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theawkwardterrier · 5 years

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Stitch Together

Summary: Peggy and Steve can't leave a particular competition behind in the twentieth century.

It’s Steggy Secret Santa tiiiiime!! This one is for @roboticonography, with best wishes for a very, very merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy!!

AO3 link here.

As with so many things, perhaps the trouble would never have started without Tony’s big mouth.

“Are you knitting over there, Cap?” he asked, too loudly, breaking the quiet that had settled over the jet as they flew back from Australia. Even Peggy and Clint, the furthest away, turned around from the pilot’s controls. “If you wanted upgrades on your suit, you could’ve just asked.”

“It was going to be a Christmas present for you,” Steve said, fingers continuing their consistent movement. “But if that’s your attitude, maybe I should reconsider.”

Tony held up his hands. “Carry on. Should never have stepped in. I’m sure it’s going to be the best…?”

“Sweater,” Steve inserted.

“The best sweater I’ve ever worn.”

Steve said dryly, “Considering that you own a sweater that cost a thousand dollars because it was made from rare yak wool, I wasn’t too worried about the competition,” Tony snapped his gum consideringly, and that would have been that. Except that Peggy had heard the words “best sweater” and her eyes had narrowed.

So it might have been more accurate to say that, as with so many things, perhaps the trouble would never have started if Peggy could pass up a challenge.

Despite his best efforts not to think about it at all, Steve had spent every visit with Peggy wondering if it would be their last. So he could be forgiven for staring, stunned, for several minutes when she walked into the office he kept at the Tower looking exactly as he remembered her during the war.

“I know that I told you recently that you were always dramatic,” she said, amused, “but you needn’t have taken it as an order.” Then, seeing the way that he leaned back against his desk, his breath catching, she came over and placed a soft hand on his arm.

“It’s alright,” she said, and without making him ask, told him the whole story.

That Peggy wasn’t truly mentally competent at the time to have made the decision to enter the Stark Industries reverse aging trial was something that he would later take up with Tony. Just because she had signed up for it a decade earlier, it didn’t make it alright to go ahead once her cognitive decline had begun. But even as he had marshalled his reasoning for why it was inappropriate, almost unacceptable, he knew that he was, deep down, too illicitly glad to argue well. That Peggy was one of very few candidates to come through at all and the only one to have such a perfect outcome didn’t surprise him exactly (he had known from the first day he’d seen her that she was made of sterner stuff), but it did make him feel luckier.

They ended up talking on the cramped couch in the corner of his office for hours. He had Tony around to occasionally bring up incidents carefully mummified by Howard, or passed down by his Aunt Peggy, but to truly talk to Peggy herself about these things, to have his own memories reflected back by that familiar, consistent sharpness, felt like nearly too much.

When sunset and twilight had long since passed, he finally mentioned, “There’s food downstairs.” She gave him a knowing, fond look that he translated so easily that he wondered if he would cry. “Well, sure, there’s food here too, but it’s not as good.”

“It can’t be worse than what you used to have around,” she said. That was true; keeping extra rations might have been necessary to support his accelerated metabolism, but the serum was certainly the only reason he hadn’t gotten a medical discharge from eating too much of Hitler's secret weapon. But instead of standing to go searching with him, she yawned and reached for the soft handmade afghan he kept on the back of the sofa. “Though I think I might need a bit of a rest before we go scavenging.”

She spread the blanket over herself (“This is nice. I assume that you still consider yourself the superior at knitting?” “That makes it sound like an opinion.”), and a little corner over him, and fell asleep leaning on his shoulder. He stared straight ahead and thought about how she had lived a whole life, that she had had a husband who wasn’t him, raised children, that she’d built SHIELD and run it admirably for decades. It was ridiculous to think that she would even consider a romantic relationship with a barely employed ex-SHIELD contractor who she had kissed once seventy years ago, and it would only make things awkward to ask. He had Peggy, miraculously back with him, and that was all he needed.

That Christmas Eve, Natasha glanced at the presents under the tree and stopped halfway through her second piece of the chocolate gingerbread cake with which Thor had cheerfully presented everyone. (“Bakery,” Darcy had mouthed from behind him, then, giving up pretense, said, “Do you really think I’d let either of them use a mixer? Jane hasn’t made unburned toast in the entire time I’ve known her. Neither of them could pull off something this good.”)

“Smart of you to avoid tomorrow morning,” Nat said quietly to Sam as he got his bag together to head down to spend Christmas Day at his grandmother’s big house in Maryland.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll know,” she told him, and swallowed the last of her cake. (You never knew the next time you’d get cake.)

But Sam didn’t know, not yet. Because when Tony opened his presents the next day, the gray-violet hooded Aran pullover he received from Steve got only the expected compliments. Steve had given handmade gifts to nearly everyone (a painting for Pepper to hang in the empty space in the guest bedroom that always bothered her, a pair of new throwing knives that he and Thor had worked on together for Natasha) and they had known about the sweater for months. Even when Tony opened his package from Peggy to find a cable knit sweater in navy and light blue with large buttons, it was seen simply as another lovely gift and the overlap chalked up to coincidence or some obscure 1940s tradition.

Only Natasha saw the narrow-eyed glance Steve gave Peggy, and the small, decisive nod.

Even for Nat, it was difficult to tell that anything had changed over the next few months. Steve and Peggy laughed and sparred with each other, recounted old war stories to everyone in the jet or around the Tower, bent their heads together as they planned operations, and noticeably did not knit in public. It was only in May, after their first week of consistently warm weather, that the sound of raised voices drew everyone to the glass-fronted office which Peggy had claimed as her own, where they found Steve saying through clenched teeth, “It was rigged!”

“In what way,” Peggy asked him politely, “do you think I could influence Tony’s wardrobe choices?”

“He wore yours more because he’s scared of you and he knows that you notice everything.”

Peggy turned toward the doorway. “Tony, are you afraid of me?”

“Course I am,” Tony told her promptly. “I used to tell kids on the playground not to mess with me or I’d call my aunt Peg.”

“Flattering as that is, it has no bearing on the question at hand.” She turned back to Steve, her fingertips pressing gently but deliberately into the desktop as she leaned forward. “It’s clear to me, given that my sweater was worn on six more occasions than yours, that Tony considered mine to be more attractive, more comfortable, and of better quality.”

“That doesn’t—” Steve started, but Bruce cut him off.

“Can someone explain what the hell is going on here?” He looked between the two of them. “Are you two really having the first fight I’ve ever seen from you over sweaters?”

Peggy and Steve glanced at each other, then turned toward Bruce with mutually crossed arms. “Sweaters,” Peggy said dangerously, “are very important.”

It hadn’t been the plan for Steve to go on the mission at all. Marcus Harrington - Harry - a more experienced SSR field agent who Peggy had worked with before, had been tapped to join her again. But then Harry had broken a leg during a foot chase, Steve happened to be in London for three days of leave while the Commandos rested up between assignments, and the operation simply couldn’t wait.

Steve and Peggy had rescued the captive SSR operative fairly easily - he was still being dragged by a small group of soldiers through the woods back toward an established Nazi base when they found him - but returning him to where he needed to be proved more difficult. Finland was never exactly hot, but they had picked a particularly terrible week to be outdoors. Steve would often sit with his broad back facing into the cutting breeze in an attempt to act as a windbreak. But finally they managed to get him to the safehouse, enduring with embarrassment the effusive thanks of the two sisters and multiple Resistance friends already there.

“Let us give you something to thank you!” someone said, and Steve and Peggy accepted, hoping that this could serve as an appropriate endpoint to the conversation in the way that their protestations that it really was only their job had not.

Food supplies being what they were, it took a bit of time to find something deemed suitable as a gift. Finally a skein of cream yarn and a pair of knitting needles were handed to them, a final round of thanks was exchanged, and Steve and Peggy set back on their way to their pickup point.

The driving snow that cut them off miles from where they were meant to be was a problem. The small and broken shed they found to shelter in was an absolute miracle. Except that, after several hours of forgetting propriety - Steve leaning toward Peggy, or she leaning toward him, to share his warmth - and then abruptly remembering it again, they were both absolutely, incredibly bored.

Steve hadn’t remembered the yarn, exactly, but when he encountered it after sticking a hand in his pocket, it was a relief.

“I can show you a couple of stitches,” he offered Peggy idly, and she looked at him and asked, “What makes you think that I don’t know your ‘couple of stitches,’ and more than you do besides?”

“You’re already a codebreaker and a crack shot,” Steve pointed out. “Where would you find the time to learn to knit too?”

As she soon showed him, she made the time. But Steve, who had gained his own skills during long winters (and autumns, and summers) in bed, guided by the few knitting books available from the public library, was for once determined to hold his own. In anything else he accepted Peggy’s superiority as a matter of course, but in this he refused to yield.

When the pilot asked how they had passed the time waiting for the storm to clear, they both answered, without looking at each other, “Talked.” But a personal battle had been declared, and neither party was willing to back down.

Although Tony congratulated them on their attempt at experimental design, he had to admit that “proximity to hand as he reached into closet” was too significant a factor in his getting dressed to have made it a fair competition between them. New parameters would have to be set.

“Your criteria were a problem. Best sweater is too broad and too subjective, and you didn’t take weather or occasion into account,” Pepper told them. “The sweater you want to wear for a cozy day in the house isn’t necessarily the sweater you want to wear shoveling the driveway, or to work, and it’s practically impossible to make a sweater that fits all of those needs.”

It became quickly apparent that there were too many facets to consider. Half the room was stewing in stumped silence, while the other half talked over each other with suggestions. Finally it was Clint, who had walked in midway through the argument, who said through the slice of pizza he’d crammed into his mouth, “Ugliest.”

The new competition now took shape. The guidelines would not be which was the most attractive or most comfortable, which showed the most advanced technique or held up best in the wash, but instead who could make the ugliest sweater.

“It has to be wearable,” Natasha ticked off. “And the deadline is this Christmas morning.”

Those were the only rules.

That Peggy and Steve retreat to opposite corners and refuse to speak for the six months of competition seemed the next logical step. But they had been happily at war with each other for six months already, and saw no need to let the renewal of hostilities interfere with their relationship now.

If anything, they grew closer. Now that Steve had no reason to base himself out of DC, he had decided to find himself another, less depressing New York apartment, and masochistically asked if Peggy would like to be his roommate. (If he could see Peggy fixing the garbage disposal, or accusing him of eating all of her favorite breakfast cereal, or with disheveled hair finding something to watch on TV, he swore to himself that now it would be enough.) Peggy recognized with some sadness that after nearly dying, acclimating to all the losses of an entirely new century, and spending time with her elderly self, Steve was too battered for a relationship and certainly could not view her in a romantic light. She was also past ready to move out of the Tower. She accepted.

They were good roommates. Their parents would have been scandalized. A schedule was devised for making sure the bathroom was kept clean, and they agreed that if one was making food, they would always make enough for both of them. (This quickly turned into a promise to order in enough for both of them, as their stove remained mostly unused.) Peggy snuck a pair of nicely fitted jeans into Steve’s wardrobe. He bought her a gun safe that matched the red accents of her cream-painted bedroom. They mutually agreed to cancel the History Channel on their television package, but found themselves sharing the sofa often at the end of the day, flipping through the options and bickering over what self-indulgent program to choose.

And in the evenings, they would part, each to their separate bedroom to work on their creations.

Darcy passed Peggy’s office one afternoon when Steve was away and poked her head inside. “If you’re in the apartment anyway, why don’t you just, like, burn his yarn supply? Or at least sneak a peek at what he’s working on?” she asked.

“Well, that would hardly be sporting,” said Peggy, letting the screen scroll through some documents in front of her as her hands kept up her stitching. “And it’s certainly unnecessary. I will beat him, as always, through pure talent.”

Steve was equally confident. “You don’t spend a few years making your own clothes by taking apart charity castoffs and not gain some useful skills,” he told Sam as they headed back on another flight, this one commercial, following a lead in one of the HYDRA files. His needles clicked as he spoke; somehow Steve was never questioned about them at security.

“Considering what you’re competing for, I don’t know if those skills are something to brag about,” Sam commented, and Steve shut up and stewed.

Though the cordiality - which was by this point their hallmark - remained through their shared Thanksgiving and into the beginning of December, there were some cracks starting to show. They shared an open glare during a conversation about strategy which certainly did not merit such anger, and their training sessions in the Avengers gym, which typically had a graceful, mythic quality, were taking on a vicious angle. Yet somehow, even as they shopped for gifts and put on their finishing touches, their time together at the end of the day remained sacrosanct. Neither was willing to give it up. The possibility was never even mentioned.

Sam arranged to do Christmas Eve in the city and then leave again for Christmas itself with his family. As he put it, he was too smart to keep himself in the line of fire.

“It’s like my mother always said,” he told Pepper as they all stood around the Tower drinking eggnog and pretending not to look with trepidation at the gifts beneath the tree. “‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,’ and I plan to get to New Years with the same two I was born with.”

The point was astute. Most of the fun to the competition had slowly worn away, and it somehow seemed to be standing in for proof of something more serious yet unnamed. Still, everyone opened their gifts on the next morning with passable glee, poking at new gadgets and passing thanks around.

No one got further knitwear, which helped.

Finally, the two packages were brought forward. Peggy and Steve took politeness to another level, each insisting that the other go first for so long that - after Tony realized he didn’t exactly carry change - Darcy took out a quarter and flipped it.

The pride Steve had in his creation was understandable. He had clearly been exploring fashions of the 1980s at some point recently, which were recreated in the shape of the...garment (calling it a sweater seemed dangerous and insulting). The shoulders of it were so enormously padded as to be nearly square, and the base color - a vivid and horrible metallic red, with accompanying sequins - was easy to imagine tossed by the skein into the bargain bin. The stripes of silver and green glittery fur yarn gave the entire thing the impression of either a tinsel-covered candy cane or some of the more disturbing types of mold. But it was in the notions department that Steve had truly outdone himself, choosing beads in the shapes of Christmas bells, buttons molded to look like holly berries and leaves, and bows in all sizes, colors, and textures to spangle across his creation without pattern or logic.

There was a moment of silence as he unveiled it. The true hideousness of it needed to be mourned upon sight.

“Okay, maybe it is a real contest,” Tony said, a little awed. He dared only look at Peggy from the corner of his eye; he had enough memories of her steaming when she had been upset with his father, and he didn’t need new ones.

But Peggy, when she brought her own box forward, was calm. If Steve had gone for the more traditional route of unattractiveness through overwhelming the eye, Peggy had decided on a subtler, more simple strategy. The sweater in itself had something of an ersatz quality to it - it was made too wide, so that it somewhat resembled a poncho or a sweater cape, and the snowflakes decorating the hem were lopsided and angular - but it was as the eye drew upward that the true knockout came.

Jane, who was a little tipsy, began to giggle. So did Pepper, who wasn’t.

“Oh,” said Bruce. “Oh, wow. Oh no.”

And he might have summed it up the best. For what Peggy had attached to the front of her entry were two mock reindeer faces: plush, tan appendages stuffed presumably with batting, little red noses on the ends and antlers above the tops. She had even included tiny stitched smiles on the lower curves, and sewn on button eyes.

They were placed directly on the chest so as to mimic two nude, decorated breasts.

“Comment cards can be found on the table for easy tallying,” she said generously.

For a moment nobody moved, struck not by an enemy but by the terrible, impossible choice before them. Then, into the silence, Natasha said, “There’s something else under the tree.”

And she reached for a final time beneath the tree, pulling something from the hidden back branches. She set the box in her lap, and slowly lifted the lid...

As they walked home, Steve kept glancing at Peggy when they passed under streetlights. He was enchanted by the color the cold was bringing to her face, a blush in her cheeks and a rosy tip to her nose.

“I had no idea that Father Christmas could be so frightening,” she was saying, and he forced himself back into the conversation and agreed.

“It was bad even with those little lights in his eyes off, but when she turned them on...” He gave a shudder.

Seeing the third, and most disturbing, take on the contest prompt, a draw had been declared, and the afternoon had progressed with food, classic Christmas movies, and the traditional British crackers which Jarvis had ordered specially for Peggy. Only when it had darkened did everyone begin to drift out, including Peggy and Steve, getting a chance to speak on their own for the first time since the morning.

“We both put up a good fight,” Steve said as they reached their block. “Truce?” He put out his hand. Peggy took it and shook easily.

“It really was marvelous fun, and you were a worthy competitor.” They took a moment to wave to their neighbor, Mr. Travellini, as he put his cat out. “I’m only sorry that I was so caught up in the whole affair that I neglected to get you a gift.”

Steve was already shaking his head. “Not like I got one for you, either. And besides, I have all the gifts I need.”

She had climbed one step to their building before she had turned back to look at him. In the warm beam of the streetlights as snow began to drift down around them, his scarf draped indifferently around his neck and his eyes glowed up at her, just like the boy she remembered.

Oh, she thought, as she always had when faced with that gaze. Oh, my.

She wondered if he had become better at hiding the look, or if she had just been too caught up in her own logic, her own assumptions, to see it.

“Steve,” she asked, placing a careful hand on his shoulder. “Steve, are you ever going to kiss me?”

His mouth parted just a bit, an amazed kind of confusion on his face. “I thought—” He swallowed. “I thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“Well,” she said practically, “I absolutely do. And you’ve just said that you owe me a gift.” With her on the step, they were of a height. All it would take was the tiniest lean forward...

Steve might have been more practiced at knitting than he was at kissing, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t give a perfectly lovely present.

#steggysecretsanta #Steggy #Steggy fic #roboticonography #please pretend I know one (1) thing about knitting

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apairofcrepeswiththerarestape · 4 years

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The New York Review of The New Yorker for March 30th, 2020

Hello! Welcome to the relaunch of the New York Review of the New Yorker, a series where I, humble New Yorker subscription haver TD Sidell, attempt every week to read and review the New Yorker! This is an old on-again off-again project done last in 2015 (I think) which always crops up whenever I have very little to do. SURPRISE being out of work and trapped at home leaves very little to do SO HERE WE ARE AGAIN! This issue was pretty much a bummer through and through and had waaaaaayyyyyy to many references to Camus' The Plague (I lost count after the 4th, jeez, READ ANOTHER BOOK NEW YORKER STAFF WRITERS) so let's get into talking about this bummer!

COVER

Hey everybody! New York is all cooped up in their homes! Busy landmarks are all but abandoned! This is what this very well executed but pretty banal cover says to me. Artist Eric Drooker has cursed this one poor human with sweeping all of Grand Central and if you haven’t been there, it’s huge. Pretty mean there, Eric. At least this unknown person has something to do all day instead of reviving old projects that were mildly amusing at best AND gets to be in quiet Grand Central which actually seems kind of nice. Ok, mixed meanness and nicesness there, Eric.

TABLES FOR TWO

During this project’s hiatus The New Yorker has gone through a lot of changes. Gone is the Financial Page and in its place is this restaurant column that also at one point had a bar section but that too has been done away with. Usually I read this section thinking “this place sounds nice” and then never eat there. Occasionally there will be an article reviewing a place I’ve gone to or know people who work at and then I’ll read it with glee or anger depending on the complicated algorithm of my opinion of the place/people who run it/people I know that work there and Hannah Goldfield’s. This week it’s more of a state of restaurant world in this time of pandemic told via the goings on at the Num Wah Tea Parlor, one of my favorite places in New York. Turns out EVERYTHING SUCKS!

TALK OF THE TOWN

The thing about talk of the town is that it usually follows a pretty simple formula: the first bit is about politics, the a little slice of life piece, then something about a celebrity or the internet doing something interesting, then something vaguely about the arts, and then a wildcard. Sometimes the order changes but generally these are the things, a few little articlets that are perfect for a short train ride or a wait in medical office of some kind. This week though, OH BOY, do they seem extra dumb.

The political piece, by David Remnick, is about how terrible the president is handling this whole thing, which is NO DOY! increasingly, in this time of ultimate bullshit, it becomes hard to read these types of articles with anything less than a shrug. Everything Remnick says is totally correct but what’s the fucking point? WE ALL KNOW WE HAVE A TERRIBLE PRESIDENT WHO IS TRULY TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING BESIDES PROMOTING HIMSELF. Having a columnist in a the freaking New Yorker point that out to me with specifics is a real snooze.

Next is a shortie about how terrible delivery people have it now. This is pretty hilarious because I've seen how people who read the New Yorker tip so I feel like 50% of the folks reading this little jammie would be like "yeah, that's fine"

After that a thingee about a kid from Mercer Island, Washington (an upper class suburb just outside Seattle) who made a covid tracking website (not the one I use, I'm all covditracking.com for my getting even more depressed by the second news) that got popular. Now, I grew up in Seattle and knew a bunch of kids like this AND THEY WERE INSUFFERABLE. Like calling cheap fouls while playing pickup basketball at the JCC insufferable. Also, Mercer Island sucks and is built on a landfill.

Then an extremely dumb meditation on toilet paper, the less said about it the better.

Finally a thing about a couple multimedia artists who made a thing where you randomly talk to people on the phone. I've relaxed my previous stance on multimedia artists recently (my previous stance was that they were pretty much awful) but it's hard to even get through even the first paragraph of this without rolling my eyes completely into another dimension. The sentence that did me in was "He had just returned from a two-year trip abroad, during which his algorithm dictated where he lived, taking him to Dubai, Taipei, and rural Slovenia." Aaaaanway I assume that invariably you get connected to someone jerking off when you use their phone thing.

THE POLITICAL SCENE

OH BOY! Susan B. Glasser writes about Never Trump Republicans, or at least one Never Trump Republican's attempt to rally other republicans to their cause. This had a real laugh to keep from crying vibe. The subject of the story was a former PR person who spent their career working for a cutthroat firm that worked against corporate regulation. While I'm not certain of the exact tactics of this firm, I AM sure that it involved lying and obfuscating like they were getting paid for it (which duh, they were). The irony of someone decrying the acts and tactics of our extremely wet baby president when they themselves paved the way for those acts and tactics throughout their entire professional life is so rich it gave me brain gout. Anyway, SHOCKINGLY, this person spent a whole bunch of money and nothing changed! Ha HA HAAAAAA (sob).

SHOUTS AND MURMURS

Did not read.

ANNALS OF CULTURE

JILL MOTHER FUDGING LEPORE EVERYBODY! J comes through with a history of contagion fiction and even though this piece is patient zero for the pandemic of The Plague references in this issue (that was a little much, I know) it still sparkles. This was a great one.

LETTER FROM CHENGDU

Peter Hessler on his life in the lockdown of China. Weirdly I found this piece very soothing. Maybe it was all the different descriptions of the way people wore their masks? I DON'T KNOW! I kind of fell asleep reading this one.

COMIC STRIP

Chris Ware, much like Miller High Life, is something that I really loved in the early-mid 2000s but now have really lost my taste for. His self deprecating misanthropy schtick seems pretty boring now! Especially coming from a very successful person!

OUR LOCAL CORRESPONDENTS

I was really dreading Adam Gopnik's piece about New York during the time of Corona, even more so when I checked its length in the table of contents. Luckily it has a lot of photos by Phillip Montgomery. Some of those photos were very affecting (empty subway car/shelves at grocery store/classroom/restaurant, person diligently cleaning Port Authority), others less so (hand inside of plastic glove, rich person looking forlorn from windowsill of very fancy apartment), and one which was kind of both (stockbrokers on the phone outside the stock exchange (boring as hell but one of the dudes has a jacket with the word "Pasta" stitched into it and he's either selling pasta futures (which would have been a good thing to invest in seeing as how my body is now 65% pasta) or he's a stockbroker named like Tony Pasta or whatever and believe me, if I ever get the fuck out this I'm sure as shit unleashing on the world my character "Tony Pasta, Stereotypical Italian Stockbroker" who only invests in gabagool but somehow makes tons of money doing it.)). Without looking at the words I cannot remember any of the stories from this article though!

FICTION

I used to never read the fiction in the New Yorker but now I do. Even though I do have a degree in English and World Literature and should be able to tell you more about this story besides that I was bored by it, I cannot! It's possible I was bored because there was so much talk about tennis in it and oh boy I do not give a fudge about tennis!

ON TELEVISION

Doreen St. Felix gives us more of the what is ______ now that Corona is happening with television filling in the blank. It was fine.

A CRITIC AT LARGE

David Denby spends a few pages talking about how horny Harry Houdini was.

BOOKS

Casey Cep tells me more things amount Mormonism that make me go WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

BOOKS

I've never heard of Anna Kavan before but if I ever get to go to bookstore again I'll buy a copy of Ice because Leo Robson made her sound cool and kind of mean and fucked up and I like that in authors.

THE THEATER

Did not read.

Also did not read any of the poetry or laugh at any of the comics.

THAT'S IT Y'ALL! Another one of these in the "books"! Will I keep doing this? Probably! See you next week! Probably!

#The new york review of the new yorker #the new yorker #new york #corona #another dumb project #important criticism

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updatedc-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.updatedc.com/2018/10/21/nikon-z7-field-review/

Nikon Z7 field review

Nikon Z7 field review by Stuart Palley (stuartpalley.com, terraflamma.org | @stuartpalley):

TLDR: Mirrorless is the future of working pros in the documentary/journalism/travel realm. It may take another generation or two to fully compete with DSLRs, but it’s coming. The Z7 will not replace my D850 but rather complement it for the many situations where weight and size trump ease of use and AF speed/reliability in the near term. As the Z mount lens system grows I can start divesting myself of F mount glass when a Z mount equivalent comes into production. This is written from the perspective of someone who makes the majority of their income as a photographer and creative professional.

For years many great companies have manufactured excellent mirrorless cameras already in use by working pros and enthusiasts alike. Fuji, Olympus, Sony, etc, all make awesome cameras (I’ve used many, the X100, X Pro 1, GFX, OM-D series, etc). The big news here is the FTZ adapter with solid AF/VR compatibility with my existing dozen Nikon lenses, similar button layout for fast workflow adoption, and smaller and lighter baggage.*

That means I can integrate the Z7 into my workflow with minimal fuss and rock the Z mount 24-70 f4 or 35mm 1.8 when I want to go fast and light. A metadata analysis of my images from wildfires shows 60-80% of my images shot in the 24-70mm focal length.

The other two lenses I use the most are the 70-200mm 2.8 VRII, 200-400 VRI, and Sigma 14mm 1.8, which all work great with the FTZ adapter.

Sigma 14mm 1.8 with FTZ adapter

With the Z mount 24-70 f4 I lose a stop of speed and the durability of the 24-70 f2.8 VR AF-S, (which is the best/most versatile Nikon midrange zoom I’ve used) but the lens is about 1/3 the overall mass and a fraction of the weight of the F mount big brother.

The FTZ adapter is well designed and does what it’s supposed to do, allowing me to use F mount lenses, now with the built in VR of the Z7. My chief criticism is that AF is not so great, in the case of using my 200-400 AF-S VR I for photographing Lenticular clouds over the Cleveland National Forest, it hunted for AF at sunset. I initially thought this an issue with the F4 aperture or lack of contrast in the tones of dusk, but even on contrasty and clear points on the horizon that my D850 and same lens combo would’ve likely focused on without issue, the FTZ adapter left me wanting a little more accuracy with it’s hunting and focus racking. I’m going off my own real-world experience here, lab tests and more technical analysis from might yield different results.

FTZ Adapter and 200-400 VR I, panorama stitched from two images

On the Z7 body itself, the buttons are laid out similar to other Nikon DSLRs and as a result I found the camera easy to pick up and start shooting with. The viewfinder is incredible, sharp, bright, and clear. Coming from using an original Fuji X100 or an earlier micro 4/3 camera you see the progress that electronic viewfinders have made in the last 5 years.

Another advantage of the Z7 is the reduced size and weight. Size wise, it’s mainly the bulk that is reduced in all dimensions. After using the Z7 for an afternoon and placing it on the counter next to my battle worn D810 with a vertical grip, the D810 looked like a pig and felt like a lead weight. This is a little hyperbolic but it’s liberating to not have a boat anchor hanging off your neck. Heavy cameras are terrible for your back ligaments, muscles, and spinal column, so any reduced size and weight is a welcome improvement when these are tools you use to make a living with day in and day out.

This past weekend I did a 4-mile hike and brought the Z7 along with my trusty 105mm f2.8 AF-D Macro lens. It manual focus only with the FTZ adapter, but having stabilization on a macro lens was great and I had a good time playing around with the forms of cactus spines along the trail. I wouldn’t have brought my D850 with a grip, that’s for sure.

FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro (manual focus)

Virtually a 100% crop from the Z7, FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro

FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro (manual focus)

The lenses still retain a similar size to DSLR lenses, but with the shorter flange to sensor distance, optical designs can be optimized to make lenses slightly more compact. Additionally, the wider diameter of the Z mount will allow lens designers to take more engineering liberties when designing new lenses, meaning better performance, even more extreme focal lengths, and apertures too. Case in point, the 50mm-ish f0.95 lens Nikon has announced is a show lens to demonstrate the Z mount flexibility. Personally, the lens is useless to me since it lacks autofocus, and the sway of your body while breathing will put your subject out of focus at f0.95 handheld with manual focus. Try focusing an f1.4 lens in the dark and tell me it’s easy!

Every camera is only as good as the system around it and the company making it, so I look forward to Nikon fleshing out the Z lineup of lenses. The 35mm 1.8 is sharp from corner to corner, and the 24-70mm f4 is a versatile lens, but needs to be “unlocked” and expanded from its compact stowage position. As an NPS member I received priority delivery on the camera, and despite my concerns about Nikon’s repair logistics and inability to keep important parts in stock (Ask about my months long parts hold repair on a 70-200 VRII in 2015) rest assured Nikon will fix the camera should anything happen under warranty, and afterwards for a fixed fee. Cameras have always come back fixed right and with firmware upgrades, a sensor cleaning, etc from the repair center in Los Angeles.

A Storm is Coming

Randy’s Donuts, Los Angeles. Z7 and 24-70mm AF-S, ISO 140, 1/25 sec, Auto ISO. In body stabilization allowed me to shoot from the passenger seat of a car, at a stoplight, with a much lower shutter speed than I would usually select. Accordingly I was able to shoot at a lower ISO.

Another advantage of a smaller system is that everything gets smaller. The bags, tripods, tripod heads, filters, etc. needed to support the Z7 all shrink. Things get smaller and lighter, requiring less energy to cart around, which equates to more focus on shooting and creating pictures and telling a story, the whole reason I’m here in the first place. Everything about the equipment is in the service of creating the image. Instead of a Think Tank Retrospective 30 for my fast and light kit, I can get the Z7, 24-70 f4, 35 f1.8, and my ancient Nikon 70-210 AF push pull zoom (which I got for $60 :-p) with the FTZ adapter into a smaller Retrospective 7. I have space for spare cards, batteries, filters, and the charger.

Think Tank Retrospective in Pinestone with Z7, 24-70mm f4, 35mm 1.8, 70-210 (works in MF only with FTZ adapter, replacing with a 70-200mm f4 AF-SVR). GoPro Hero 4, spare batteries.

A Z7 and two lenses will now fit into the pack I carry around at wildfires that includes mandatory safety gear like a fire shelter and radio. That weight quickly adds up and adding a camera swinging off your neck with a strap isn’t ideal. Being able to stow the camera and it’s accompanying weight into my actual pack where the load bearing harnesses can support the load is a godsend for longer hikes. Sometimes I have to go hunt down fire crews in the bush and having a camera swinging off your body isn’t ideal. I was hiking at the Ferguson Fire in Yosemite National Park on assignment for the US Forest Service when my 24-70 decided to detach itself from my D850, and a lucky fall onto dirt with the lens hood saved it from damage.

This issue illustrates the two ways I usually shoot in the field. The first is up close, where the heaviest fire activity is present and I’m hiking around and moving a lot, getting in and out of a pickup truck, going up hills in smoke and ash. The smaller Z7 in good to decent lighting conditions is ideal for this. The jury is still out on how much I can push it in low light with the contrast detect AF. In darkness or low light, I would still be partial to a D850 and 24-70.

On a tripod with more relaxed conditions, perhaps photographing the fire from afar or just general nightscape photography, the Z7 perfect. I have three tripods, a large and medium Really Right Stuff carbon fiber tripod that is perfect for DSLRs and long lenses, and a tiny travel tripod. The medium tripod is perfect for a Z7 and a wide lens with FTZ adapter, and I could probably get away with one of their compact tripods in the future or my tiny travel tripod.

I disagree with Nikon’s decision to fit just one XQD slot in the camera. While memory cards are much more reliable than they were a decade ago, I still don’t fully trust them. My D850 is still coming out for when I need extra peace of mind. I hope that Nikon puts in a second SD slot, double XQD, or double SD in future versions. I would prefer a slightly larger camera with dual slot security. For me it’s just an extra short-term backup during shoots. Everything immediately goes onto a solid state RAID array when images are uploaded to my laptop, but once I click the shutter on the Z7, a potential card failing means it’s 2005 all over again. As I use the Z7 more I suppose I’ll grow to trust single slot XQD, but the jury is still out along with low light AF (which I’m finding is wholly satisfactory the more I use it). Buy good cards and format early and often.

Watch and Wallet: Z7 at ISO 11,400, 1/125 sec, f5: Nikon 105mm f2.8 AF-D with FTZ adapter in manual focus. This shot would not be possible without VR, at least handheld.

In conclusion this trend toward smaller and lighter with similar image quality to pro DSLR’s has long been in practice. Sony did it with the A7 series, their compact cameras with full frame sensors, etc. Now that the big two, Nikon and Canon have jumped on board, we have a real integration of mirrorless into pro workflows, We still have ground to cover when it comes to AF and lens selection, but the future is here, and the same way that the 4×5 Speed Graphic gave way to the 35mm SLR slowly over the years, so will the DSLR give way to mirrorless. Onward.

Stuart Palley is a Southern California based photographer who recently published his first photography book, Terra Flamma: Wildfires at Night, (Schiffer Publishers, 2018) photographing wildfires in California via long exposure over the last five years.

His work on climate change and the environment has been featured in National Geographic Magazine and has been recognized in Pictures of the Year International. He is a contractor for the US Forest Service and works commercially with various Fortune 500 clients in addition to select editorial publications internationally.

www.stuartpalley.com

www.terraflamma.org

Instagram @stuartpalley

*** Every camera on the market makes great images, it’s all about ease of use, ergonomics, lens options, price, etc. There are no bad cameras in 2018, just photographers that should focus on the art of making pictures rather than the gear. No camera manufacturer sponsors me or gives me anything for free, these views here are entirely my own and based off my experience as a working professional.

If you have an interesting idea for a guest post, you can contact me here.

For additional Nikon Z coverage like the Nikon Z Facebook page and join the Nikon Z Facebook group

Source from nikonrumors

#camera #Canon #dslr #Fuji #lens #mirrorless #news #Nikon #Olympus #om #rumors #sensor #Sigma #Sony

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5hit-i-l00k-at · 6 years

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2020 Lamborghini Urus Performante Price

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2020 Lamborghini Urus Performante Price

2020 Lamborghini Urus Performante Price – Lamborghini required the world by delight in 2012 if it introduced the actual Urus Idea on Pebble Seaside. It had been the actual company’s initially utility since the LM002 pickup vehicle along with signaled a whole new course for that maker. Nevertheless, the Urus did not be a generation model till five several years in the future. Unveiled in late 2017, that took over as the speediest and the majority of potent SUV worldwide, offering efficiency comparable to great-user profile athletics automobiles. Using the Urus currently set up hitting community roadways during 2018, we are questioning the other variations tend to be organized for future years. A hybrid model is nearly an assurance.

Exterior

The particular making by By-Tomi Design supplies some hints in regards to what will change at the start. The upper section, like the nose and also headlights will remain unaffected, and so will the large grille inside the bumper. Even so, Lamborghini may prefer to refinish our bodies-tinted panels in black color for a sportier appear. The greater changes may occur listed below, where reduced attire may lengthen better to the floor. The most important supplement could be the carbon-fiber splitter. Combined with the reduced suspensions, it can give the Urus any suggest stance.

Onto the sides, changes are usually quite expected, mostly because the SUV won’t acquire numerous latest features aside from revised side skirts and also brand new, unique wheels. X-Tomi suggests that the actual one side sill along with wheel arch extensions will likely be colored in entire body color, which happens to be very likely and may make your Performance appearance a lot less durable. One side top additions will probably be made out of carbon-fibers, much like the match caps. The particular tires will probably have a thin, multi-spoke design and may come wrapped in higher-performance car tires.

Close to rear, it ought to get a motorsport-encouraged diffuser/extractor using bigger deplete water lines. Although the main highlight will be the co2-fiber content wing. Because of the SUV’s coupe design, Lambo provides lots of space to install any section on the decklid as opposed to a spoiler positioned upon the actual tailgate just like of all performance crossovers.

Interior

The particular Urus’ interior shouldn’t modify much design-sensible inside Performante cut. However though it can get the identical furniture and also technology characteristics, issues must be a bit different when it comes to components. To save more weight, Lambo substituted most of Huracan’s components having its unique “forged composite” blend, along with it is harmless to believe it can perform the same from the Urus. Components that can be upgraded to be able to forge blended combination should include the actual A/C air vents, products paddles, door takes care of, and also heart unit.

Black color Alcantara ought to be regular in the efficiency SUVs. However, customers should certainly add a little shade by way of compare stitches around the controls, dashboard, and also floor rugs. The actual “Y” images seen on the car seats in the Huracan Performante might be provided here way too.

In the technology aspect, the digital exhibits will probably be improved to include a couple of additional features, along with improved changes with the couple of available driving a car modes. Now there should also be a new screen dedicated to the particular ALA process, delivering facts about downforce along with drag, and also just how the method works together aero vectoring data. The actual Lamborghini telemetry system will allow the motorist to history, replay, along with study performance on the track.

Read Also: 2018 Lamborghini Terzo Millennio Price

Drivetrain

The particular drivetrain behind this particular super SUV is undoubtedly a mystery at this stage, however, if the Huracan Performante will be all indication, the particular Urus Performante need to get yourself a beefed-up version in the normal twin-turbo, 4-liter V-8 drivetrain. The same as within the Huracan, productivity should not boost simply by very much. Assume the particular drivetrain improvements to include about 30 additional hp and a few 20 extra lb-ft of twisting across the 650-hp and also 627-lb-ft score from the normal model. That is around 680 hp and also 650 pound-feet around Performante trim.

It may not seem like a lot, however, if Lambo manages to eliminate about 100 lbs from the typical model, performance ought to boost drastically. Especially with the particular ALA sleek system. The particular Urus’ 3.6-next standard coming from to 60 mph need to lower to 3.5 notes (and maybe even 3.4). Leading speed will probably continue to be unaffected although.

The actual up-graded engine will be reinforced with the latest platform set-up. Firmer arises, cafes, and also arm bushings must create the revocation more appropriate about excessive monitor efficiency. The actual SUV must also acquire varied-rate active directing, the retuned four-tire-travel method, and also aired, cross-drilled carbon-earthenware disks along with 6-piston calipers at the front end and also various-piston clamps to the rear.

Prices

The actual Huracan Performante is nearly 14 percent higher priced in comparison to the common supercar, and also it’s harmless to assume which that this difference is going to considerably related to that Urus. Using the regular SUV cost through $200,000, the particular 2020 Lamborghini Urus Performante probably will expenditure a minimum of $230,000 before possibilities.

#2020 Lamborghini Urus Performante #cars price #Cost #Dimension #Drivetrain #Engine #Exterior #For sale #horsepower #hp #Interior #latest cars #New Cars #Price #Release date #Review #Specs #SUV #Top Speed

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levaduraa · 6 years

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mariokolaric · 6 years

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lettingwordsmeetheartbeats-blog · 6 years

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