Richard Williams

By 'obscure' I mean the Hauptarchiv in Munich rather than the NSDAP in general. That's a rather obscure cog in the Nazi machine, not an obvious target for forgers. This one is also a genuine (and not the commonest) Leitz lens, so it has significant value even without additional engravings. That means a bigger outlay for any potential forger (unlike your outrageous 'Swedish Leica', where the value of the work that went into converting it is probably greater than the cost of the original Soviet camera!). In any case, Tamarkin are estimating the lens at $2500-$3500, even without provenance, and are saying 'this lens was made in 1935, in the very first year of production, and was most likely conscribed at that time for the party’s use', which implies they think it's the real deal.

I meant to write 'If neither Leica nor Jim Lager have any records, you are probably out of luck', so if Leica are still working on it they might dig something up. On the other hand, the engraving might have been purely a local decision - maybe the Archive just bought a lens from a camera shop in Munich and had it engraved, as Lager suggests, by a local jeweller, presumably as a security measure. There might be no others to find in 2018, especially as there would have been a very strong motive to erase any explicitly Nazi engravings in the aftermath of the war (stronger than with the German military Leicas, where the engravings are also commonly defaced).

Surely the'department' was the Archive itself? If neither Jim Lager have any records, you are probably out of luck. But perhaps the archive's activities extended to keeping records of its own purchases? If so, then they might just conceivably have survived. According to the link above, the original Hauptarchiv documents are in the Bundesarchiv in Germany, and there are microfilm copies at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide in London and at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA. Perhaps 'X50' is a magnification factor of some description, used in some copying/enlarging application? Do you have a link to the engraving on the other forum?

Someone posted about an unplated brass Leica (not a gold-plated Luxus) here a while back - apparently the factory records confirmed it had been shipped that way. Someone else had an apparently genuine Leica that had been stripped to the brass by a third party at some point in its life. But these are very much the exceptions - nearly all the brass cameras are obviously refinished FEDs or Zorkis. What looks like a real Leica lens with an unusual inscription is a different matter. If the engraving is genuine, then it was presumably done by or on behalf of the archive itself to indicate ownership, rather than by an individual. This would make it historically interesting, though the sort of thing I'd rather see in a museum that puts Nazi-owned objects in their terrible context rather than on one of my cameras. If the engraving is forged, it's a pretty sophisticated bit of fakery to use something as obscure as this. A Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine or Heer engraving would have broader appeal.

I expect you've already seen descriptions of the archive like this: NSDAP Main Archives; Julius Streicher collection; Heinrich Himmler collection (microfilm) - Archives Hub If it's genuine and Leica themselves have no relevant record, then the engraving might well have been done locally - I suppose even Nazi archives liked to mark their property. I wonder that 'X50' refers to? Perhaps this was used in some sort of copying application? Pre-photocopier archives must have done a lot of photographic reproduction work. It seems a bit wide to be used as an enlarger lens.

A very clear fake. This one started life as a Zorki 1 (type 1e) made in the USSR in the mid 1950s. The chrome and original engravings have been stripped off, leaving bare brass, and fake engravings added.

This thread is from last January - while the last few posts make some interesting points, I suspect they'll be a bit late for the original poster's purposes! Otherwise, how about the 28-70 f/2.8?

I'm not a fan of this either - it looks a lot like Adobe exploiting a near monopoly position to make a mountain of cash. But there should be no reason for you to go this way yet. If you have a computer that can run CC, you have a computer that can run CS6 plus the free ACR upgrade.

The supported method is the installer in my first link, above (v9.1.1 for CS6). It's very easy to update if it's supported by your version of PS and your OS. I'm sure Adobe did to some extend use raw format compatibility as a way of 'encouraging' PS version upgrades before they came up with the rental scheme - sometimes the difference between the raw formats of related cameras is trivial (just an updated 'Model' tag in the metadata). On the other hand, they do go to the trouble of making camera-specific colour matching profiles that go beyond basic compatibility.

What operating system and version? It may be as simple as updating the ACR plugin. PS CS6 is compatible with Adobe Camera Raw up to 9.1.1, which supports all three cameras, but this requires a relatively recent version of Windows (at least 7) or OS X (at least 10.7). I don't think the DNG converter will help if upgrading ACR doesn't work, because any version that supports the D810 would have the same OS requirements as the equivalent ACR. Camera Raw plug-in installer Camera Raw plug-in and Adobe application compatibility Cameras supported by Camera Raw Adobe Camera Raw 8.4 or later on Mac OS 10.6, Windows XP, and Vista Otherwise (or instead - I like Nikon's conversions), you can get the free Capture NX-D package and convert to tiff (or jpeg): Nikon Imaging | Global Site | Capture NX-D

That's interesting. My star ratings were from a previous (Windows) version of NX-D rather than from NX-i. I could see the images and the ratings as expected in 1.5.0, but when I attempted to process a file with a rating (to 16-bit tiff), a progress window popped up but then immediately closed again and the file was not processed. With an unrated file, the progress window stayed open, and I could see a progress bar moving towards 100%, and the file was processed as expected. Changing the old rating, or removing it, or separating the file from its sidecar, restored normal behaviour. I've now explored a bit further, and found that some earlier star-rated files (perhaps rated with an earlier version of NX-D) behave as normal. So it looks like this happens only in very specific circumstances! If you run into this problem, resetting the rating is a fix.

Well, the control points are certainly there, but I'll leave it to others to comment on whether they work as well as before (or vs the Nik collection). I've just noticed one strange possible bug. Images given a star rating in a previous version didn't convert until I removed or changed the rating in 1.5.0, or moved the rated NEFs to break the link with the sidecar metadata folder where the rating is stored. Deleting the old sidecar files should also work. I haven't tested whether there are incompatibilities with other edits made in previous versions. If you have extensive edits, it may be worth backing up the NKSC_PARAM folder in your image directory before testing the new version.

As the version number suggests, NX-D 1.5.0 appears to be a significant upgrade. Control points are back and it's claimed that image processing is faster: Nikon Imaging | Global Site | Capture NX-D Nikon Capture NX-D: Control Points are back! *New* Nikon Capture NX-D 1.5.0: Nikon Coolpix Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review Under Windows, the installer detected the previous version, but rather than removing it, told me to uninstall manually before it would install the new version.

Original engraving, or something added more recently to make it seem more exotic and marketable? Is the gold colour just the lighting? A Russian lens wouldn't usually be engraved in German ('Special Lens'). This name was apparently used for (e.g.) Zeiss Jena lenses corrected for IR and visible light, supposedly used by the East German Stasi for covert surveillance, but the examples online aren't collapsible Elmar copies. As for the coating, my real 5cm Elmar looks rather like that, and none of my Leica lenses have greenish coating (though some Nikkors do). But of course the important thing is the quality of the results, whatever the history - looks like a keeper!

I doubt it is, but I'm also sceptical that not being able to change anything that would normally be controlled by a menu or review an image in the field would, either.

Poor battery life, no SD or second XQD slot, delayed f/2.8 zooms that should have been available at launch, a manual focus lens nobody was asking for, and exorbitant UK pricing. But otherwise I quite like the look of them!

Yes, this. All I see are the demise of the underwhelming Nikon 1 and KeyMission cameras, the usual short life cycles of anonymous P&S cameras, and the expected replacement of various dSLRs and lenses by mostly comparable products.

Well, that's certainly cheaper than the official one. And even blacker. Black Leica Logo for M6-M7-M8-M9, M10 & Q Cameras.

Why not keep the Summarit for now and see how you get on with it? That will give you the best idea of how a 50 works for you on full frame, and you can always trade it in for something faster or wider later.

This video shows some of the final steps in putting together a 'Made in Germany' M9 - at about 50s, you can see a largely assembled camera 'which comes from Portugal' entering the German production line, where it is married with a sensor from Kodak packaged with electronics by Jenoptik:

I've never been there, but a quick glance at Tripadvisor suggests there's not a huge choice of places to stay, and if a handful of reviews are anything to go by, the Ernst Leitz may be one of the better options: The 10 Best Wetzlar Hotels of 2018 (with Prices from £14) - Wetzlar Accommodation - TripAdvisor Plenty of places to eat with decent reviews, though.

The 105 DC is perhaps my favourite Nikon lens.

I think the point made in the linked blog is that this judgement (including the interpretation of fair use) is an outlier that isn't consistent with what other courts have decided. The photographer might well win on appeal.

I don't recall any difficulty going from the D70 to the D300, or from the D300 to the D800. You can always take the D70 as a backup, and carefully review the first photos from the new model to make sure you aren't making any obvious mistakes. The basic camera controls of any '2 dial' Nikon will be familiar to anyone who has used an F5 or later. The PASM modes work the same way, though AF has got a bit more complicated. You might not be taking full advantage at first of the more advanced digital features when you upgrade, but the basics will be pretty similar. There will be more menu options than before, but a D300 or later has pretty comprehensive help built in. I think I just fiddled with the camera for an hour or so when I upgraded just before a trip, and everything was fine.

The D70 was my first dSLR, I enjoyed using it, and got some shots I was very pleased with. But even at the time it was necessary to be aware of its limitations. Reviewing photos isn't ideal on the tiny LCD, the outer AF points aren't great, the noise starts to come up above ISO 400, there's not much latitude for cropping a 6MP image, and it's easy to blow the highlights. The D300, only 3 years later, seemed like technology from another world, and sensors at least have only improved since then. Something from the D7xxx series seems like a good choice - as others have pointed out, anything less and you lose the sub-command dial and screwdriver AF compatibility. A D300 would also be a big step up, and as a higher end camera is still in some ways superior to a D7200, though it doesn't have the high ISO performance of the later bodies. If you have FX lenses, there are of course further options.