joe_kallo

Hi all,

This is my first post in years: I used to hang out here a whole bunch back in the early 00s. I probably don't know many folks still around, but this was always my fav forum for Leica info back then. I am wondering if there might be someone who can use their eagle-Leica-eyes to ID something for me. I recently bought a nice Summicron 40 from ebay, and it's coming with a step-up ring and hood I can't identify. I asked the seller for some info on what the ring stepped up to, and he just replied "series 5.5." That doesn't make a ton of sense, and that's the odd filter size that Leica used for the 40 itself, right? (i.e. e39 with the different thread pitch). Anyway, here's the only pic of the hood I have:

imgur.com

The ring looks sorta like a Leica 11251 maybe? Anyone else recognize the ring or hood? Obviously I'll learn more when I receive it, but in the meantime I can entertain myself with speculation. :)

Best,

Joe

First off, some excellent views about this (including mine!) were shared here:

http://www.nikonians.org/dcforum/DCForumID71/3684.html

The upshot? If you shoot RAW and don't crop, the D1 is a VERY viable body.

Several of the images (including the current one) at my photoblog were taken with a D1:

www.quietglow.com

A couple of those printed at 11x16 will hang in a showing next month--I'm quite happy

with the quality.

Joe

Yeah, it runs like crap on my TI 1ghz PB with 512M ram too. From what I understand, its a

port (and a bad one) from peecee. I've tweaked this and modified that and it still runs

slow. Capture is just as bad. FWIW Photo Mechanic is very fast and has lots more features

than View.

Okay, I did it: I purchased a used D1 body to act as a complement to my D70. I've

arranged to shoot a few ultramarathons locally, and this was enough of an excuse for me

to justify the D1. Strong body (ultras are run on trails) and faster AF being the pluses, and

I won't be making more than 8x10s, so I figured "what the heck."

Now I have lots of extra time at work today, so I decided play with the nice D1 RAW image

from outbackphoto which someone was playing with on my previous "Should I go D1"

thread:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workshop/NEF_conversion/nefconversion.html

I used a really fantastic upsizing sequence (nicely made into a Photoshop CS action) also

available on the site (outbackphoto is a really fantatsic site):

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_60/essay.html

I upsized the orginal image to widths of 10", 16" and 24" and from each of these I pulled a

4x6 chunk centered on the bird's eye. I saved these as 12 quality jpegs. I uploaded these

to my local WallyWorld to be printed, and picked them up at lunch a few minutes ago. (By

the way, if you haven't done this yet, take a look. I'm not a big fan of Walmart, but this

service is really great. Once I got a color workflow worked out, I use them all the time to

get quick 8x10s to proof work.

WOW! The image quality is really fantastic all the way up the the 16x24" size. The image in

nice and contrasty, so perhaps its an exceptional sample, but I'd say that 16x20" prints are

no problem assuming you take care of them in Photoshop.

Not to delve into the really controversial, but it makes me seriously wonder what the

massive push for 12+ MP is about? I feel like I'm hitting that stage I did last year when I

realized that my two year old powerbook was pretty much still doing the job I needed it

to--I remember when six months after getting a new computer you invariably would find

something which made it feel slow. Maybe I'm just getting bad eyesight and not playing as

many games...

I can't wait for my D1!

Yeah, I didn't say much about pixel density in my post because its not all that important to

me at this point. I have some nice images made with a 3MP camera that make great

11x14s. Its wonderful to be able to blow D70 images up to 16x20 and make big crops,

but those are exceptions in my little photo world.

I do really like the idea of going back to working with two bodies instead of changing

lenses. I've recently gotten my first ccd dust and its pretty annoying. I REALLY like the idea

of a body that I don't have a coronary over when I fall on it. Laugh, but that was the

scenario on TWO occasions on a recent two week trip to the coast of CA. The D70 survived

without harm, but sometimes I think I need a heavy-duty body for certain situations.

My biggest concern about the D1, believe it or not, is the battery life. I LOVE the D70s

ability to shoot all day (and the next day etc...) on a single battery charge. I'm wondering

how many batteries I'm gonna have to carry for the D1.

Thanks for all the input!

I was wondering if anyone keeps a D1 as a backup body for a D70, and if so, how that

works out. I'm not a pro, but I do often travel--sometimes with the express purpose of

photographing. Previously, with film cameras, I'd always have another body of some type

along with me and I worry about not having a backup sometimes. It would also

occasionally be nice to have two bodied in situations that demand frequent lens changes

(especially in dusty environs).

I'm thinking of the D1 (as opposed to maybe another D70 or D100) as a backup for a few

reasons:

1. They're getting pretty inexpensive on the used market.

2. It would be *really* nice to have a weather and bump resistant body.

3. I work in RAW so the purple people problem isn't really one for me.

Thanks for any input.

Its not as bad, but its noticable enough in regular shots to alert me that something was

amiss. My general rule is that I don't go looking for trouble: if the prints look good, the

lens is good. I also meant to point out before that these samples were taken at 18mm so I

could compare the lenses and confirm I wasn't just losing my eyesight. The softness with

the Sigma is more pronounced at 12mm, which is the focal length I really bought this for.

Douglas (and anyone else having trouble opening the file), please see the picture: <br>

<a href="http://homepage.mac.com/quietglow/lenses.jpg"> here </a>

<br>

I am completely in agreement that doing lens tests with jpgs online is probably not a very

conclusive methodology. In this case, though, I think the differences are pretty darn

obvious, and they appear to me to be very similar to those at the luminous-landscape site

(thanks!). The problem isn't barrel distortion or saturation (which I can work with), but a

much lower resolution.

Hello all,

I don't do lens tests usually, but I noticed the images from my new Sigma 12-24 were

softer than I'm used to. Would someone who is familiar with the SIgma 12-24 EX and the

current 18-70 DX by Nikon take a look at the attached jpg? I am trying to figure out if the

degree of softness in the Sigma is normal for this lens or if I got a bad one. Info about the

pic: 100% crops taken about 2/3 of the way to the upper right corner of the image. Both

exposed at 18mm, f/8 on a Nikon d70 at 200 iso using a tripod.

Thanks all!

Joe<div></div>

James,

It a modified version of CS's "horizontal gallery." I opened a copy of the template (which is

in your PS CS directory) in an HTML editor and made the changes you see. Now I use that

one to generate my pages when I update. Its kinda like what a PHP script would do on a

server (i.e. dynamically generate a page) but I just do it on my machine and upload the

results. Basically, Photoshop does the page generation and I just put it on the web. I would

offer you the template, but it wouldn't do you too much good as it has all my info in it. It

a pretty easy project to do, though.

Joe

I'm a techie by trade and I actually have been using PS to generate my site:

http://www.quietglow.com

I'm using .mac at present, and Apple doesn't allow any scripting. Rather than make/update

a gallery in Dreamweaver, I do it automatically with PS. And, yeah, you can indeed modify

the stock designs (as I have), but just be sure to work on a copy of the originals.

Best,

Joe

I have two questions, and I've searched the archives with no luck finding answers:

1. Is Nikon Image Capture preferred over Photoshop's RAW conversion plug-in? I've

messed with initial RAW processing to no end in PS, but color always seems to be handled

MUCH better by Nikon Capture. Also, Nikon's Image DEE seems to almost magically pull

detail out of shadows w/o blowing highlights. I ask all this because I overwhelmingly

prefer to work in PS both because I'm very familiar with it and:

2. Because Image Capture is SLOW on my machine: a 1ghz Powerbook with 512m ram.

Photoshop, and most everything else, runs super-quick on this machine, but IC is enough

of a dog to make me not want to use it. An example: opening the average RAW file takes

nearly a minute. Changes like DEE take similar time. Conversion from RAW to TIFF takes

more than a minute. Photoshop takes a fraction of these times to do these things. Anyone

else seeing this kind of bad performance with IC on a mac? Any suggestions outside of

"buy more ram"?

Thanks!

Joe

Just for perspective: Not too long ago I picked up, for REALLY cheap, a collapsible summicron with a small chip in the very edge of the front element--maybe 1mm. I have since shot with this lens in all manners of light and have yet to see the effects of this chip in the negatives.

I'd say the effect of the cloudiness might be a drop in transparency (and hence a drop in the actual speed of the lens) and perhaps a greater tendency to flare. If you want softness, buy a Summarit :)

I thought the most important reason was for impressing and influencing people. Damn, I knew something seemed wrong.

Sorry, road weary after just getting back (driving in from) Denver. Mile High Camera rocks and any Leicaphiles passing through Denver ought to stop by.

Jay,

Thanks for your advice. I was hearing Sherry's dire warnings about M4-2s echoing in my head as I noticed this.

Anyway, being the intrepid (read: overly-uncautious) sort, I went ahead and took the eyepiece off. This was surprisingly easy: I used a swatch of bicycle innertube over the whole area and grasped it gently with a pair of pliers. It came off without trouble.

Anyway, what I have now is the little objective lens and the retainer ring. The lens is free from the ring. Is this normal? Is there supposed to be a gasket here or something? I can see a little ring around where the lens goes that sure looks like a little rubber ring would go.

The advice about the M6 style ring is sound, no doubt: I wear glasses. I may pony up for one, though I hear they are pretty pricey.

Thanks again.

Howdy all,

The eyepiece on my M4-2 seems to be broken, should I sell it and buy an MP? No, no just kidding.

Yesterday I noticed when tripping the shutter on my m4-2, that the whole field of view sort of 'ticked.' Upon investigating I discovered that the outermost glass piece in the eyepiece is loose--I can move it around with the eraser of a pencil for instance. The 'tick' I saw was actually the little piece of glass moving just a bit from the vibration of the shutter. It only does this occasionally, probably because its most often its already resting on the bottom of the eyepiece assembly. Not suprisingly, I also noticed that there is a good bit of dust behind it (I assume its not dust-tight now).

My questions:

1. Why? What might cause this?

2. Is this something which is a giant pain to fix? I vaguely remember reading posts about getting the eyepiece retainer off, but there is no sense in me doing this if there is something broken here as opposed to out of whack.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Um..as you might imagine, its not usually like this. As a one who frequents Mac sites as well as this site, I can say with all honesty that this list is almost nothing like the Mac ones. We usually spend lots of time gnashing our teeth about the fact that the new stuff aint as good. Well, okay, some of us do.

I'd give it some time.

Is it just me or does the MP's covering look like Leica bought it from cameraleather.com? Cf:

http://www.cameraleather.com/leica_m/leatherette.htm

The second example down (fine grain black) looks like a dead ringer for the MPs covering.

Bas,

I think we're on the same page. I carry my various Leica's with me virtually everywhere I go. I tend to value my images made with my Leica's over those made with other cameras (I only have a couple others left) to a unreasonable degree--like I tend to act as if only my Leicas are capable of making good images, even though I know that's pretty silly itself.

I just don't think I'd say I love my camera. Unlike most of the other things I would say I love, my camera is pretty much exchangable. I might have a moment of silence if my m4-2 was stolen, but it would end pretty quickly if you handed me another mint one in a nice box with a receipt and warranty card...speaking of silly things...

Okay, reasonable question. Looking at my drying prints on Monday evening (monday is my darkroom night) sipping a beer, I am likely to feel a number of different things. Most often I can see something I could improve on in future printings (and future exposures). Sometimes (albeit not all that often) I am really excited about the way a print has turned out--most often these are the ones I share here or on my website. Sometimes I see something in a print which I am afraid I will forget to do next time and I'll drag myself back into the darkroom and do it again.

What does this have to do with Leica sillyness?