terry_m1

<p>Good news: I spoke with a male at Leica's office in New Jersey this morning and he confirmed that Leica Germany <em>is</em> still developing a DSLR camera that will be compatible with all of my numerous Leica R lenses. He hopes that Solms' spokepersons will announce an update at Photokina in September so as to please me and all other R lens owners!</p>

<p>I have numerous Leica R lenses and still wonder when Leica will release a digital version of the R camera. Has anybody heard anything new about the likelihood of it being released?</p>

<p>I will never part with my beloved R8, M6 TTL, and numerous R and M lenses as well as various films I love using. I also will never part with my outstanding darkroom and related equipment. All of these tangible realities in my life have created wonderful joy!</p>

<p>Does anybody know if Leica is going to release a digital R camera at Photokina this year that will enable me to use all of my R lenses?</p>

<p>I have been watching a crime investigation show on the Biography channel on DirecTV called Crime 360 and the first three shows I've seen so far show police departments in three U.S. cities using a Leica scanner on a tripod to capture awesome 3-D images of rooms and outdoor areas where crimes have occurred. The cities so far have been in Indiana, New York, and another I can't recall at the moment. It seems that Leica is successfully selling these to one police department after another! I also saw a male use it to photograph the original painting of The Last Supper last year in Italy because that painting is deteriorating. As far as police use goes, they bring the crime scene scans into a computer with which they can zoom in and out and spin the scene all the way around in order to review complete scene details. Awesome! The image I captured below shows a crime scene investigator setting the scanner up to completely scan an apartment living room in New York containing a dead male tenant who had been stabbed almost 50 times in the face, skull, chest, and back. I wonder what this scanner costs?</p><div></div>

<p>I never liked the access to the controls atop my R7 because they are so non-ergonomically situated and hard to operate. I love my R8 because its top side controls are vastly easier to operate and don't require what the R7 does: removing my eye from the viewfinder to operate them. With the R8, I never miss a shot!</p>

<p>Carlos, if you can find and purchase a latest-version 19mm R lens, you will be blown away at its amazing quality! I initially bought the second-to-last version and when the new one came out I bought one new by trading in my old one and the improvements are wonderful!</p>

<p>I am now 7 months short of 57 years old and have been wearing soft contact lenses for more than 30 years. I have astigmatism and am nearsighted, but the Focus Daily daily throw-away contact lenses I have been wearing for years, despite my astigmatism, give me completely sharp eyesight, enabling me to manually focus my Leica R and M lenses thoroughly and speedily. I highly recommend you visit an optometrist, have him or her perform a complete evaluation of both of your eyes, and then you will know whether or not your eyes are compatible with soft contact lenses which can create complete and speedy focusing as I mentioned above.</p>

<p>Solved! I suddenly noticed that the metal contacts on the hot shoe of my M6 TTL were discolored and also then suddenly remembered that I had gotten rid of that discoloration in the past by rubbing a pencil eraser back and forth on all three contacts. I then did that, and now everything is fine! Yay!</p>

<p>Addendum to above: I just noticed that when I take my 1993 50mm Summilux off my M6 TTL(which was on my M6 TTL when the above problems occurred) and replace it with my 1999 90mm APO/ASPH Summicron, then I can change the ISO setting on the Metz flash to 200, but if I remove the latter and again put the Summilux on, the ISO setting on the Metz changes back to 50 immediately. Gads, what is going on here???</p>

<p>I'm experiencing a strange problem I've never had with my 54 MZ-3. I loaded a roll of 200-speed color print film in my M6 TTL, changed the speed dial on the back of the camera to ISO 200, loaded newly charged batteries in the MZ-3, turned on the M6 TTL and then turned on the flash. The ISO on the flash read 50, so I attempted to change it to 200 but the wheel would not change the reading. I then turned the camera and flash off, turned the flash back on, successfully changed the ISO on the flash to 200 with the wheel, turned the camera back on, and the flash ISO immediately switched back to 50. I then cleaned the contacts on the 3502 adapter and the hot shoe of the M6 TTL with isopropyl alchohol and a q-tip, but the same damn problem of the flash reverting back to ISO 50 recurred. Any suggestions about how to fix this nightmare?</p>

<p>Rome, Italy, 1944, captured with screw-mount Leica camera.</p><div></div>

<p>Hi, Alex. I've enjoyed your recent articles in Viewfinder very much and I am impressed by the accuracy of your typing. I say that because each issue has numerous typos and/or misspellings which degrade the articles and bug me so much. I excelled all throughout my school years regarding English grammar and was at the top of my class in court reporting, but I had to drop out of the latter because the school closed after filing for bankruptcy. I told the Viewfinder editor that I would gladly edit every issue's contents free of charge in order to get rid of misspellings and typos and thereby clean up the mess, but he turned me down, so those bothersome mistakes persist.<br>

Terry</p>

<p>Next weekend I will be taking my R8 as well as my 90mm AA Summicron and 180mm APO Elmarit with T-max 400 to capture images of old ships in a harbor after dark. The ships will have somewhat small strings of lights in certain areas signifying a holiday celebration; otherwise, there will probably be complete darkness. I also suspect I will be many hundreds of feet away from them. Having never experienced this type of setting, what do I do about exposure metering? A well-experienced photographer last night told me to open up the 90mm Summicron to f/2 and set the shutter speed to 1/15th of a second with my R8 on a monopod. Of course, that would not therefore be based on my using spot or matrix metering but, rather, his recommendation only. Nevertheless, does that sound essentially correct? If not, please indicate your workable experiences. Thank you!<br>

Terry</p>

<p>Hi, Dennis. Microdol-X is the only film developer I have been using for years and it is outstanding diluted 1+3 at 74-75 degrees for 18 minutes for all films at and below 600 ISO speed. Below is one of my images, captured on Delta 100, souped as just mentioned.</p><div></div>

<p>Calvin Klein model Gabriel Aubry. What wonderful facial bone structure!</p><div></div>

<p>I shoot 35mm film in my Leicas and for years I have processed all film speeds from 100 - 600 in Microdol-X diluted 1+3 at 74-75 degrees for 18 minutes (with agitation for the first half minute and 4 times every minute thereafter), resulting in wonderful contrast and tonality as well as retention of shadow and highlight details. It is my favorite film developer.</p>

<p>I will be bringing my Metz 54 Mz-3 flash for fill-in lighting, so I won't necessarily need a 400-speed film perhaps. My sister's daughter has told me she doesn't want enlargements greater than 8x10 inches in size, so my Leica equipment will be fine and outstanding. Last year I gave her fiance my old R4 camera along with 28, 35, 50, and 90mm lenses after showing him the glorious quality Leica's R lenses create on film emulsions, and both he and she chose me to photograph their wedding based on what they saw on my darkroom-based prints in addition to what he has captured on black & white film with the lenses I gave him.</p>

<p>In two months I will be capturing images at my sister's daughter's outdoor wedding (as the only photographer) with my R8 and various lenses. I have only used black & white film for a long time and thus have been away from color film for about three years. I detest grain and therefore seek a color film without grain impact and without excessively saturated colors. If you have any excellent recommendations, can you also point me to wedding images you've captured with that recommended color film? Thank you, all.<br>

Terry</p>

<p>I bought my R8 and motor winder new in the late 1990s and neither of these objects has been impacted by anything, including adverse temperatures and drops. I have used the motor winder on it regularly, but suddenly I cannot get it to recognize even newly opened batteries. I just cleaned all the contacts on the motor winder and the R8 with rubbing alcohol, but this has not effected a cure. I need it for a shoot tomorrow. Can anybody help me with this today?<br>

Terry</p>

<p>Hey, Steve, a lot of scans of prints I made from my father's WWII/Italy negatives are at my Flickr site, below, if you are interested in seeing many of them.<br>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/</a></p>

<p>My father used a Leica screw-mount camera and three lenses (35mm, 50mm, and 73mm) during World War II while stationed in numerous countries, but before he died in 2003 I carelessly forgot to ask him how he afforded those purchases inasmuch as he was in his early 20s in the early 1940s and was a USAAF pilot.</p><div></div>

<p>In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s my father shot lots of weddings in Northern California with both his Hasselblad and his Leica M2-R as well as a large Metz flash unit, preferring the M2-R to the Hasselblad because the Leica did not require so much film rewinding and loading. He always got wonderful results. A friend of mine who lives on the East coast, a professional photographer, shoots lots of weddings with his M6 TTL and Metz flash these days and also gets wonderful results and is in high demand because of the exquisite quality Leica's M lenses create. He gives the film to a lab and gets back both color prints and CDs containing all of the images.</p>

<p>I bought it new from Samy's Camera in Los Angeles and its sharpness is absolutely phenomenal! Last year I captured images of bicyclists, and on the prints I was able to see incredibly sharp details in even the bikes' tire treads! It is a phenomenal lens, perhaps the greatest 90mm lens every produced by anybody!</p>

<p>Here is a color image of my 8x6 feet darkroom. I sit on a cushioned stool while agitating prints in the developer, stop bath, and fixer trays. Hanging from plastic clothespins in this image are 8x10 inch prints drying, which I place there after I am done; otherwise, they would hit my head. There is sufficient space between the tables and the vertical wall across from them for me to turn completely around. Not seen in the top left corner of the wall to the left of the Saunders dichronic enlarger is a small air conditioning unit that is needed when the temperature in the garage reaches 80 degrees and more. I have made thousands of prints here and I love working herein!</p><div></div>