Top picks

Medium Festival of Photography

Visual art, Photography | The 12th annual Medium Festival of Photography kicks off this week, a locally based convening of photographers and photography lovers worldwide. With a keynote from Indigenous photographer Cara Romero, exhibitions, lectures, studio tours, a Tijuana bus tour, receptions, portfolio reviews, pop-up markets and more, it’s a busy week with plenty to stumble upon, even if you don’t have a festival pass.

The festival began in 2012 by an organization called Medium Photo, founded by Scott B. Davis.

“Medium started because I knew a lot of people working in fine art photography who didn’t have a platform for their work, and I myself as a photographer learned the most in my career by hearing other artists speak about their work and by attending educational workshops. And those didn’t exist in San Diego,” Davis said. “I really want to see the community feel a shared love of photography. It’s such a dynamic medium and it reaches people on so many different levels — as a storytelling tool, as a tool for creative expression, as a tool for abstract ideas.”

Photography has transformed significantly since the festival originated. Smartphone camera use is not just more widespread, but the technology is much better today than in 2012. Davis has also noticed a resurgence of analog photography. In addition, artificial intelligence has begun to shape the landscape of photography — and a Medium Festival panel on copyright and AI will attempt to help attendees sort through it.

Festival passes are still available, but some of the events are free and open to the public, or — like Romero’s keynote lecture on Friday evening at the Central Library — are ticketed separately at a lower-cost and don’t require a festival pass.

Details: Event link. Thursday, April 25 through Sunday, April 28. Locations vary.

San Diego Book Crawl and Independent Bookstore Day

Books, Poetry | Independent Bookstore Day is back, and with it, every local book lover’s favorite tradition: San Diego Book Crawl. Here’s how it works: visit and support as many of the 13 participating indie bookstores in San Diego as you’d like. Bonus perks may be yours if you make purchases at each shop. This year’s author ambassador is Susan Lee, and a new addition to the crawl this year is a shuttle service, on Saturday. You can learn more in our interview with Book Crawl organizers here.

Details: Event link. Saturday, April 27 through Monday, April 29. Times and locations vary. Free (purchases required at stores to receive prizes).

‘Afterburner’

Visual art | Named after the afterburner combustion mechanism on jet engines, this exhibit at Oceanside’s Techne Art Center spotlights artists who push boundaries — with materials and form in art. Artists include Jon Elliott, Jack Henry, Robin Kang, Dave Kinsey, Jason Clay Lewis, John Oliver Lewis, Mônica Lóss, Jessica McCambly, Tim Murdoch, Sasha Koozel Reibstein and Allison Renshaw. Curated by Chuck Thomas. You can view samples of the works by some of the participating artists here. Notable are the intricate, charred-looking relief pieces by Dave Kinsey, the sculptural, textile works of Mônica Lóss, the curious and almost candy-like constructions of John Oliver Lewis and the minimal works on paper by Jessica McCambly — but there’s so much to discover from the 11 artists.

Details: Event link. Opens with a reception from 5-8 p.m. on Saturday, April 27. On view through July 20. Gallery hours are 1-6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; and 1-5 p.m. Saturday. Techne Art Center, 1609 Ord Way, Oceanside. Free.

‘Madama Butterfly’

Opera, Music, Theater | Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece opera, “Madama Butterfly” returns to the San Diego Opera stage — it was last produced in 2016. The story follows a young woman in Japan, Cio-Cio-San, known as “Butterfly,” who meets an American officer, Pinkerton, falls in love and — so she thinks — marries him. He returns to his American family, while she is left to raise their son alone, awaiting his return. It’s a tragic story, with a gorgeous and quintessential operatic score.

Details: Event link. 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 28. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown. $13-$340.

Art Alive

Visual art | San Diego Museum of Art’s annual spring floral show will be on view this weekend. Floral designers are tasked with interpreting works of art in the museum, and those floral arrangements are displayed near the inspiring art. Don’t miss the kid-friendly activities in the sculpture garden. And of course, there’s the ever-dazzling rotunda display in the museum’s two-story entrance lobby — designed this year by Meghaa Modi, Art Alive’s first international selection for rotunda designer.

Details: Event link. 12-5 p.m. Friday, April 26, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, April 26-28. San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park. $40 for general admission, $5 for guests aged 7-17, or free for museum members.

Sidro Saturdays

Visual art, Music, Food, Theater | This special community arts event in San Ysidro is a great chance to check out the “Invisible Traditions” exhibition at The Front Arte y Cultura Gallery, curated by Katalina Silva and Arzu Ozkal. Plus, between The Front and the nearby El Salon space, you’ll also find live theater performances, music and lots of food, including tacos from Los Pinches Birrieria.

Details: Event link. 12-4 p.m. on Saturday, April 27. The Front, 147 W San Ysidro Blvd., San Ysidro. Free.

More arts and culture events this weekend

Adams Avenue Unplugged
Live music, Festivals | Browse the schedule and lineup of bands that will take over bars, cafes, restaurants and performance spaces along Adams Avenue. Event link. 12 p.m. to midnight, Saturday, April 27. Adams Avenue, University Heights, Normal Heights and Kensington. Free (except headliner concert, which is $25). 

Little Italy Mission Fed ArtWalk
Visual art, Festivals | This annual art festival is the longest-running one in the region, and it celebrates its 40th year with more than 250 artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, jewelry and more. Learn about this year’s featured artists here. Event link. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, April 27; and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, April 28. India St. between Grape St. and Beech St., Little Italy. Free. Free MTS trolley passes while supplies last.

Sazón Live
Dance, Music | Centro Cultural de la Raza will host vibrant performances of Mexican dance along with live music. Event link. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, April 27; and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 28. Centro Cultural de la Raza, 2004 Park Blvd., Balboa Park. $15-$90. 

‘Tuck Everlasting’
Theater, Music | This weekend, Coronado Playhouse opens their production of “Tuck Everlasting,” a musical adaptation of Natalie Babbitt’s classic book. The story follows 11-year-old Winnie as she gets caught up with a mysterious, immortal family in the woods near her home. Event link. On stage April 26 through May 2. Coronado Playhouse, 1835 Strand Way, Coronado. $27.

Twelfth Night Ensemble: ‘The English Orpheus’
Music, Classical | San Diego Early Music Society presents the debut of a new ensemble featuring harpsichordist David Belkovski and violinist Rachell Ellen Wong. The group will perform works by Purcell and Handel. Event link. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27. St. James-by-the-Sea, 743 Prospect St., La Jolla. $10-$50.

‘Duruflé Requiem’
Music, Classical, Choral | The San Diego Master Chorale will perform Maurice Duruflé’s 1947 “Requiem” along with works by J. S. Bach, Mark Butler, Benjamin Britten, Felix Mendelssohn and Gerald Finzi. 4 p.m. Saturday, April 27 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, 2728 Sixth Ave., Banker’s Hill; and 4 p.m. Sunday, April 28 at St. James-by-the-Sea, 743 Prospect St., La Jolla. $10-$35.

In 2019, I wrote about how I would never quit full-frame DSLRs. Back then, I complained about mirrorless cameras for wonky bodies and mediocre autofocus. Today, I’m eating crow.

It creeped up on me through a few flirtations with mirrorless cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, and Fuji. Then Canon’s M system got good, and then finally the R system came into its own with the release of the R5 and R6, two cameras that melded the functionality of Canon’s DSLR controls and menus with the added usability of mirrorless autofocus, which has come a long way in the last five years. I switched to those cameras in 2022, and I haven’t looked back, especially when it comes to my sports photography.

But the other day, I found myself shooting back-to-back lacrosse games with my students, and one of them needed a camera. I loaned them my mirrorless camera and pulled my old 7D off the shelf and popped in an LP-E6N battery in, so I had something to shoot with. It has been a couple of years for me and DSLRs in any sort of serious shooting situation. So, how did the OG 7D do 15 years after it was released? Can a DSLR still be useful for sports photography in 2024, or has mirrorless technology passed it by?

The Differences and Similarities

To anyone fairly new to photography, cameras have always been able to nail focus on an eyeball and track it through a frame. There have always been several hundred autofocus points scattered across the frame, and you can touch the screen at any time to pick one. And there has always been a way to simulate your exposure in the viewfinder, which the optical viewfinders of a DSLR could never do since the view is directly through the lens.

While DSLRs are missing out on these features, the body design remains mostly the same, with big wheels all over the back and front to adjust settings and familiar-looking menus (albeit without a touchscreen on the 7D).

The 7D had 19 autofocus points spread across a large, centralized swath of the frame. It was a system befitting a flagship APS-C camera at the time. Of course, that doesn’t hold a candle to the R6’s 1,053 autofocus areas and almost 100% coverage across the frame, with eye- and face-tracking autofocus.

So I’ve been pretty spoiled lately. With the solid Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens and the R6, my hit rate has been damn near 100% in most field sports in even semi-decent light. If I missed a shot, it was likely due to pilot error. Focusing on a mirrorless camera is entirely off the sensor, so if it looks like it’s in focus in the viewfinder, it will actually be in focus.

Going back to the 7D was a throwback. The phase detection focus, separate from the imaging sensor, often registered something in focus in the viewfinder with its focus tracking, but things were more often than not just a hair off. In some ways, it wasn’t enough that I would have raised a fuss in 2009, but in 2024, cameras have just gotten so good that the expectations are higher. Here is one that I’d say would just be “OK” by modern standards.

Not something that I’d worry about on the web or social media but enough that it would give me pause to use in a large printed format.

That said, it could hit very sharp focus too, occasionally:

This brought back nightmares of having to microadjust lenses on DSLRs to compensate for front or back focus that body and lens combinations could develop. As a shelf piece for a couple of years and no service probably for some time before that (I bought it used a couple of years ago), it probably badly needed some tweaking in this area. Something I don’t want to do ever again, and so I didn’t.

Were There Any Other Differences?

Using a DSLR again felt surprisingly good. There’s a heft and substantial feeling to the camera body, even in something along the lower end like the 7D. While I have no desire to lug a 1D X into the field ever again, there’s something about that through-the-lens view and the reassuring slap of the mirror as the camera takes pictures.

In some ways, mirrorless cameras are akin to what Apple has often done, in that features are introduced that you didn’t even think you’d need. Back in 2009, I didn’t think I’d ever need more than the 19 points of autofocus the 7D had, let alone face- or eye-tracking. Exposure simulation was completely unnecessary, I thought, as I yelled at the kids to get off my lawn.

But time marches on, and as much fun as going back to the 7D was, the results speak for themselves. We had it good, back then, but now we have it better. Way better.