nemeng

I with most of it, except for the price for the "2.8F" models, which are far too optimistically low.

FWIW suggest $1000-1400 instead.

(Yes they are hideously overpriced!)

Good to hear you are still around Morgan!<p>

I wasn't being mischievous about the Whois record. You can check

it yourself at:<p>

<a href="http://cqcounter.com/whois/">http://cqcounter.com/whois/</a><p>

Enter "www.cameraleather.com" as the domain and jump through the hoops... and you'll see there is "No Record" for this domain.<p>

<i>> any suggestions from PNetters for a reliable hoster would be appreciated</i><p>

I've had my sites with <a href="http://www.bluewho.com">Bluewho.com</a> for a few years now. Not perfect, but affordable - $US 20 per month for Plan 1", which has 2GB of disc space & 30GB of bandwidth.

Same question came up on the MF forum -<p>

I did a whois lookup on the "www.cameraleather.com" TLD and... it doesn't appear to be registered anymore. Looks like the owner forgot to renew their domain name registration!<p>

It may be worthwhile checking out their cheaper competitors, Aki-Asahi:<p>

<a href="http://www.aki-asahi.com/store/about.php">www.aki-asahi.com/store/about.php</a><p>

I did a whois lookup on the "www.cameraleather.com" TLD and... it doesn't appear to be registered anymore. Looks like the owner forgot to renew their domain name registration!<p>

It may be worthwhile checking out their cheaper competitors, Aki-Asahi:<p>

<a href="http://www.aki-asahi.com/store/about.php">www.aki-asahi.com/store/about.php</a><p>

BTW, I bought a kit from Cameraleather a few years ago and I second the remarks about it's owner. Prompt transaction and the leatherette is still firmly attached to the camera. That was before Cameraleather got famous though, so maybe he's been swamped?...

Hmm, yes. Mostly images of people suffering in far off places, for your hand-wringing pleasure.

As others have pointed out, there are beautiful moments in life alongside the ugly. Both should be given equal coverage. Unfortunately the lazy buffoons in the media (and their equally lazy cheer squad) are only fixated the latter.

Oh well, click and we're on a completely different page. "Irrelevance" anyone?...

In Australia, my "NSW Photographer's Rights" is pretty comprehensive:<p>

<a href="http://photorights.4020.net">photorights.4020.net</a><p>

For other jurisdictions, just google "photographer rights NAMEOFCOUNTRY". Even a simple Google for "photographer rights" will turn up the main players for the USA, UK and... myself :?)

David - not that it solves the problem, but one of the benefits of sticking closely to Web Standards / W3C compliance is that if things go awry, then you can point the finger at MS with a clear conscience :?)

FWIW I develop and view sites with Firefox v2 (Mac OSX). Not perfect, but it works fine and behaves reasonably well with sophisticated CSS.

It may be time we started adding a note to the first page: "This site best viewed with any browser other than MSIE!"

Everyone appears to be tip-toeing around the most important issue here - price.

Don't expect much change from $US 9000 for new (CFV) units, while second hand backs seem to hover around the $US 6000 mark, depending on make, age, condition, missing or broken cables etc.

<blockquote>Check out Luc Delahaye's "L'autre", a series of portraits done on Paris metro.

Delahaye claimed that he "stole" these pictures, because under the French law, everyone is the owner of his/her image.</blockquote>

According to the Amazon listing for the book, the photos were taken in the period 1995-7. Yet the French law "banning" unauthorised photography was enacted in 2000/1.<p>

Unless I'm missing something, Mr Delahaye seems to be engaging in a little hype. He took his photos (ahem, using a concealed camera) <i>four years</i> before the French law came into force. Hardly courageous :?)

About removing the H'blad mirror - I asked a camera technician about this a while back. He said you can easily get it done, but you will also have to have your lens(es) extensively modified so the aperture/shutter won't open when you cock the lens.

Tends to ruin the film otherwise :?)

You're shooting landscape, you've got a digital camera, you want lots of megapixels... why not take a lot of shots and then stitch them together?<p>

That way you can create images with as many Gigapixels as you like :?)<p>

See for example the following:<p>

<a href="http://www.xrez.com/manifest/xRez_manif.html">xRez gigabit resolution images by Greg Downing</a>

You need to grind the mirror of the EOS-5D to get enough clearance to use the Leica Fisheye-Elmarit-R 16mm.

That's the bad news, the good news is that it's easy to do. You only need to shave off a couple of mm. Any camera technician can do it and I've even read on a mailing list that someone DIY using a Demtel grinding tool :?)

A trip to google will sure answer a lot of questions.<p>

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=leica%20m%20motor">http://www.google.com/search?q=leica%20m%20motor</a><p>

Steven Gandy on his site gives an overview of the different M motors, while my FAQ gives a detailed user-review.<p>

FWIW I use both the Motor-M and Rapidwinder. Different tools for different jobs :?)

Good link Martin!<p>

FWIW there is also a detailed write-up in the Leica FAQ I maintain at:<p>

<<a href="http://leica.nemeng.com/049b.shtml">leica.nemeng.com/049b.shtml</a>>

Sheesh. Thankfully not everyone thinks the author of "Shutterbabe" is the be-all and end-all of photojournalism. See the "spotlight" reviews at amazon:<p>

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shutterbabe-Adventures-Deborah-Copaken-Kogan/dp/0375503641">Amazon Shutterbabe listing</a><p>

Methinks Ms Harvard Graduate should have stuck to shopping + parties, which is ironically where she ended up anyway :?)

How close? Depends on the lens/camera: usually 2.5m if I'm using 50mm lens on a RF camera or 80mm lens on a 6x6; 1.5m if it's a 35mm on the RF or 50mm on the 6x6. When using a 16mm fisheye, then can get down to 50cm:<p>

eg.

<a href="http://4020.net/unposed/#stadaustopen">Stadium Australia open day</a><p>

Getting in close is pretty easy. Doing so without posing your subject or drawing attention to yourself... that isn't so easy :?)

Generally good answers, but speaking as a QTVR professional with ten years experience, they are far too theoretical and technical.<p>

In practice the middle of the lens will do for the nodal point. You don't have to be super-precise because you can easily fix things in post when authoring the panoramas.<p>

FWIW the current panorama I am working on is a linear-pano of a street, with 50x shots taken at 5m intervals. The end result will depict @ 300m of a city street with the buildings depicted front-on (similar to the San Francisco "Seamlesscity" project by Michael Koller a few years back).<p>

Now because the camera was moved 5m between shots, there are a-m-a-z-i-n-g parallax errors! Yet you can fix them adequately in Photoshop to get seamless joins.<p>

So fussing about +/- 0.001mm accuracy for placing the lens nodal point is... unnecessary :?)<p>

BTW, using a rangefinder camera for panorama/ QTVR shooting is much more convenient than using an SLR, especially for low-light work. For samples of my M6TTL + 16mm Leica R fisheye work, see mywebsite at:<p>

<a href="http://www.4020.net/vr/">vr.4020.net</a>

I had a pristine condition #1.1M M3 a few years back. Comparing its finder side-by-side with my M6 TTL 0.85x showed the M3 to be appreciably darker.

IMO the M3 finder blue-tinting didn't help.

The good news is that out in sunlight the difference in finder brightness was irrelevant - the M3 finder was more than bright enough. The M3's dimmer finder only became a (small) issue when indoors.

Emir I - thanks for the note but this film has been in the "Leica spotting" FAQ topic for years :?)<p>

<a href="http://leica.nemeng.com/005ea.shtml">leica.nemeng.com/005ea.shtml<a/>

Don't forget that you can also correct the f/eye barrel distortion using any number of photoshop plug-ins or stand-alone apps.

Some have a very simple interface (google "defish"), some intermediate ("lensfix" or "ptlens"), and some as complex as you like ("ptmender", "panotools" etc.)

Nice shots. Looking at the 3rd "jennifwr" image, I notice there's quite a bit of Newton's rings, both at the top near the lights, and on the chequered floor where the tiles are torn.

You should watch this, as it's a typical problem when using a flat-bed scanner for MF film. Basically, try to keep your film off the scanner glass.

BTW, gorgeous woman!

Cannot do it and maintain infinity focus:<p>

<a href="http://nemeng.com/leica/017e.shtml">http://nemeng.com/leica/017e.shtml</a><p>

BTW, this info is easy to find via Google:<p>

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mount+leica+m+lens+onto+r+body">http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mount+leica+m+lens+onto+r+body</a><p>