Flickr has been heavily promoting their MODE conference for ages now. It took place this weekend and was ...a completely and utter fizzle, Trumpian in its proportions:

Day two has photos. It's sad. I hope this doesn't bankrupt the company.

Edited September 21Sep 21 by Knuckledragger

Lauren

Unknown

Kenzo

On 9/20/2026 at 7:22 PM, Knuckledragger said:

... I hope this doesn't bankrupt the company.

Their parent headquarters (SmugMug) doesn't look like anyone has been inside for two years.

Nemo Gould's Technostalgia at The Museum of American Heritage (MOAH)

Nikon D4 and CV 58mm f/1.4

Edited September 24Sep 24 by blessingx

One of my favorite photography YouTubers covered a lens whith which I've had a 20 year love/hate relationship.

Comment I posted on it:

I've had an EF 50mm F/1.4 USM in constant use since I bought it in 2006. It has an impressive dent on it from when a drunken reveler knocked my camera to the floor in a nightclub. It still works just fine. I have found the 1.4 to be a HUGELY hit or miss lens. When it hits, it's amazing. So much of the time, it misses. Especially on older bodies that struggle to autofocus with it. The truth is, I prefer my original 1987 EF 50mm F/1.8 mark I, which is a bit of a rare beast. It has a build quality very similar to the EF 35mm F/2, which is to say "okay." One other quirk of the 50mm F/1.4, it does not work well with my infrared modified 5D classic. There's a huge bright spot in the center that doesn't appear with any other lens I attach to the IR 5D. I'm not sure what the cause is, but it means any time I use that combination of body and lens, I will have to work harder than normal editing the shots. Of course, the other side of this Faustian bargain is that sometimes (and only sometimes) the 50/1.4 and IR 5D produce ethereal "horror movie" shots like nothing else I have ever used. The 50/1.4 is a mixed bag, but I find it to be worth keeping and worth using.

The new comment editing widget and I do not get a long, which makes sense as I didn't get along with the old one either.

What I'm talking about with the EF 50mm F/1.4 and IR 5D:

Some more Garry

I think about this shot of his all the time.

The pain of living on MV. Four different "updates" on the delivery of my new camera. Two trips to the post office. No fuckin' camera. The clerk's advice was to try back tomorrow.

On 10/2/2026 at 1:45 PM, Knuckledragger said:

The pain of living on MV. Four different "updates" on the delivery of my new camera. Two trips to the post office. No fuckin' camera. The clerk's advice was to try back tomorrow.

Did it land?

R5 Mk II arrived yesterday, and by "arrived" I mean I drove to the post office and picked the damn thing up. The camera body is comparatively small and lightweight vs an equivalent DSLR. The 5D IV with its battery grip feels like a hulking behemoth in comparison. Even the 5D classic a chonker next to the R5. Funny how much bulk a pentaprism adds. The R5's UI is ...Canon. I had to figure out how to enable shutter activation when "no lens is attached" to use my manual focus glass. From the get go, the R5 pestered me relentlessly to set it up with my iPhone. That necessitated making a "MyCanon" account ...which I did on my laptop, with a real web browser and password manager. Then I had to sign into Canon on my iPhone and pair the two devices. The entire process made want to buy a view camera from 1920.

I own zero R lenses and probably won't for quite some time. I am totally buying an R mount anamorphic. I started with the Canon EF to R adapter and it did what it said on the tin. The lens I had closest was the 135L, which says more about me than it. For reasons unclear to me, Canon ships their bodies set to fast burst mode. My 30D came that way 20 years ago. Some fussing later, and I had single shot and daylight white balance set (AWB is the devil.) Of course, the first actual keeper shot I took was with my beloved Super-Takumar 35mm F/3.5, a lens design that goes back to the 1950s. My copy is from the 70s and while it's far from perfect lens, I love how it renders things.

This marks only the second time I've used the 35mm Takumar with a full frame sensor. Its ass is too fat for EOS bodies and on the 5D IV, it requires mirror lockup and live view to use. I find that workflow to be a miserable PITA, so I only ever used the 35 with my EF-S bodies (of which I have 3 ...for reasons.) While I loved the shots I got with the Tak on a cropped sensor, I knew I was losing out on much of the flavor of the lens by not having it on full frame. It's like own a Mac tube preamp and not using the phono input.

The Fotasy M42 to R adapter is very well made. I had to enable the "shoot with no lens attached" setting or the shutter won't work with non-electronic lenses. Of course, the second lens I tested was the 35mm Takumar's 50mm, radioactive, F/1.4 sibling:

There are a lot of variants of the F/1.4 Takumar, and mine is among the least desirable. The original 8 element version proved to be too expensive to produce and is a bit of a white whale amongst collectors. Besides being radioactive and yellowing, my version has a terrible coating and makes giant orange hexagon flares. Of all the lenses I own, it might be the one with the most "character." The 50's posterior isn't as bulbous as the 35's, so it's far less invasive inside the camera body and as a result I've shot with it on full frame for years.

Before lunch today I had a go with the Nikon F to Canon R adapter (also made by Fotasy.) I have never been good friends with the Nikon lens mount. It's backwards. Also, I have owned precious little Nikon glass over the years. The only ones I shoot with are the mighty 300mm F/4, an excellent 50 F/1.8 I got from a certain 🐵 in 2010(!) and the decidedly mixed 18-200mm VR. Of those, the 300 was the obvious choice. I replicated a shot I took nearly 20 years ago of the house across the pond. Manual focusing a long lens with an EVF takes some getting used to. The R5 has a zoom peek function, but I as of yet haven't figured out how to use it.

That's it for now. I'll out some modern electronic AF lenses tomorrow. What a silly idea.

Edited 48 minutes ago48 min by Knuckledragger