Leica product reviews - help wanted

Sometime in the near future this forum will be a part of photo.net, and I will continue to be its moderator. Further, I have volunteered - and have been selected - to be the photo.net Leica section editor, which makes me largely responsible for the content of the Leica section (presumably mostly product reviews and this rather lively Q&A forum).

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Right now, the management staff of photo.net is looking for approximately one Leica product review each month over the next six months. They are looking to me. I, in turn, am looking to anyone here who may be interested in writing reviews. We will arrange for you to recieve a loaner from Leica so that you can use it for a month, write your report, and email it to me so that I can edit it and publish it to photo.net with proper credit to you, of course. I will nag you to get the reviews to me sooner than you probably would like, so you may end up disliking me very much over the course of our relationship. At least one member here has already written a review for photo.net: Kirk Tuck on the Leica M6.

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If you are interested in volunteering your time for this task, you can respond to this thread, or write to me personally at <i><a href="mailto:rowlett@alaska.net">rowlett@alaska.net</a></i> and we can discuss the particulars.

Hey Tony, I'm definitely interested. As long as its M stuff, I

typically burn about 8 rolls of film a weekend on my project so

there's plenty of room for tests. I'm also in the process of

submitting a paper to a major scientific journal and am versed in

the "reverse pyramid" style of writing (newspaper style).

Tony first off, thanks for your work on this forum.:0) My quetsion is

about the speed of Photo.net. Photo.net seems to take for ever

to load up/do searches there. Are they working on this? I have

cable internet and I have tried photo.net with T3 line at work all

are slow. I actually find myself coming to read posts here

because of this.;0) Thanks I've been meaning to ask you this

since I read that this forum would be moving. --->Scott

That's really odd... I've found it to be just as fast as this forum

at its fastest, for the last 5 years. And it does not slow down like

this one (or worse still, go offline) with the rarest exceptions.

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What gives?

I do not have problems w photo.net load times either. It is possibly

because I access the server from europe when most americans are

sleeping?

I am interested in M and even LTM reviews. I don't shoot nearly as

much film as I would like and having to write a review would give me

the kick in the back I need to get out and shoot.

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I have written for publication, although not for a few years and would

like the oppurtunity to start writing again.

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Chad Hahn

tony, here are my 2 cents:

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- ok, the photo.net server isn't screaming fast, but I find this

server to equally slow, many times slower and with substantially

higher rates of misloaded pages. i access through DSL or T3,

sometimes dial up modem.

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- perhaps w/ leica above all brands, it is imperative that you have a

qualified and experienced reviewer. not only very knowledgable about

leica products, but other products in order to compare them

objectively (no need for some gung-ho leica fan do do reviews, i'm

sure the comments section will be full of those ;-)) why

not "invite" different reviewers that have shown competence

technically and artistically before, e.g. stephen gandy, erwin puts,

dante stella (w/ some Konica bias ;-))

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in all, i'm looking forward to the move towards a more controlled

community (no one mentioned, no one forgotten) and will also make

this great community accessible to a larger # of users

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cheers,

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pat

The responses here and through email have been wild! Thank you very

much! This is great news. Even though I've received 20 or so

emails in addition to the few in this thread already, there will

probably be work for most everyone who has responded. I will be

contacting you individually.

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I don't know about the performance/response time of photo.net or

even the server that is home to our forum (greenspun.com) because I

am not involved with its administration. There must be hundreds of

variables, including the number of hops from you to the site,

network traffice, etc., that would affect performance. I know both

systems seem to work OK for me most of the time.

I also find photo.net quite slow. There's a lot of JS your browser has to

process. In contrast, LUSENET is super straight forward. The photo.net logo

is animated, drop down flyaway menus are all JS. Sigh. Can't have bells and

whistles for free. A reason I like this place so much better. I used to hang

out at photo.net a lot. But even with a T1 (?- whatever it is we have at work)

or DSL at home, it's too slooow... Not that we have a lot of choice at this

time...

Photo.net slow? For me, just occasionally. (University LAN + dedicated

line = speed.)</p>Tony, I'm based in Leicaland, am more or less

html-versed despite my frequent typos, use an R system, know it rather

well, am willing to test any R and digital gear Leica provides, and

know how to work under pressure.

Hispavista.com packed in two or three days ago--I can't acess my email

any more over there. Tony, in case you already notified me, would you

mind to send another mail to my new account? Thank you very much! I'm

sorry for the trouble.