Rocco Galatioto, nice photos and good food

A few more from my beloved Csatellammare del Golfo. Night shots that show the power of digital since it doesn't have the dreaded reciprocity failure of film. That is the color shift that happened when using long exposures.

The day was perfect to set up the mood that I wanted. Sunny days are fine but boring. The lens was the inexpensive Canon 24-85 F 3.5-4.5 EF. A great travel lens .

These delightful shots of this solitary man doing his morning tai chi were shot by my very talented wife Marcy. She gets fantastic shots from this advanced pint and shoot camera. These are photo i wish I has taken.

Naturally the camera does not take the photo nor does a new and better camera make one a better photographer. Nevertheless, shooting with a range finder camera like the Leica with its superb optics and handling makes one take shots that would be more difficult with lesser cameras. The ability to see outside the frame, unlike with a  SLR where  one sees through a tunnel, makes composition much more hands on. I always say that with the Leica one is looking out of a window. These three shots, taken at different venues all were shot with the 50mm Summicron F 2 a marvelous lens. All hand held and all without flash using the famed Tri-X developed in D-76 full strength to reduce contrast and smooth out some of the grain. The top photo is of an Haitian artist in Brooklyn, the middle one is of a pediatric nurse at Mary Immaculate Hospital, now closed, and the bottom one is of Mother Theresa when she visited Newark. I always liked the contrast between the well fed bishop and the frai...

Hasselblad Drops Camera Prices by Up to 23 Percent The managers Hasselblad have just made their high-end cameras significantly more affordable by dropping prices on both the entry-level H4D-31 and high-end H4D-60 by as much as 23%. The cameras are stll out of reach of most photographers. That may not sound like a massive discount, but considering the original prices of both cameras, it's a whopper. The H4D-31 dropped around $4,500 to a price of just over $15,000. The H4D-60, meanwhile, went down in price almost $8,000 to around $30,500. I can buy a nice car with this amount pf money. "This price reduction campaign is part of an innovative and dynamic marketing strategy for the company, ahead of the world's biggest photographic trade fair," says Hasselblad sales manager Chris Russell-Fish, referring to Photokina in Cologne this September. "We are determined that more of the world's serious creative photographers will now have unprecedented access to a...

May they live in our collective memory. Che possano sempre vivere nellla nostra memoria collettiva.

A few more shots from this delightful cove in the Gulf of Castellamare and part of it's territory. Movie buffs will recognize this place from Ocean Eleven, the final scenes were shots here. Many commercial;s on Italian TV are also shot here. As it's obvious, the water is crystal clean.

Shot way back in the days when Tri-X was king and the Leica was the reining qyeen of candid photography. Here I used the 50mm Summicron F2. This garage sale was shot upstate New York.

How many of you remember Spiratone? They had a store on 32nd Street and one in Flushing. Their specialty was selling every imaginable photo gadget imaginable. They also were one of the first to come out with lenses for various cameras in different mounts. The lens used for these two shots of Castellammare was a semi fish eye that was for the Nikon mount but whose adapter was also interchangeable such as the adapt-all mounts in early Tamron lenses. This lens was all metal and had a rotating disk to dial in the three f stops: F *, F 11 and F 16. The sharpness was so so. What made it interesting that it covered the entire frame when used in digital cameras that had a 1.5 multiplier effect. It made for a fun lens.

The micro four thirds system is wonderful but it does lack some fast lenses. Panasonic has come to the rescue with this new lens that allows a 24mm equivalent at the widest end. It also looks well built.  Panasonic Introduces New Micro Four Thirds Digital Interchangeable Lens   According to the press release: Panasonic’s  New Premium LUMIX G X VARIO 12-35mm Lens Offers Exceptional Design, Achieving Increased Functionality for Spectacular Image Quality SECAUCUS, NJ (May 21, 2012) – Today, Panasonic announced a new digital interchangeable standard zoom lens, the LUMIX G X VARIO 12-35mm/F2.8 ASPH./POWER O.I.S. (H-HS12035). The newest addition to the company’s premium lens brand “X,” which is compatible with the Panasonic LUMIX G Series and complies with the Micro Four Thirds™ system standard, this lens offers a versatile zoom range of 12-35mm (35mm camera equivalent: 24-70mm) and features constant F2.8 aperture brightness at entire zoom range. Suitable for p...

Shot in Sicily way back in August of 1969 with the 50mm F 1.4 Canon FL lens and Kodachrome. Those were the days.