jean_.

<p>It's most likely a fake, "Kriminal Polizei" is spelled in one word in german: "Kriminalpolizei"... I'd say is safe to assume that anybody who does engravings for german authorities would care to check the spelling. BTW, german authorities are very much in love of abbreviations, if it read something like "LKA Berlin" I'd believe it immediately ;-)<br>

Anyway, the pics will be completely unaffected, so enjoy the camera!</p>

For me, to much equipment is more often a problem than having left something back

home. It's to much choices - take a 21mm, or try a tele, mhhh, perhaps better check with

the 50 - oh dammit, the light has changed, the photo got away and I stand amidst the

most beautiful scenery holding a lens between my teeth and fiddling with a camrea and

two other lenses. More likely I end up myself on someone elses's pic as "the fool with to

much equipment" than making to many pics myself.

 

OK, that's just me, but with one camera and one lens (maybe two, but then very different

ones, like 28 and 90) I adapt to the limitations and concentrate on pics I can get with that

rig instead of constantly cycling through my gear.

 

Another issue for me is to much equipment means to much worry about where to leave it.

In the car? In the hotel? Under the restaurant table while I'm off to the bathroom? I feel

more comfortable with less gear that I can either afford to lose or have it comfortably near

me all the time.

 

That's why I would take two lenses, one body for using and one for backup, but I wouldn't

haul the second body around all day, rather leave it back in the room.

 

Same, BTW, accounts for film. 10 rolls of kodachrome (are they still making it?), 30 rolls of

different types of b/w film would make me fell of having always the wrong film in the

camera...

700 euros in germany for a M6. Besides a CLA light leaks has to be repaired, but still it is

ridiculously expensive. But I'm afraid that Leicas also cost the most in germany, apparently

somehow during the transport overseas they lose some of their intrinsic value!

From my own experience of my conversion from film to digital I see two factors. First one

is that the images have more or less migrated to a digital environment, they are shared,

viewed, stored and post-processed digitally. For me this means that a photo doesn't really

"exist" unless it's digital. People see a print and say wow, that's nice, can you email it to

me? Or set up a slideshow at flickr? Not that long ago it was the opposite. Folks saw a

photo on my monitor (I was a very early adopter of digital photography!) and asked for a

print - which was nearly impossible to achieve in the late 90s. IT infrastructure was so

primitive then that a digital photo was a handicap and could only be seen on my monitor!

If you embraced this part of the digital workflow you will spend (= waste) a lot of time for

scanning your film, and I would strongly recommend a digital capture to make life easier.

As to the comment of a special "vodoo" that's required to make a digital photo look as

good as a chrome - that's nonsense. Tools like Aperture or Lightroom have eliminated all

that RAW conversion wizardry. If you expose as careful as with film, there will be no

issues afterwards, you just skip the tedious scanning.

 

OK, but now the downside of digital. It has been mentioned before, and I have to agree

that carrying along a truckload of AC adaptors, batteries, cables, adaptors in order to take

photos is a serious pain. The effort needed to keep the required digital infrastructure

running is huge and I experience this as becoming a problem that takes a bit of the fun

out of travelling. Compared with just throwing in a camera and film rolls in my bag I don't

feel that digital has brought an improvement when I look at the bulk I'm now carrying even

for a one day trip. But then I just pop the SD into the adapter dangling from my notebook

that's hooked up to AC power together with the cellphone and the camera and voila, I can

edit my pics and then again I feel it's worth all the effort. And I still have some rolls to

scan, always postponing the scanning tro another weekend.

 

So, in the end, I would take the M8 if I could afford it. By affording it I mean if I could bring

it to all places I'd like to witout worrying loss, theft or damage because i could easily

afford another one just in case.. Fussing about the fear that slides or film would yield

better results is really a waste of time, but it is very important to be clear about your own

workflow and intended use of the photos. You know, nothing beats a projected slide. If

this is what you are after then digital would be a waste of money. If you plan to use the

photos only digitally than a film camera is a waste of your precious time.

Don't be to surprised, history is being "adjusted" quite a bit for a while now. One part is to

negate all remnants of the dark era, at the same time there is a huge education about how

terribly germany has suffered in WWII. At the end of that process you will learn that this

country has been raided and abused for no particular reason. It's amazing to witness the

annual rememberings, of course only nitpickers mention why those evil aliens came to

germany in the first place..

 

As to add some 0.02$ to the original intent of this thread, in germany it is forbidden to

publish all symbols of that era. It seems just sane to me for a company to avoid legal

trouble and simply skip those 12 years, in the same time also avoiding any negative image

transfer.

The meter in my M6 died after some weeks of agony where it gave me random erratic results. It worked for some days after re-inserting batteries and playing with the ISO wheel, but at some day it insisted to have ISO 1600 at f/2 with 1/15 sec - in plain sunlight..

 

I was bit disappointed since I could have bought an M2 for considerably less money and have a nicer camera. Out of luck, I guess..

 

I considered repairing it, but concluded that it's not worth it, even Leicas have become cheap these days! The quote Leica gave me was more than a DSLR with decent lens, selling the defective one and getting a fully functional M6 would be a lot cheaper. Still undecided what to do, but since I don't use my leica much anymore I've not bee pressed to make a decision..

Alessandro, ths is completely off topic ;-) Reading your name here I remembered we had

contact a couple of years ago via ebay about the 50mm! I'm glad to see you posting here,

and that you enjoy photography! Greetings from munich!

 

To answer your question: I'm afraid that there is just to much choice, and all offerings are

very attractive. Don't be to influenced by the usual "something better will come out soon"

talk, or that a megapixel more or less would actually matter. Frankly, I wouldn't bother

about 6MP vs. 10MP or full frame vs. smaller. Unless you sell to magazines it won't matter.

What matters is that you enjoy using the camera and lenses. Quality wise all current

offerings will be fine.

 

Anyway, here's my $0.02: looking at your present equipment I'd dare to guess that you

enjoy the look of older lenses, especially fast primes? In that case I'd give the Pentax a try.

The mount is backwards compatible and you can use any Pentax or even M42 lens on that

body, leaving endless room to experiment with fine old glass without having to mortgage

anything. Pentax also offers gorgeous new primes.

 

And I'd look into the 4/3rd cameras, among them the Panasonic/Leica offering. Here also

you can use a wide choice if lenses using adapters, including fine Olympus glass.

Two misunderstandings IMHO:

 

a) the cult of PJ. A profession like any other. I wouldn't obsess over the preferred brand of taxi drivers or truck drivers when I'm in the market for a car. Do the "pros" drive BMW?

 

b) reducing PJ to paparazzi chasing after celebrities. While I'm no PJ I can really imagine that this profession has a lot more to offer than a crowd of fellows waving dslrs over heir heads in the hope of getting a shot of Tom Cruise.. In htis case the PJ is part of the show, I'd even say that he is the show and the celeb would be just another ordinary mortal without the crowd of paparazzi..

 

And ym 0.02$

 

When it comes to recording something as opposed to the inscenation of an event as in b) I can well imagine that a camera that does not fire like a shotgun and look like a ahoulder missile launcher will have it's share of use even among professional photographers. But then, as in a), I don't really care at all.

Thanks to all for your responses, and my apology for coming back so late, but I've been

travelling and had no access to the web..

 

OK, what I get from it is that sooting RAW will certainly help. I admit that I shot jpeg until

now, and have only fiddled with the jpeg settings the camera offers, like that auto-

contrast-thingy that actually is very useful to gain a bit of tonality.

 

Fill flash: Has occured to me of course, but is not helpful for landscapes, and for people -

let me put it that way: the silence of the R1 is one of the main reasons I bought the

camera. Not because I take pics sneaky and secretly, but because the noise of a DSLR (and

certainly a flash going off) is killing any nice mood that people are having. I do not want to

become the center of interest when taking a pic, and I don't want the people starting to

"act" and become camera conscious. The leica, or the R1, just take pics, and everybody

forgets about it fast and igbnore me handling the camera. BTW, flash also kills any nice

lighting..

 

Metering certainly helps, I'm aware of that, thanks for reminding me.

 

Correcting exposure until the zebra pattern goes away certainly rescues the highlights, but

I often end up with the shadows being really noisy when I lighten them up. I'll try RAW and

the expose to the right method.

 

@ Andy: thanks for posting the pictures, I was actually hoping for something like that. I

will try RAW.

 

After all, it may be in part my expectation, after using mostly b/w film and using mainly an

incident light meter, I almost never encountered any blown out highlights or other

exposure problem, save for the frames lost because of me forgetting to set the shutter

speed back from 1sec ack to something more useful in bright sunlight ;-) I see that those

using slides are used to deal with it.

Fellow leica users, I dare to post this here since I presume you know what I'm

talking about:

 

I got myself a Sony R1, and while the camera is gorgeous and works like a charm,

I keep being frustrated by the limited exposure latitude and blown-out

highlights. I feel that either I have the choice between all shadows black or

the highlights being totally blown-out. Apparently digital camera makers are

afraid of the dark, and default exposure is set to avoid shadows at thre price

of half the frame being blown out. As a cmpromise, I have exposure compensation

constantly set to -1 fstop to save some of the highlights, but in the end this

is not really satisfying.

 

OK, I know that this is a result of coming from b/w film with plenty of exposure

latitude..

 

My question to those of you who are also using digital cameras - how do you

handle this? Combine multiple frames and photoshop wizardry, or avoid contrasty

scenes alltogether?

 

Just curious..

My guess would be that there certainly is no rocket science required for the coding, so it should be possible to code 3rd party lenses or adapters for ancient screwmounts.

 

If leica keeps this a secret then it would be necessary to share the codes of the different lenses, so that someone can figure the system out.. Huw perhaps ;-)

prove<div></div>

i hope the driver got out in time and is doing well<div></div>

' ' ' '<div></div>

don't worry, the stadiums will be the quitest and most relaxed places in germany. Actually

only few fans have been able to get tickets, the vast majority have been given to VIP,

celebrities and their acquaintances. I guess that every german celeb must have received some

100 tickets, let's see if they have enough entourage to fill the stadiums.

 

On the other hand, the riots will take place in public places, where the mob is unobserved by

police.. even worse, there is a certain suspicion that nazi groups have plans to hijack the

event, unfortunately a lot of potential for things getting really ugly. Let's hope the police is

prepared and able to react fast enough.

It seems a lot of bird potography experts shed their knowledge here, I'm impressed. I admit that while I saw many photos of animals (and birds) I rarely have seen any where the predator is presenting his prey like in this pic. That makes it special - for me, the bird photo layman - and together with composition and lighting I'd call it an excellent picture.

 

Doug, thanks for sharing your photos here! I also appreciate to see results of the DMR used for real photography, as opposed to the usual snaps of someone's cat, BTW

Has someone checked the Sony R1? I feel that it could be a "digital leica" and combine the

pros of digicams with the image quality of a dslr. Lens is a bit on the slow side, however..

Funny to see the folks continuing to rave about magapixels! More is of course always nice to

have, but 10MP really by all means is good enough. And in case you missed some math

lessons, the 12MP or 14MP are a pathetic improvement over 10MP..

 

What could bother a bit more however is the crop factor, which nicely limits the wide angle

options - unfortunately wide angles seem to be very popular among the leica shooters. I

believe that in this regard, leica did not set the correct priorities for the digital M. I still would

want one, though!

Kodak DCS520 for web and ebay stuff (now that is decadence, isn't it? I bet AP didn't see

this coming when they shelled out $15.000 for this camera!), and whatever cam is on my

current phone.

 

Long version: I once was an evangelist of digital photography, and begun with the first

megapixel (just one) camera as soon as it became available. I could not understand how

anybody could lug around film cameras, knowing that it couldn't get any better. The folks

shooting film, the vast majority in the late 90s, had pity for my endless needs on power,

batteries, memory cards, computing power, backups..

 

The digicam was a LOT of fun, but at a point I felt that there was some potential both in

ergonomics and image quality, what brought me to get a M6. Now I use the leica, since

they cost next to nothing also a Hasselblad MF setup, and recently a Minox and Pentax

110, just to enjoy them as long as those unusual formats are still easy to get. I follow a

low-fi approach, using film and $10 scanner, an old Kodak RFS 2035, that strangely

enough makes better scans than the Epson flatbed I used before.

 

Now again the majority pities me for my old and ugly gear, the need of film and

processing, and the lack of instant feedback. However, they are surprised when they see

the pics saying something like "hey, now that's not bad considering the old crap you are

taking pics with, just imagine what you could do with a digicam!"

 

I fancy a Sony R1, however. Let's see if I go back to digital..

i just bought a 2035 for $10 off ebay, and am very pleased so far. For the price, it is certainly unbeatable! I will jot down my experiences as I start using it seriously.

 

Quality is OK, the 200dpi seem to be of better "quality" than the 2400 or 4800dpi that flatbed scanners claim. Speed is VERY impressive. As a sidenote, the scanner is basically b/w, taking 3 snaps in R/G/B and adds them up to a color image. I can imagine that it is very useful fos scanning b/w, I have yet to scan some b/w negs. Operation is nearly silent.

 

I am using it on OSX with vuescan, and it works just fine. You asked about the 3570, which is basically nthe same scanner but can handle also medium format film. The 3600 is entirely different, and I cannot recommend the 3600 after having used one.

 

So if you don't expect it to outperform an Imacon or latest film scanner, a 3570 or 2035 will certainly be very useful.

This is amazing. I am really itchy to grab an old camera and make it digital. Especially building a dedicated b/w camera. As you know, it is a huge difference between a true monochrome sensor and a converted image froma coor sensor. Until now only kodak attempted such a camera, and apparently the corporations see no market for this. But if this approaches the DIY realm, tis would be one of my first projects.

It seems that the leica brand is still strong. The spot is for the upcoming "origami" from

Microsoft. I was amazed to see what camera was chosen to underline the message of the

spot, and how beautifully it works. The camera itself is also a little surprise, as you will see.

Should they have got something from Solms? We'll have to wait until later this year to know..

 

Given the effort they put into integrating that camera in the spot, apparently the brand

behind it has been considered powerful enough to make it worthwile. I mean, any other

camera right of the shelf would have done it, but instead - but see for yourself!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHgkZ-yIQfM

The Bolex cameras are gorgeous until you look through the viewfinfer. Bolex viewfinders are the worst crap, comparable only to disposable pocket-110 cameras. What made them put such a crap on so wonderful cameras is beyond me.. it doesn't affect the fondling factor and image quality, though. Beaulieus have much better viewfinders, but many quirks of their own.

 

For actual filming in 16mm on a budget, I highly recomend the Arri 16ST

The rules are fine, the main point is if the event actually is an event, or if the media (e.g.

the paparazzi) are the event.

 

Example: a play at a theatre. i'd kick everyone out of the audience who dares to fire his MG

like SLR shutter and flash the devil out of the stage. This is a real event, it's about what is

happening, and any attempt of some dumb photographer to take control over the event

and become himself the center of attention is an outrage.

 

Example: some meaningless politicians or other irrelevant celebs gather to celebrate their

celebrity status. Nothing noteworthy happens, probably nobody would care. Here the

opposite is true - since there is no real event it's the photographers who "make" the event.

Rightfully are they shouting, running to and fro, firing away like artillery in D-Day, because

its them, the media, who all is really about.

 

It's right that today PJ don't get as close to the celebs as before. Today celebs want to be

in control of their public image, and every time they rear their heads is an inscenation of

themselves. A PJ moving among them snapping silently away would be out of control, and

might create images the celebs are not interested in - look at the excellent coverage of

politics until the 70s, and the meaningless pics we get today. Politicians were less

conscious of their image, and more about their work. Therefore they allowed PJ to be

present and document things that today would be out of the question.

Very valid point, and the first time I think that it's not about protecting the camera from

being damaged! I took mine several times to snowboarding, with the camera under my

jacket. Indeed it is unpleasant to fall on it, even whenthe ribs remain intact.

 

While there are many nice views in the alps, I found it very annoying to stop, open the jacket,

freeze, make a snap, put camera back, etc.. last time i went without a camera, and it was

clearly more fun. I think that's why I'm not a photographer ;-)