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gwebster

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Posts posted by gwebster

    who bought the m8 and regretted?

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    I love my M8 and have no regrets. Sure it's a quirky beast and definitely not a camera for anybody who likes a lot of features and automation in the digital capture process, but it is capable of producing images of stunning quality and as Alex says, you don't need a mule to haul your camera system around. I also find the M8 to be a quiet and very unobtrusive camera for candid and street photography.

     

    With regard to image quality, my point of comparison is the Canon gear I used before I purchased my M8 and the Nikon gear used by friends and family with whom I share an interest in photography. I find that compared with their images, the M8 images are consistently more detailed and tonally rich and furthermore, we are all in agreement on this - and so although this is hardly a scientific sampling, this observation would seem to be more than just purely my bias as an M8 owner. Other people more experienced than me have observed that the M8 images are closer to medium format in quality than to 35mm and I think that this is true.

     

    Of course, none of the wonderful attributes of this camera will make you a great photographer if you don't work at developing your photographic eye and skills, but if you can get all of those things right, I think the M8 will allow you to go as far as want to photographically and it is a really marvellous and craftsmanlike tool.

    My first Leica

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    Brian - here's my "no darkroom" setup on my desk in front of my computer. To the right of the computer, the small silver box that looks like a disk drive is the Nikon Coolscan V and to the left you can just see the edge of my HP Photosmart printer (for anything bigger than 10x8 I use one of the online services like Winkflash or Mpix).

    <p>

    <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6484413-lg.jpg"><br>

    <p>

    I've laid out the items left to right, more or less in order of their usage in the workflow. The items are: a changing bag for loading the film; a bottle opener (makes opening the film cassettes much easier); a pair of short, blunt-nosed scissors (easier to move around in the changing bag than long scissors and less likely to rip a tear in it); some plastic film spirals and a light-tight Patterson tank (so once the film is loaded and the top is on, all the processing can be done in the kitchen with the lights on); a cheap big-display timer with multiple memories (about $10 in Radio Shack); a plastic measuring cylinder; a regular thermometer; Sprint chemistry; measuring jugs; metal clips for drying the film.

    <p>

    This entire setup (obviously not including the big stuff like the computer, film scanner, printer etc.) costs less than $200 and easily stores on a small cupboard shelf. I also have a small light box and a loupe for checking the negs, along with a rubber blower and a small bottle of Pec-12 for cleaning/dusting them (these items are not shown). I also ended up fitting one of those Pur water filters to my kitchen faucet to make the water cleaner and I do my final washes in distilled water (which is dirt cheap from any good pharmacy).

    <p>

    I air dry my negs in the shower stall after pre-running the shower as hot as possible for a couple of minutes to create steam which removes a lot of the airborne dust (I do this before I start processing the film so that the steam has 15-30 minutes to dissipate before I hang them up).

    <p>

    I hope this is helpful.

    My first Leica

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    Congratulations Brian, I know exactly how you feel. In spite of all the digital gear I have, I still get a great thrill when I step out on a photo trip with a film Leica! Reducing the picture taking process to the fundamentals of composition, focus and exposure really makes you think about the basics of photography and the business of recording the image you want.

    <p>

    Personally, I really like the silvery hues of the Ilford films and use FP4 and HP5 pretty much exclusively, but it's good to just buy different films and experiment with them to find the ones that have the characteristics and qualities that speak to you and that match your photographic style or interests.

    <p>

    Dare I mention the fact that you might even want to start processing your own B&W? I used to do a lot of darkroom work when I had access to darkrooms during my college years and I rediscovered my love of it when I bought my film Leica. These days, you don't even need a darkroom if you buy a film scanner, especially if like me, you live in a rented city apartment where a darkroom is out of the question. Once you have the film scanner (which is the most expensive part - about $500 for a really good Nikon film scanner), it's amazing how little gear you need to do it yourself. I even use the Sprint chemistry which only needs to be diluted 1:9 with water before use and is a one shot deal so no messy powders or storage of partially used chemicals. Developing your own B&W is not only incredibly gratifying, it also gives you a further degree of creative control over your work.

    <p>

    I see you've also discovered the excellent range of VC lenses that CameraQuest sells. I find them to be really superb and incredible value for money. It's also worth noting how light and portable a Leica body and a bunch of these little lenses can be, especially compared to some of the SLR systems and their accompanying lenses. A small photo bag will easily hold an M body or two with three or four lenses for little more weight than a modern SLR with a medium range zoom lens.

    <p>

    Anyway Brian, congratulations on your purchase - it's sure to bring you (and your children) years of happiness and it's a whole world apart from the digital experience. Enjoy!

    <p>

    <center>

    <img src="http://GrokPhoto.smugmug.com/photos/202937807-L.jpg"><br>

    <strong>Skating on the Frog Pond</strong> - <em>Leica M6TTL, Ilford FP4+</em>

    </center>

    Digilux 3 with Olympus 7-14mm Zoom

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    Dave - I really like the aperture ring that Leica put on their 4/3 lenses and I wish all manufacturers did it, but when you hook up the Olympus lens to the D3, the little wheel on the rear panel automatically becomes the aperture control and I have found it very easy to use once I got used to not using the aperture ring. Since you can see the exposure settings in the viewfinder, it's really no trouble to have your right thumb on the little wheel while composing the shot so that you can alter the aperture as needed.

    Digilux 3 with Olympus 7-14mm Zoom

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    I just took delivery of the Olympus Zuiko 7-14mm 4/3 system lens from B&H and

    couldn't wait to put it through its paces on my Digilux 3. My initial

    impressions are overwhelmingly favorable - this ultra-wide zoom (equivalent of a

    14-28mm zoom for 35mm) works really beautifully on my D3 throughout its focal

    length range, giving beautiful crisp images right across the frame with gorgeous

    tonal and color rendition. Here's a sample image that I snapped today at its

    shortest (widest) focal length of 7mm.

    <p>

    <center>

    <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6417780-lg.jpg"><br>

    <strong>The Chess Master</strong> - <em>Leica Digilux 3, Olympus 7-14mm</em>

    </center>

    Digilux 3 sample image

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    <em>Then, using exactly the same logic, posting it as an example isn't a particularly good idea, quite dubious value in that</em>

    <p>

    Not so ... as you yourself said, the presence of featureless highlights is <em>not necessarily a bad thing photographically</em> and indeed, based upon your own words, their presence in this image has no bearing on the quality of the camera.

    <p>

    I find the constant twittering on these forums about "blown" highlights rather silly. Why do you barely ever hear anybody complain about featureless shadows? Yes of course we always want to maximize our choice in these matters by exposing the scene in such a way that gives us the maximum possible latitude with our images, and yes of course - if we are not careful, we may exceed the dynamic range of our medium and lose detail where we actually wanted to record it - but sometimes texture-less highlights (or shadows) are a CHOICE and not an exposure error. Failure to recognize the potential to deliberately utilize these effects in photos might be the result of a very formulaic approach to photography learned from technical books on the subject that are actually trying to help the photographer avoid exposure errors rather than laying down some imagined set of aesthetic rules like "thou shalt not have texture-less highlights in thine images". I don't think that this necessarily applies to you Jeff, but there seem to be a lot of people on these forums who have learned the same photographic "rulebook" by rote and then try to pass off regurgitated chunks of it as learned criticism whenever somebody posts an image that strays from their ponderous notions of what "good photography" should be.

    <p>

    Furthermore, consider this - I see featureless highlights all the time when I look at any brightly lit scene with my own eyes (whose dynamic range puts any digital camera to shame). For example, unless they are extremely low power, light bulbs appear as featureless blobs of light - I don't see the structural details of the glowing filament underneath (unless I happen to be viewing the bulb through a welder's mask). Therefore, it's clear that featureless highlights are even a component of natural vision and not just some artefact of digital cameras - and so long as we are careful to optimize our exposures to record the detail we actually WANT to record, there is no reason why we should be so afraid of them in our photographs.

    Digilux 3 sample image

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    <em>... it's a poor endorsement for a camera</em>

    <p>

    Since you are looking at a JPEG that I converted from a TIFF that was developed from a RAW, how can you possibly know what the original pixel values in the camera were? Even the pixel depth is not the same between these different file formats and for all you know, I increased the brightness and "blew" the highlights in post-processing. There's simply no way you can know what the original pixel values in the RAW file were and any comments about the camera itself based upon such assumptions are therefore dubious to say the least.

    Benjy's Progress

    in Leica and Rangefinders

    Posted

    <em>Is that a Leica to nipple mount he's sucking on? Or is it just a knockoff?</em>

    <p>

    Barry - It's the new Leica <em>Lactilux Aspherical</em> specially designed for kid portraits. It reduces the facial plane grimacing and distortion that results from lactical aberrations :-)

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