Neon, the Night and the G9

It was built in 1948 in New Jersey, but it sits today in Miami Beach on the corner of Washington and 11th, a big silver slice of gleaming, open-24-hours-a-day, Americana: the 11th Street Diner.

The menu is just what you'd want from a diner: not gourmet, but real diner food: omelets and toast, open-faced turkey sandwiches, biscuits and gravy, malteds, American coffee and apple pie a la mode. Big portions. And OK, yes, they have some tofu and salmon things, too. And a full bar. This is South Beach after all.



I've photographed the place quite a few times, including a lit, medium format shot done inside the diner and featuring a sexy, sassy blonde named Christine Lyons wearing a vintage-style waitress uniform -- she actually worked at the diner while also running an indie record label on the side. I think she was a singer, too, if I remember correctly. That shoot was for Amica, a terrific Italian fashion magazine, and I later also used that shot in my now out-of-print book South Beach, America's Riviera, published in 1995.

Anyhow, Friday night I was walking home after a fine swordfish dinner with an old friend at Grillfish, when the diner loomed up at me in all its Streamline Moderne glory, and I couldn't resist photographing it again, this time with a little pocket camera I carry with me all the time now, the Canon G9.

This 12.1 megapixel baby fits in the palm of your hand, but it's surprisingly heavy for such a little thing, almost 10 ounces. An astonishing amount of very high technology is packed inside; and despite some design compromises and at least one design blunder -- the incredibly inaccurate optical viewfinder -- the thing's a gem.

I made the above image hand-held (!!!) at 1/10th of a second at f3.2 and ISO 400 at a focal length equivalent to 70mm.

The camera's built-in image stabilization helped me to get a sharp image at such a slow shutter speed, and the image was much less noisy than I expected. That is is to say it was less grainy than I expected. (Grain, or noise, is a problem with small digital sensors cranked up to high sensitivity in low light).

The G9 has become a cult cameras for many of us -- it's so light you can take it anywhere, and it has a superbly sharp lens, with a zoom range equivalent to 35 to 210mm.

You can buy one for around $450, plus you'll need a high capacity memory card.



The above image was handheld at 1/5th of a second with the G9 at f3.2 and ISO 200; but it got rather noisy when I goosed up the saturation in Photoshop -- still nice, though

The worst thing about the camera is the optical viewfinder, which seems to point in a somewhat different direction than the lens! It's worse than useless -- it's positively misleading, a huge mistake in a semi-pro camera. Of course, there is an excellent 3" LCD screen for focusing and composing, but a good optical viewfinder is also needed, especially when you want to jam the cameras against your brow to help keep it steady for those slow hand-held exposures.

I'd be willing to pay about $35 more to also have a good optical viewfinder in a camera like this. Also the high ISO performance should be improved. The grain becomes really horrid at ISO 1600.

Even so, this is an amazing piece of technology.

Doorways in Time

Back in the 1930s and '40s, before air-conditioning was commonplace, most houses in Miami Beach had screen doors -- beautiful Art Deco screen doors.

Though South Beach's historic district is supposed to be protected from changes that destroy its unique character, quite a few of the elegant old doors have disappeared during the last 15 years.

I think many rusty or broken ones were simply junked by owners who didn't recognize their value.


Others, however, remain; and some have even been restored.

Illustrated here are three old ones that remain in or near Miami Beach's now booming South Pointe area

When I first saw this neighborhood at the southern tip of Miami Beach, back in 1992, it was a slum; and many old cottages, small apartment buildings and little hotels were in ramshackle disrepair alongside a few that hip entrepreneurs had fixed up. Now the neighborhood has been revived with ultra high-end, high-rise condos ringing the waterfront; and some of the older buildings have been lost. Many still remain, though, along with their remarkable doors.


I made these pictures yesterday afternoon with a little Canon G9 that when I'm not shooting professionally with my big cameras, I carry with me everywhere.