NANPA musings

A great way to see all the Zeiss offerings is to stop by their booth at a show like NANPA, where every one of the lovely ZM (rangefinder) and ZF lenses are on display, as well as some stunning binoculars, showing incredible clarity, just as with the camera lenses.

I was hoping to see the new ZF 21mm f/2.8 Distagon, but it is getting particular attention from Zeiss before release, because it has a stellar optical reputation to uphold, and is a challenging lens to assemble/build to deliver on that reputation. It’s likely to be one of the more sought-after lenses from Zeiss, given that its allegedly improved over its outstanding Conax predecessor.

Richard Schleuning and Stephen Ingraham the NANPA summit
NIkon D3x + Zeiss ZF 35/2 Distagon

Sometimes mistakes are interesting visually, and are definitely a worthwhile experiment.

Light saber

Bosque del Apache empty — some attendees scheduled time at Bosque del Apache, but according to Art Wolfe, the cranes and other species all left in a hurry at the conclusion of the summit, just prior to the beginning of the post-summit workshop with Arthur Morris (“Birds as Art”)!

I had some good sushi in Albuquerque, but the Mexican food sucked, go figure. The best sushi place is just down the street (same street to the north) as the convention center. The other sushi place on Center is a dump. Convention-center food is godawful, but included with the NANPA registration, so 99% of the attendees ate there, a testimony to the fiscal challenges of being a photographer. I gave it a good effort, but couldn’t stomach it by the 3rd day.

And what’s with the building lighting in Albuquerque? I found green, I found blue, but no red building. A bit weird (8 of them). (That’s a nerd joke).

Doubletree Hotel
NIkon D3x + Zeiss ZF 85/1.4 Planar @ f/5.6

One word of warning on the Hyatt Regency hotel: the AT&T cell tower sits on the building next door, but most of the Hyatt gets no cell phone coverage! They won’t tell you that on the web site or even at checkin. I was able to get a weak signal by moving up to the 19th floor and moving near the window. The pimply-faced hotel clerk justified the problem by telling me that they could not control where AT&T put their towers, as if that made it all right. At least for me, my cell phone is my means of communication when traveling.

So near, yet so far (from the 19th floor)