Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

After one of their most dramatic marketing build-ups in recent times, Leica unveiled the X Vario camera on June 11. I was fortunate to get a working sample—for just a few days—and put it through its paces. Here are my impressions.

The only thing better than owning a high-end compact camera is owning two of the same model. At the risk of sounding extravagant or greedy, let me explain.

Here’s something you probably never expected me to write about: men’s shorts. To be specific, they are OKC Mesa Cargo Shorts and I bought them online from Cabela’s on sale for $15. There is a label inside that says “The Original Khaki Company” along with laundering instructions. That’s all I could find to identify the manufacturer.

Partly because I own some great Minolta glass (including a 17-35mm G-series zoom) and partly because one of my best friends in the whole world, Mickey Iwata, a former PMDA Technical Achievement Award winner, is in charge of the Sony Alpha DSLR/SLT accessories, I bought a Sony Alpha 55.

It’s really scary when I think of it this way, but my career in the photo industry spans parts of four decades. I started as a junior salesman at Minolta Corporation in 1975 and left as the vice president of marketing for the camera division 29 years later. Minolta is gone and the Konica interlopers are out of the camera business. Many of my friends in Japan are now designing and marketing cameras for Sony, having moved there when Minolta sold off all of their camera patents and other intellectual property. Other former colleagues here in the US are now selling Panasonic, Fujifilm and Samsung products. I am doing what I have done long if not well: writing.

On Thanksgiving morning I left home before eight and drove my Jeep 20 miles to photograph a farm I’ve been shooting for the past 15 years. Sometimes it’s hard to keep a relationship fresh and exciting for such a long period of time, but like an exciting woman, this subject reveals something new to me every time we meet.

A short time ago I was shooting with a Tamron 18-270mm zoom lens on a Canon EOS 40D and discovered something very surprising. When I reviewed the images of some leaves that were backlit against a bright sky I didn’t see any DPF. You know what DPF is, of course: Dreaded Purple Fringe. It usually inhabits the contrasty edges that separate highlight and shadow areas in some digital images. I’d upload an example, but I know you have plenty of your own.