Birds Without a Branch

Wearing the Richard Mille RM 030

Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/sVgkW7

Write Right: Montblanc Offers Bespoke Nib Service on Madison Ave.

This is the business end of the fountain pen —the nib. Its anatomy is refreshingly simple. The tip is made of iridium, chosen for its hardness (paper is incredibly abrasive; in centuries past nib makers used ruby as a tipping material.) The vent hole and split running from it to the tip conduct ink from the reservoir of a fountain pen to the paper via capillary action, and the two tines spread apart slightly under pressure —how much depends on the flexibility of the nib —giving writing with a fountain pen the character that distinguishes it from a rollerball or ballpoint.

The nib shown is on a 20 year old Montblanc 149 —the Meisterstuck, or “Masterpiece” fountain pen famous the world over and instantly recognizable for its distinctive thick, cigar-like profile. At one point I had the pen collecting bug badly —I owned over sixty pens, vintage and modern, and enjoyed the pleasant hobby of buying and repairing them (like watches, vintage fountain pens have gone from going from a song to becoming in many cases prohibitively expensive except to affluent collectors. If I had it to do again, when I first moved to New York in 1984 there are a few things I’d have started investing in immediately, and that includes vintage fountain pens, vintage watchs, and real estate in Brooklyn Heights. Ah, hindsight.) That exposure to a vast variety of different nibs was very educational —fountain pen nibs are sold in bog-standard medium in huge numbers (partly because many are sold as gifts and the buyers are playing it safe) but whether you have the right nib for your writing style can dramatically affect not only the look of your handwriting, but also your comfort with it —especially in the case of a fountain pen. Fineness, flexibility, and cut of the tip are all variables which allow for an enormous range of possible good fits —but unfortunately, for most casual fountain pen users the entertaining variety of possible nibs are as a closed book, and many struggle manfully with an inappropriate nib before, sadly and all too often, abandoning writing with a fountain pen as a bad job, when what is really wanted is the right nib.

Which is why Montblanc has started to offer a rather interesting option, available through the medium of this rather unusual writing instrument:

This pen has been outfitted by technicians at Montblanc’s skunk works in Hamburg, Germany, with an array of sensors designed to measure the speed, pressure, and angle at which the user writes. Armed with this information, Montblanc can create for you a nib ground to exacting specifications which will turn your hand from an illegible scrawl into a thing of beauty (or at least less ugliness.) Not only that, writing with a nib that actually suits your writing style makes as much of a difference to how it feels to write as having a bespoke suit does to how it feels to dress for work —something that can be sheer unpleasant drudgery is suddenly transformed into one of life’s sustaining little pleasures.

The above illustrates the metrics gathered from my own ham-fisted scrawl. The analysis describes my handwriting as “relaxed and considered,” haha.)

A fountain pen, it must be remembered, is not a ballpoint and should not be handled like one. Properly adjusted, any fountain pen nib should leave a track of ink on the page with almost no pressure (allowing for variables created by paper tooth, tip width, and direction in which the tip is cut, if any) and no skipping, and should feel virtually effortless to write with. This ideal will remain out of touch, however, if one is hobbled with a nib inappropriate to one’s preferred writing style. In my case I write rather quickly, with a pretty light touch, rather vertical strokes and the pen held at a definite oblique angle, making an extra extra fine oblique firm nib a perfect fit for my writing style (EEFO, to use the nib maker’s preferred abbreviations.) As you will not find any EEFO nib stocked at any pen-seller as a standard item this service allows one to obtain what will be the correct nib for one’s writing style, perhaps for the first time in one’s life.

A word to the wise: virtually all fountain pen companies now buy nibs from third party suppliers, which means the differences between most pen companies are cosmetic rather than functional. Montblanc is one of the very few companies left that still makes and grinds its own nibs (Namiki, the Japanese firm, is another) and if you want to experience what little is left of real terroir in the pen world, this is one of the best ways I can think of to do it. Price for the service is $850, only available currently in the USA at the Madison Avenue boutique in New York. The cost of the bespoke nib service is in addition to the price of the writing instrument. I must say parenthetically that I have had my own 149 and written with it almost daily for two decades and it has given excellent performance; it was serviced once by Montblanc after I dropped it a meter and a half onto pavement, nib first, and the service experience was excellent. The bespoke nib service is not cheap and neither are the pens, but what you get is a pen which, like a few other things —virtually any 35mm Leica rangefinder camera ever made, for instance, but perhaps especially the M6 TTL —could, at least theoretically, be the last one you will ever need.

Mighty Mite: A Watch Guy Reviews The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5

This is not that, and that is not this (to quote MFK Fisher, who was talking about oyster soup and oyster stew) and the most interesting about the camera I’m about to review (this is my first camera review) is what it is not.

First of all, what it is (sorry about that.) It’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, the most recent iteration of a very successful Panasonic formulation of the so-called “enthusiast compact” (camera geek-speak for I-want-the-results-of-a-full-frame-DSLR-but-man-that-sucker-weighs-a-ton.) 10.1 MP sensor, variable aspect ratio set from a slider on the Leica-branded zoom lens (f 2.0-f.3.3). The lens is officially dubbed a Leica DC Vario-Summicron. As I say, one of the most interesting things about this extremely capable little camera is what it’s not. It’s not a Leica. Specifically, it’s not THIS Leica: … the Leica D-Lux 5 (“D-Lux?” Seriously???) What we should get out of the way is that they are essentially the same camera, with some external design differences, different firmware, but no real performance differences (at least none that I’m aware of.)  The Leica will run you roughly twice as much; if you buy the Panasonic you’ll be set back under 400 USD with enough left over for some tasty accessories, including a rather lush OEM leather case, and a very nice OEM electronic viewfinder that slots neatly into the hot shoe (I assume the same viewfinder would fit the Leica as they’re basically the same camera; the EVF is a lifesaver when shooting outdoors where any LCD viewfinder becomes very hard to use. Plus, maybe it’s just old habits dying hard or old film user-interface Stockholm syndrome, but I find it very physically awkward to compose with an LCD screen. Probably presbyopia has something to do with it.)

With the Leica you do get an instant luxury rush, allegedly better firmware (I wouldn’t know; haven’t tried) and a copy of Adobe Lightroom —plus, bragging rights to actually say you know firshand whether it’s got, as some claim, the “Leica Look” to its output, despite being exactly the same camera in all functional aspects as the DMC-LX5. The other thing that the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 is not is a full frame DSLR, though as Robert Redford said at the end of The Sting apropos revenge, “It’s not enough. But it’s close.”

The image quality is amazing. Having already sprung for an S95 as the fall back from an EOS 5D Mk II I picked the DMC-LX5 for its reputation for great macro photography and it does, largely, live up to that rep: (From the Maurice Sandoz collection at A La Vielle Russie at 59th and 5th until 11/26; a must see. Info here) After lugging around a full frame DSLR on assignment for the last few years a camera like this is something of a dream come true. It is more capable than the already very capable Canon S95; not quite as pocket-able but my subjective impression is that it’s got less shutter lag, better high ISO performance, and much better macro performance (I don’t spend much time at full zoom so you’ll have to look elsewhere for comments on that.) It’s incredibly customizable, with two presets in addition to the usual PASM settings and most basic controls are accessible from hard dials and buttons (including a dedicated ISO button.)

Does it give you quite the rush the Leica might? Probably not but if you’re looking for an old-skool vibe, put the OEM leather case and the EVF on it and you’ll feel all Cartier-Bresson before you know it (the Leica lacks the Panasonic’s built in grip but you’d probably just mess up the lines of the Leica with the lovely add-on grip Leica offers with it anyway. Because let’s face it, accessories matter.) The variable aspect ratio hard slider on the lens is a great tool that you’ll realize you never missed only because you never had it, and to all intents and purposes, the damned thing seems to do what a full frame DSLR would do at about one fifth to one tenth the cost. Shoots RAW? Check. Great macro? Check. Good high ISO performance? Well… not full frame DSLR high ISO performance but how often do you really need a low/no noise shot at ISO 3200 through an f 1.2 lens in near total darkness?

The real Damocles’ sword hanging over this whole category of cameras is, of course, all the micro 4/3 and APS-C sensor cameras out there —the NEX-7s, the Fuji X100s (sweet! —but close to a grand and a half for a fixed lens camera…?), the Olympus PEN EP3s. With bigger sensors and interchangeable lenses available on cameras designed from the ground up for digital photography, putting up with the mass of a full frame, pentaprism DSLR —which, after all, is still solidly rooted in a film paradigm —starts to make even less sense.

It’s also true, however, that at the edge of the photographic envelope, DSLRs still beat compact enthusiast cameras like the DMC-LX5.  For a real pro or a pure performance obsessed amateur, that makes a difference.  And small sensors do run up against the laws of physics eventually —I’m not sure even shooting RAW if my magazine could run an image (especially a high ISO one) from the DMC-LX5 at 8x10 full bleed. But for now at least for me the sheer ease of use, stylish design, and lightness of the DMC-LX5 is a winning combo. I’ve been walking around with it, plus a Leica M6 for fun, for the last couple of weeks and I don’t miss that cinder block of a DSLR body, I can tell you that. Ultimately it’s all about the user interface; I want a camera that lets me get into micro-managing if I want to but ultimately makes shooting all about the picture, not the equipment, and this little thing really does the trick.