Maxwell Street Market - January 2015

The market was a little sparse this weekend - usually things don't start hopping until spring.  But Maxwell Street is open year round so there's always something going on.  This Sunday it was almost 40 degrees so I grabbed a couple of cameras and sprinted out the door.  Maxwell Street is pretty much my default go-to location for street shooting, there's always a broad & diverse group of people and you can usually find a few characters as well.  

Two things to note - I finally got around to using my 21mm f/3.4 Super Angulon on the Monochrom. The rear element on this lens sits very close to the sensor which means light will hit the corners at an angle - causing corner softness and vignetting (and a red color cast if you're shooting digital color). I'm not terribly pleased with the results - the vignetting is a bit strong for my tastes.  But I don't have any other super wide lenses so I'll just have to make do or use it exclusively on film.

Point 2 - I'm super in love with the Ricoh GR.  As a street shooting pocket sized camera it has no equal.  I just put it in 2m snap focus mode at f/8 - everything from 1 meter to infinity is in focus so taking shots is instantaneous. And image quality is just incredible when you're shooting f/8 and ISO 200.  

Roy Hargrove Quintet - Jazz Showcase Chicago

These were taken during the Sunday matinee at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. Every year Roy Hargrove sets up camp for a year end "residency" - this year from December 26 all the way out to January 4. With at least 2 shows per night, that's a lot of time for the band to  hit its stride.  Overall, a great show and I can't wait to see him again next December.

These shots were taken with the E-M1 and Ricoh GR. The Olympus is outstanding for concerts - autofocus is very snappy, there's no mirror slap to distract the audience or band, and the 75mm 1.8 really lets you get in close to the action.  My biggest problem stemmed from my own stupidity - I had the OM setup for JPG shooting instead of RAW.  The noise reduction applied to JPGs is pretty heavy handed - the 2nd shot below is with the 12-40mm 2.8 lens and the ISO bumped up to 3200.  If you zoom in 100% the noise is pretty awful, details are smeared and the noise looks "clumpy".  If I had left the camera on RAW then I could have used Lightroom's NR sliders and gotten a much better result.

The GR is (not surprisingly) not ideal for concert photography especially when light levels start dipping down.  The 2.8 max aperture means that you're shooting at ISO 2500-3200 which isn't where I want to be with this camera.  I find ISO 1600 to be really nice with RAW and 3200 starts to fall apart, especially in the shadows.  

E-M1 with 75mm 1.8

E-M1 with 12-40mm f/2.8

Ricoh GR

Ricoh GR 

Olympus 45mm f/1.8