02Pete

<p>Thanks for all the comments!</p> <p>@ C.R. Ultra -- Thanks for posting the links to the shots you took in London and Paris with your M6. I looked at both sets. Of the London shots, there were four that I particularly liked -- 6/31, the one showing the Tower Bridge with a twin-hulled boat in the foreground; 17/31, the Queen's Guard; 22/31, Bikes; and 31/31, Bottled Ship 2. Of the Paris shots, I especially liked 6/11, Downstairs.</p> <p>Other readers: If you haven't already seen C.R.'s photos, take a look -- he's got some nice ones.</p> <p>@ Bill Bowes --I'm glad you like the photo of the Bowlus. If you're interested in seeing more of my sailplane photos, you can find them here:<br> http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=526024<br> http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=518565 </p> <p>Some background re the Bowlus photo, for what it's worth. I've got an FAA license as a glider pilot (though I'm not current), so I know a bit about this. The sailplane in the photo is a Bowlus BA-100 Baby Albatross, the prototype of which first flew in 1937. This example was owned and flown by Jeff Byard. For any pilots reading this, it had a wingspan of 44.5 feet (13.5 meters), an empty weight of 300 pounds (136 kilograms), a maximum payload (i.e. pilot plus parachute) of 205 pounds (93 kilograms), a maximum L/D (lift to drag ratio) of 20:1, and minimum sink of 2.25 feet per second (0.69 meters per second). The wings and tail were built of wood and fabric, and the open-cockpit pod and boom fuselage had a molded plywood pod and an aluminum tailboom. The designer, Hawley Bowlus, was an American who designed several other notable sailplanes during the 1930s and 1940s. While the Baby Albatross was a small ship with relatively low performance, it was flown by pilots such as Dick Johnson, Dick Schreder and Joe Lincoln (famous to US soaring pilots, unknown to anybody else), and in some cases made cross-country flights of more than 250 miles (402 kilometers) -- not bad for an aircraft that was out of gas before it took off. This photo was taken at the National Soaring Museum (NSM) on Harris Hill in Horseheads, NY, near Elmira. The event was an International Vintage Soaring Meet held in 2005. Pilots from all over the US, and from some foreign countries, bring older sailplanes to these meets for display and non-competitive recreational flying. In case anybody is interested, one of these IVSM events is scheduled to be held at the NSM from July 9 to July 16 this year (2016).</p>

<p>From your currency reference, I assume that you are in the UK. Don't know enough about dealers in the UK to offer any recommendations -- if you were in the US I'd recommend KEH.com.</p> <p>If you don't want to spend a lot of money or wait a long time, a good used Nikon D5200 with an AFS 35mm f/1.8 G lens would be an affordable but effective shooting combination.</p> <p>For a film shooter who learned photography on manual cameras and still owns some older manual focus lenses such as Nikon AI or AIS lenses, but wants to do some DSLR shooting and hopes to be able to use the older lenses, a Nikon Df might be an ideal solution -- it can do manual metering with AI and AIS lenses, it's a full-frame FX format camera with no crop factor, and it has manual rotary-knob shutter speed, ISO and exposure compensation dials as well as menu-driven digital controls -- but it would cost more than you plan on spending.</p>

<p>See if you can get hold of an Olympus 35SP in good working condition. I had one of these for several years in the early to mid 1970s, and got one again a few years ago. Slightly larger and heavier than an WA, a neck-strap camera rather than a pocket camera -- but a fast and sharp 42mm f/1.7 lens, shutter speeds to 1/500, a large and bright viewfinder/rangefinder, and auto exposure from EV 5.5 to EV 17 or manual exposure from EV 1.5 to 17 at ISO 100 if you can find modern substitutes for PX-625 batteries -- a really nice camera overall, maybe not a Leica M but still a very effective photographic tool. Here's a link to more info: <br> <br /> https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~yue/misc/35SP.html </p>

<p>Photographing using just one lens is a good exercise. It helps you to concentrate on figuring out where to position yourself and your camera in relation to the subject, what you want to include in (and leave out of) the image, whether to move closer to or father away from the subject to accomplish that, how to frame the shot, what to slecect as your primary point of focus, and so on. It also helps you to figure out what the strengths and weaknesses of a particular focal length are -- what it does best, whether it has any particular characteristics which can be used intentionally for visual effect, what situations it is most useful in, and what subjects or situations it is less useful for.</p> <p>Which lens you choose for your "one lens" project depends primarily on what type of subjects and what style of photography your prefer for a majority of your work.</p> <p>If you like street photography, environmental portraits (i.e. those showing people in the context of their lives), landscape photography or travel photography, for example, you might choose a wide-angle lens. On a Leica, 35mm lenses offer a good combination of compact size, large maximum aperture, good depth of field, a moderately wide field of view, and a relatively natural-looking perspective -- among the reasons why a Leica with a 35 is a classic combination. If you want a somewhat wider field of view and a bit more depth of field, you might choose a 28mm. If you want to explore an exaggerated sense of perspective and depth, with close-up objects looking olarger and far-away objects looking smaller than normal, you might consider a 21mm.</p> <p>If you like doing available-light photography early in the morning, at dusk, or at night, you might want to try a 50mm f/1.4 for its large maximum aperture, to give you as much margin for error as possible in terms of shutter speed.</p> <p>If you mostly shoot portraits, or like to focus in on details in landscape or travel photos rather than going for the big picture, you might want to try a 90mm. With Leica 90s, at least the more or less affordable used ones, you have a choice between small and light but not really fast enough for available light; and fast enough for available light, and shallow depth of field at maximum aperture to isolate subject from background, but large and heavy. (Not as large and heavy as the 300mm f/2.8 monsters that sports photographers use on monopod-supported DSLRs to shoot football games, mind you, but rather large and heavy as Leica lenses go. The 1950s-vintage 90mm f/2 Summicron, which I rather like, used to have a tongue-in-cheek reputation as "a burden too great for one man to bear alone.")</p> <p>Choose which style of shooting you like best, pick one lens to suit, and stick with it for a while. The specifics of what you learn will depend on your choices and personality, but it's very likely that you'll learn something worthwhile.</p>

<p>Digital has taken over, but there are some of us mastodons still shooting film (as well as digital) -- even black and white. I have nothing against digital photography, and do some digital shooting, but I considered it worth pointing out that the combination of Leicas and B/W film can still produce reasonable results.</p> <p>I've just posted a series of photos I took using a Leica and B/W film, here: <br> <strong>http://www.photo.net/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=1090495</strong><br> <strong> </strong><br> I took these last year. I don't usually do architectural photography, but thought I would try some. The subjects were various buildings in or near the Empire State Plaza, a complex of state government buildings in Albany, New York. I make no claim to any particular artistic talent -- the photos speak for themselves, for good or ill. View in full screen mode for best results.</p> <p>For what it's worth, I used a Leica M2, Kodak 100TMX film, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm and 90mm lenses, and medium yellow filters. The film was developed normally and scanned at medium-high resolution, and I did some light editing of exposure and contrast using Adobe Lightroom 4.4. </p>

<p>If you're concerned about traveling light, you might consider leaving both the 70-200 and the tripod at home -- both useful pieces of equipment, but rather large and heavy to lug around on an international trip.</p> <p>You might consider taking just two lenses, a 35mm prime and an 85mm prime -- the AF-S Nikkor35mm f/1.8G and the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G, for example. Nothing exotic, but practical. Relatively small and light, higher image quality than most zooms, fast enough for available-light shooting without a tripod at higher ISOs, and affordable enough to be replaced without too much grief if stolen, damaged or lost. </p> <p>On a recent trip, while I had a couple of other lenses along, I took almost all my photos with just two lenses: the AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G, and an old Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 AiS. The goal was more straight-up photography than the kind of images requiring very long or wide focal lengths, but for me the 85 and 35 were a good, functional pair of lenses. You can assess the results for yourself (along with a smattering of images taken with other lenses or cameras) here:</p> <p> http://www.photo.net/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=1089362</p>