ALL POSTS INDEX
A hyperlinked index of every ULTRAsomething post in descending chronological order
-
Sentences and Sensibility: Leica’s M (246) Pt. 2
This is ULTRAsomething’s second installment in the “Sensibility Series.” It features thousands of words, grouped into hundreds of sentences — a handful of which are actually about the topic it purports to discuss: the Leica M Monochrom (Type 246). I should also mention that it’s populated with over a dozen…
-
Sensors and Sensibility : The Leica M (246) Monochrom
What if Jane Austin had the opportunity to test and compare Leica’s new Type 246 M Monochrom camera against both the existing Monochrom and the M Type 240? Would her first published work have been a tale of romantic fiction? Or would it have been something closer to this?
-
Yin Every Yang (Part 2)
Traveling to Iceland in the dead of winter? No problem. Traveling to Iceland carrying a backpack and a zoom lens? Now that’s culture shock.
-
Yin Every Yang (Part 1)
In this world, there are things that motivate and things that demotivate. Curiously, what motivates one person might be exactly the same thing that demotivates someone else. Case in point: exotic vacations to scenic locales. For many people, such trips stimulate an outpouring of photographic activity. But for me, the…
-
Appropriating Cortini
Does a song need an evolving melody in order to be called a song? Or can something else evolve in its place? Composer and sound designer, Alessandro Cortini claims the latter. And it’s a claim I’ve just appropriated to help describe my latest photographic tendencies.
-
Up Goes The Ante: Fuji’s X100T
Fuji and innovation go hand-in-hand. My Hasselblad Xpan? A creation of Fuji’s. My pocketable, point-and-shoot Medium Format camera? Also Fuji. My next digital camera? Well, Fuji’s new X100T has certainly warranted a meticulous examination — nearly 5,000 words worth of meticulousness! So is that lump in my pocket a new…
-
Whenevergram
This article is for anyone whose obsessive need to update their social media outlets has forced them to post ill-considered crap. It introduces a conceptual new product called “Whenevergram,” which will force people to post carefully-considered crap instead.
-
Applied Relativity: The Leica M-A
Somewhere in this meandering tale of chance encounters and philosophical philosophizing, there’s a review of the new Leica M-A camera — a camera that just might be the closest any manufacturer has yet come to that elusive quality known as “perfection.”
-
A Measly Million
The Fibonacci sequence might get all the glory, but it won’t help anyone predict which photo will be the first to surpass the $7 million mark at auction. For that, you’ll need the “Egor sequence.”
-
Season Seven
What if ULTRAsomething was a television series?
-
Thoughts From The Void
For the first time in a decade, I took a break from photography without existential angst being its impetus — but that’s not to say it didn’t nearly prevent my return.
-
Can Monkeys Fly?
Never say never.
-
Pi
By employing the world’s most circuitous path, this article predicts the impending return of a vibrant and burgeoning film camera market. Crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
-
The Are-Bure-Boke-Matic
Grainy. Blurry. Out-of-focus. To the average photographer, these are characteristics to avoid at all cost. Fortunately, I never claimed to be “the average photographer.” So for all you not-so-average photographers seeking to infuse some low-fidelity grunge into your high-fidelity world, I present the Olympus Pen EE-2 camera for your consideration.
-
Psycho Semantics
You’d think, after a decade-and-a-half of widespread moaning, bragging, posturing, marketing and pontificating, that every conceivable angle of the film vs digital debate would have been covered ad nauseam by ten thousand bloggers and a hundred thousand forum participants. So how is it I managed to uncover a heretofore un-debated…
-
The Blacksmith’s Lot
Like telegraphs, typewriters, turntables and anvils, the Voigtlander Vito III 35mm folding camera is a relic of an earlier time. To many, that makes it obsolete. But for those who truly enjoy the act of photography, its antediluvian origins do not equate to uselessness. Distilled of all bells and whistles, it…
-
Caffenolog 2: A Shot in the Dark
Part 2 of the Caffenolog ostensibly discusses developing Acros 100 in Caffenol-C-M. But because this is an ULTRAsomething article, that whole caffenol angle might actually be an elaborate excuse to further hone my Hasselblad XPan skills (and the word “skills,” as used here, is infused with irony). Then again, it’s…
-
Cones of Silence
Everyone redesigns their website now and then. But only ULTRAsomething would use such a mundane task as justification for an observational post on the state of humanity.
-
Caffenolog 1: Enter the Dragon
Once upon a time, I believed instant coffee was one of the most insipid substances on earth — but that was before I started dunking my film in it.
-
Sigma vs. Nerd (Part 3: The DP3)
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I spent a tremendous number of words discussing the merits of Sigma’s Foveon sensor for BW photography. In this article, I’ll look specifically at the DP3 Merrill as a camera, rather than as a box that holds a Foveon sensor.