New hotness came in the mail today, well new to me at least, and so the first thing I did was take a mirror selfie with it. The second thing I did was make a strap for it out of parts, and the third thing I did was take it for a little walk, get some real images, see what it’s actually capable of. So here we are.
It’s a Leica M11 Monocrhome, a digital rangefinder that doesn’t record color information. Black and white only (actually 16 bit grayscale but who’s counting all the way to sixty five thousand (ish) shades of gray?). Why? Needed something to shake things up a little, and I feel like a little back-to-basics is just the ticket. Not that this camera could be called ‘basic’. It’s more like someone got really into guitars, had one tuned way down, took out a pickup. Most people that hold it won’t know what to do with it, but in the right hands (hopefully mine)… it can really shred.
I’ve learned, though, through long experience, not to judge cameras by their first impressions. My Z8 I barely use any more because it’s big, but I loved it so much at first it was the only camera I took to Portugal (when I need something fast though it’s the only one to use). The original M11 I was really cold on until a couple months in I aligned the rangefinder. This one is helped in that it’s basically identical to that M11. Its a problematic fave though, because of the slow startup time and the tendency I have to forget to focus sometimes, or think I have it in the right hyperfocal range only to get the pictures back blurry. But for all that, I can’t quit it.
This new body has a few other tricks up it’s metaphorical sleeves, though. The ISO can go to the truly mind-bending value of 200,000. I remember a long time ago when I was blown away by ISO 25k, this is three more stops but also looks a lot better. Might be able to push it even further. Testing is in order.
Speaking of repeating myself, I’ve made this picture before too: here. The trees have grown in a bit, and this one feels more claustrophobic without the bit of sky to escape to.
The North Beach garage I parked at had all these like fortunes at the back of every space, I couldn’t help myself adding “…in bed” to each of them.
I didn’t expect this photo to work, it didn’t seem like there would be enough separation between the painter’s hoodie and the grass around him, but it kinda does.
This was a fun little store; they had a doctor’s bag on the shelf that I was very tempted by, but I need to just stop screwing around and make my own. I’ve done similar things before. Still.
After I took this guy’s photo there were a couple ladies that wanted me to take their picture, and I said sure, and then they stopped in the middle of fucking Columbus Ave and I was like no, get out of the street are you nuts? I didn’t say that last part, just “Get out of the street.” I said it nicely, and they didn’t. Then I was like no, I won’t take your picture in the middle of the street, goodbye.
More people on scooters. Moving targets.
There may be an optimal lane to be in for pictures facing northwest from the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, but I have yet to find it. This one is pretty good though.
Posted by matt on 2026-07-07T09:16:57Z GMT
These are the film photos from the same 36 hours the of the last post. Generally I don’t take my digital camera down to the dock, since electronics and water don’t play nice. This year I took the Texas Leica, which isn’t waterproof, but the big negatives are so nice to work with. I don’t think I can shoot 35mm any more?
These were super hard to edit, though. There were some technical difficulties; I was getting newton rings and had to order a special piece of anti-newton glass, and then had to make a cardboard mask to keep them off the scanner glass. But also once I got them into the computer just like, making selects from the six or eight rolls was what took me so dang long. Maybe I should hire a photo editor? I’ve thought about doing that in the past, but never really gotten around to it. I guess you could say I have feelings about these photos tied up with my feelings for all these people.
But finally, I don’t think sitting here and staring at these any longer would magically produce a tighter and more cohesive edit, so here we are, 30 photos deep. Everybody looks so good.
I may declare backlog bankruptcy after this. I think I have some stuff that probably deserves to get out though, even though I spent a lot of the trailing 12 months just trying to stay alive (three or four fractures, three abdominal surgeries, etc). We’ll see. Maybe I’ll try to keep up this pace of just posting. Bias towards posting. A tiny incremental pushing out of real work by a real person.
Posted by matt on 2026-06-27T06:22:00Z GMT
Long ago, on an island not too far away… This was last year, when I was kind of in the thick of it. I had just gotten my dialysis port in, but hadn’t yet run with it. Basically you have to heal for some weeks before you can begin treatment with peritoneal dialysis, so I had a tube coming out of my gut that made me very prone to infection. Usually when I go to driftwood I go for the whole time, and last year I was only able to go for like 36 hours. Basically one dock day, one night, and the morning after, and then I was on the ferry home.
One of the things that makes the island special is there’s basically nothing there. You bring in everything you need and pack out everything at the end. I wonder if that’s how the early days of burning man felt? Just like, throwing a cool party with your friends in a place that has nothing (well, there’s not nothing there, Jack has a pretty big solar array and a deck, and the all-important dock is there).
There is a alchemy to just coming together with a bunch of people like that, just to share space and time and sort of care for each other. Not in a ‘this guy needs a nurse’ kind of way (which given my trailing 12 months I also understand) but passing around snacks and sunscreen and shooting the shit all afternoon. Everybody brings their own grace notes to the thing, and there’s a beautiful music to it. Also there’s a lot of good music over the speakers.
Gonna throw up the film photos after this, and I have some things to say about those, too. I have been editing these for almost a year and need to let them out into the world. Perfect is the enemy of done, as they say.
Posted by matt on 2026-06-27T06:01:28Z GMT
In keeping with my new practice of getting the pictures out as quickly as I can, news is new, as they say, this was last weekend. Drop party is a celebration of music and art; it’s been hosted at a bunch of different spots over the years, but we keep coming back to the same central themes. Usually one or more DJs, always at least DJ OTHA, and at least one community painting; this year they had three easels going all night, and someone was swapping out canvases when they got done (when is a painting done? who knows?)
I was in and out, shooting the whole night. My photos from last year weren’t the best, but this year I just sort of relaxed and let whatever happened happen? You can’t really push these kinds of things, or at least I can’t. When I’m shooting, people definitely respond to whatever energy I’m putting out, and respond in kind; if I’m nervous or anxious and fumble or screw up, it definitely puts people off being photographed. Or maybe I’m projecting.
It was a pretty experimental night, for me; I haven’t been to a party since February (still have those pictures in the pipe, at some point I might get them out). I took a bunch of lenses I hadn’t used and got to mess around a bit. The 21mm I really like but I feel like it needs some kind of shooting tweaks to make it work properly; as it is I can’t really see to focus in the live view, the optical VF isn’t wide enough, and the other finder I have doesn’t have any focus indicator. I suppose I could just always use it at f/8, which would make it focus-free.
I also got to use the Noctilux a bit. It’s been mellowing on my shelf so I could forget some of the bad feeling I had about its focus issues. I fixed them some time ago, but so much of what I do with a camera is by feeling, any nagging doubt will throw me off. Yes I’m a sensitive little baby like that.
Enough about me and my camera shit thought. Me and Sophie went over in the middle of the afternoon to set up, then went to Bronco Billy’s to get everyone pizza. The Bull Durham there is still one of my favorite pies in the Bay Area.
Posted by matt on 2026-06-26T23:45:35Z GMT
Hot off the SD card, here are some photos from last night. Drink and draw, which I think I’ve mentioned here before, decided instead of the usual meetup at Lovely’s, we’d make our own smashburgers and watch a movie, specifically the anime Redline. Akhil was saying before the we watched it that the movie was called ‘Speed Racer on crack’ when it came out. I’d never seen it, but that’s not un-accurate? Except like, there’s no expectation that an animated feature will be grounded in reality, so somehow it reads as more grounded than the neon acid trip of Speed Racer. Maybe even a little noir? There are also a bunch of Escher-esque reality-warping acceleration sequences that also are just the best animation I’ve seen since watching Paprika.
Akhil hosted and cooked the burgs. He also showed us a really moving short called ‘Butterfly‘, which saying basically anything about the plot would be spoilers, but every frame of the thing is literally a painting? Which is just a wild amount of work and also stunning as an animation style.
This was the first time I’ve been out of the house at 10pm since the transplant, which meant, of course, that I had forgotten to bring my 10pm anti-rejection meds. So like 15 minutes before the end of the movie, I had to run back to my house (which luckily was like 2 blocks away) to get them. Of course, even being that close, I missed the end of the show. Luckily for me, the whole thing is on youtube.
Posted by matt on 2026-06-19T21:57:07Z GMT
