The biggest heart you’ll ever know, Michael pours that through his lens to bring us great images and story! I’ve known Michael for a long time and am honored to have been able to call him a friend for a few decades now. Back in the day, he loaned me his 600f4 before I could own one. That heart and generosity you’ll see and read in this great piece just posted. You’ll love the read. Brilliant Michael, brilliant!

After decades of traveling with HHD drives holding my Gallery files, I’m making the switch to SSD. My good friend and technical advisor Chuck has been trying to get me to switch for a couple of years now and to say I was hesitant is an understatement. What you see here is my finally bending to the future. This Samsung 8TB is so much smaller, lighter, and 4x the space in one unit than I’ve been using. And we’re talking screaming fast speeds, screaming!!!!! I’m not enclosing it in an enclosure either as Chuck has had nothing but a great experience as is since it has no moving parts inside. I guess I’m finally embarrassing a little bit of the future and letting go of the past.

If you’re scratching your head seeing a “macro” shot from me, well that makes two of us! It’s the lens, the Nikkor Z105mc that has me looking at my feet wondering what’s down there. My world has expanded because of this lens and now has me wanting to up my macro game. I did “macro” many lifetimes ago and some of those hard-fought lessons are slowly coming back to me.

One of those is showing scale. These tiny schrums, Cladoniaceae, were growing on posts on a bridge over a biggish creek in New Hampshire. I couldn’t miss them colors, they stopped me in my tracks. I put the Z 6II / Z105mc on level with them, focused down to 1:1, and then moved the rig until they became sharp. Focus Peaking sooooo makes this easy. Then I took my favorite pen out of my pocket, the new Sharpie Gels, and shot a few with it so you could see just how small these things are. And none of this would have taken place if the Z105mc wasn’t so freakin amazing! Love that lens!!!!

My UPS app pinged me telling me a box had been shipped from Delkin. I gotta tell you I was wondering all week what the hey was going on as I have no relationship with them. The box arrived and inside was amongst other things, their DDreader-54. I knew nothing about it so I was curious. I popped it out of its packaging and the first thing that struck me is how tiny it is! Just compare the size of it to the ProGrade 1TB CFexpress card I have inserted. Then I noticed how heavy it is and so incredibly well built. With my curiosity peaked, I read the packaging (I tend to look at pictures and then read instructions). The DDreader-54 works with USB 3.2, transfer speeds up to 10 Gbps, support CFexpress, works on Win / Mac and comes with a 5 year warranty. All, very impressive.

But is it fast? Oh yeah, it’s fast! More important to me is that it works with Photo Mechanic on the Mac to Erase and Eject at the end of ingesting. I instantly pinged Bedford’s and ordered another DDreader-54 so I have one at the office and one in my travel kit. Great reader folks!

When Carol pulled out the Z2x to loan it to me a few weeks back, I said, “Thanks, but I have the Z1.4x, I want to try the Z2x”. She said, “That’s it!” Having shot with the TC-301 back in the day, seeing this tiny little thing in my hand and hearing it was the 2x was a mind lower. Then I attached it to my Z70-200f2.8 and looked at the results and I was amazed. This little gizmo is simply brilliant, gorgeous sharp, and no vignetting. And that’s it, simply put, it’s the one. Buy it!