to clear out those old photos and put them somewhere. Flickr is an obvious choice, too, but Flickr isn’t nearly as simple and (I hate to say it) mindless as scrolling through a series of photos from people you follow. 

Time to clear out that backlog. 

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Door County, Wisconsin

Kicking off a series of photos from our summer vacation spot: Door County, Wisconsin.

Yes, we’d been there in 2018 and 2020. We love the area so much that we went back this year for our family holiday.

Different cabin (the big one), different month (August instead of June/July), and different crowd (we brought the in-laws), but other than that, it was as spectacular as it always is.

I take a memory card’s worth of photos wherever we go. Above is a series of windows I saw along the way. Here are some natural spots:

More to come next week.

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