Digital v. Leica M

[chip l.]

Thanks everyone. I knew that I turned to the right place. Just to update; IF I were to make the digital jump, the gear that would still have a home in my kit: M6TTL body, 15, 21, 25, 35, 50, 90, and 135 lenses. I would at this point sell off the Xpan w/45 & 90, the M4-2, and maybe the Tri Elmar IF I do make the jump. As much as I love the M series, I would never give it all up.

[mikal_grass]

If any of you who are going digital are in a rush to get rid of a

Mamiya 7 or 7 II with the 80 and or 150, at a reasonable price, I may

be intereste

[patricks]

Chip - here are my 2 cents:

 

I'm sure most, if not all of us, will go digital sooner or later, at least partly, maybe for the majority of our photography.

 

The question then is WHEN should one get in and in WHAT system?

 

Given the serious amount of Leica equipment you have, I think some scaling down and moving towards a digital system, e.g. a Canon EOS 10D, seems like a sensible thing. I noticed you own some Nikon lenses, but personally I sold my Nikon stuff, I just don't see them keeping up with Canon in the digital race, thus a move to Canon might be worth your consideration.

 

But as most people have told you, WHEN you dip your feets in the digital pool, do it with one foot first, not both feets at the same time...

[fotografz]

Chip, good to hear you're keeping a majority of the M gear. I'd

wager that you will use a digital a lot more than the X-Pan.

 

Reinier, all excellent observations. I would like to point out that

one of the more valuable assets of the LCD screen isn't to look

at the quality of the image as much as a quick review of the

composition. The Histogram is the really valuable exposure tool

provided by the LCD.

 

Mikal, if you are serious about the Mamiya M7, I have a mint

spare black body for sale. Click on my name and e-mail me.

[franciszek_czekala]

I must agree with Peter Apos above.

 

1) The truth is that once you start using a digital camera you will be shooting many more photographs so in 5 years you will be on the plus side in terms of saved costs of film/processing etc. However this discussion does not make any sense for me since any reasonably complete Leica system must cost around 10000$ so cost-wise buying Leicas NEVER make ANY sense. Why should we worry about the cost of digital equipment then?

 

2) The myth of L lenses. It is simply not true that you have to buy L lenses to take advantage of digital SLRs. At present I own 85mm 1.8 Canon prime which is an ultra-sharp, compact, all-metal construction and produces as beautiful pictures as I could ever wish. And you can buy it for 300$. Similarly for 50mm 1.4 and 24mm 2.8 lenses which all cost around 300$. Together it makes 900$ which is not even half of a single Leica lense. And as good as Leica lenses may be they can't be better than perhaps 5 percent in terms of optical quality? The whole world of Leica is a world of illusions and myths and it has long been established that there are absolutely no financial justifications for buying this equipment. Why am I writing this actually? Some people just love to spend their cash for expensive toys and create legends...

Someone can perhaps tell me about L quality Leica zooms? Or 400 mm DO IS lenses? The truth is that lenses like 135 2.0 L, 200 1.8 L and other Canon telephoto lenses are the sharpest lenses every produced and they do not cost much more than Leica stuff. Actually 135 2.0 L is only around 900$. How many 900$ Leica lenses are there? And 135 2.0 L will make most Leica lenses look like a joke in comparison in terms of optical quality. I am tired of reading nonsense of the superiority of Leica.

 

3) A camera like Canon 10D is able to produce perfect A3 prints and personally I almost never print beyond A4. So, in what way will it be obsolete in 5 years? Will A3 size be obsolete? Please try to think just a minute before you write something. Moreover the RAW files from digital cameras are much smaller (this is a little bit of a mystery to me but it is true) then corresponding TIFF files and yet there is no loss of information here which means that they actually use some sort of a very smart compression scheme. With scans coming from 35 mm film I get files which are 65 MB in size. I would much rather work with RAW files which are around 7 MB and offer higher quality.

[Robin Smith]

Franciszek

 

"And 135 2.0 L will make

most Leica lenses look like a joke in comparison in terms of optical quality. I am tired of reading nonsense of the

superiority of Leica."

 

Now who's exaggerating?

[franciszek_czekala]

OK, I was exaggerating a little to make my point. The bottom line is this: If you are interested in medium wide angle to normal angle photography and want to keep your equipment small in size and weight and you dont care about the cost of film/processing and you can spend long hours either scanning film or in the darkroom or you are just interested in shooting BW stay with Leica. For anything else 35 mm photography (be it Leica or not) is dead next to high-end digital SLRs (Canon SLRs to be more specific). Cheers.

[furcafe]

Like most everybody else, I've also been tempted by digital. As you probably know, it's a big PITA & time-suck to scan & Photoshop just 4 or 5 rolls of film @ a time. Although I love my old & old-fashioned film RFs, I have no philosophical objection to digital.

 

My big hang up w/digital right now is simply the almost total lack of truly manual digicams w/film camera form-factors, in either RF or SLR formats. I hate the menu-driven operating systems on the digital point & shoots &, with the exception of the big high end DSLRs like the 10D, etc. (which are already too automated & menu-driven for my liking) I haven't seen many digicams that operate like film cameras. I don't need a true digital M; I would be happy w/a manual focus, aperture-priority digital RF w/a good, fast lens & traditional manual override controls (i.e., something like a fixed-lens digital Hexar RF or a digital update of the Japanese RFs of the 1970s). Can it really be that hard to make a 5+ megapixel digital RF that has a regular shutter speed dial & aperture ring on the lens? Probably not. I'm guessing that the market for manual (or AE w/manual override) digicams is just too small for Canon, Nikon, et al. & that Leica just doesn't have the will &/or resources.

[peter_ochmann]

Franciszek

 

Yep, it will be a long time until wide angle lenses will exist which show the qualities of a 1.4/35 asph. on a DSLR. If not impossible...

[henk]

Im looking at a set of perfect prints here, which i just dropped off at a good lab, and which were MUCH cheaper then digi prints..... Who says film takes too long to process.... 1 dropoff and im DONE ;)

[travis1]

I think the reason why I am not going digital is that I would miss film developing by myself. You really need to experience the whole process. Well, at least, that's how I feel about it.

 

I think that's about the most obvious difference between film based and digital based cameras anyway, developing.

[chip l.]

Peter - The lens issue is the big stumbling block at this point for me. For either the Canon or Nikon, I would need two lenses to cover that range. Where as when I had Nikon body and lenses (Patrick - sold those to get the Tri Elmar) I lived with the 28-105 80% of the time. The 70-300 and 20 were about 10% each. Don't know if I could be happy with a 24-85 that becomes a 35-120 on the digital side. And given the dust on the sensor issue I would like to keep lens changes to a minimum. In the end I guess the Leica has spoiled me. I moved away from SLR's becuase of the lack of depth of field scales (found myself loving RF's becuase you can focus by scale), and becuase of the size and weight of an SLR kit compared to my M kit. Not to mention that I wanted to "work" a bit more to get my images.

 

I also have to be honest to myself too. I pared down to the Leica and Xpan becuase I saw some words of wisdom here. The question was asked - how do you decide what gear to take on a trip or shoot? One of the replies was along the lines of - if you can't decide what to take then you have too much gear. That was when I started to sell off the Nikon stuff. And I know that if I do go DSLR, then my M stuff may find as little use as my Xpan stuff does now.

 

Franciszek - Your point about shooting more is one of the reasons that digital has an appeal to me. You are also right about the time to scan in images.

 

Again thanks for all the great input. It may come down to getting a new scanner with Digital Ice and find the time and money to stay with film. At least till someone (you listening Nikon and Canon?) comes up with a digital RF that has the responsiveness of the pro DSLR's at least.

[fotografz]

Ahhh, another stray lamb returned to the flock.

[ky2]

<p><i>"The question was asked - how do you decide what gear to take on a trip or shoot? One of the replies was along the lines of - if you can't decide what to take then you have too much gear.</i></p>

<p>That may be true only when comparing equally-sized systems. There are just things you can't shoot with 35mm/Digital, and some things that a 4x5 would be plain dumb to use. For candid/street photography I'll choose my Fm3a 60% of the time... the rest I'd use my S2 Pro.</p>

<p>It's a wise move keeping what you're already know and use happily. B/W photography is something not yet mastered by any DSLR out there. Good luck!</p>

[fotografz]

Yaron FYI, actually there are two DSLRs that are quite excellent

for B&W photography... Kodak has a model dedicated to B&W

only with all in camera functions set for B&W to increase D-Max

and B&W tonal qualities. You cannot shoot color with this Kodak.

The second is the Contax ND, which also has an excellent B&W

capture with a Phillips 6 meg full frame CCD sensor that renders

B&W with an amazing tonal range.

[ky2]

Marc, I've heard about the b/w Kodak body.. but it's been discontinued, right? As for the Contax Fullframe, well.. it's a little out of my league financially. If I had the money for it in the first place, I'd get a Hassie with a digital back...