carbon_dragon

Thanks for the advice, keep it coming.

I do take non-OS upgrades, and Apple are still doing those sorts of updates. I'm just not taking updates that update me to a new OS generation. I just can't take Mojave. I probably have a few years at least before that becomes an issue. Realistically I have another decade and a half before my photography hobby becomes too physically strenuous. I am getting old and despite my attempts to maintain some level of fitness, I'm losing ground. Some of you might be older, but you're probably healthier. As an added bonus, I would like to be able to make photo books and calendars as I used to from Aperture (before they cut that capability out of the software). I suspect I can do that online, and I need a good way to do that this year if I can. You're also right that virus software would be a must with a PC. I have had home PCs before too, but it's been some time. I don't have a lot of room to maintain old machines. If I did an upgrade, I'd recycle my old iMac (the one that is currently serving as a YouTube box) and replace it with my current iMac and then put the new computer on my desk where my current iMac is. Realistically my current 4 year old iMac has another 2-3 years before it's too old to really be useable. My old iMac is now approaching 10 years old and it's really too old to do anything much. Also running El Capitan, it's so slow it's almost comical. The truth is that even if I didn't have the Photoshop CS3 issue, it's a mistake to take new Apple OSs beyond a certain point because what happens is that the new OS runs so slowly on the old machine that you'd have been much better off not upgrading. The hard part is deciding when to stop. I would probably have stopped soon anyway. Not this soon, but soon.

I don't have the option of just buying a new copy of photoshop (Adobe won't sell me one). And I don't have the option of updating Aperture (they discontinued it). And despite being a PC programmer, I bought a mac in 1984 and have had them since. The only way to keep photoshop is to never upgrade my computer. And the truth is that I use the sophisticated part of photoshop pretty seldom these days. I do sometimes create layered documents unrelated to photography in Photoshop because it has layers. And I clone out dust (film) or artifacts sometimes (digital). It's a puzzle, but I am not, as an amateur, going to buy the Adobe subscription service. That decision is made. The question is now where to go from there. I may indeed need an illustration program not made by Adobe in addition to a photo editor/management tool like Aperture has. Besides which, I'm not a deft hand with heavy editing in photoshop anyway. So I can adapt to Capture One or whatever program I end up with, as long as it has a fair range of options for light photo retouching. I just need the usual stuff -- reading raws, exposure, saturation, light retouching/clone stamp, curves/levels, etc. I'm pretty sure any photo management tool has that stuff these days. Now upgrading to a PC won't be painless. I may have been a Visual Studio programmer, but I didn't have to MAINTAIN the computers. The corporation did all that. So doubtless there will be issues. I guess what I'm saying is that I figure that transitioning to a new iMac or a new PC is going to be pretty much the same amount of work because it's going to be transitioning the photo library to a new app which is going to take up 90% of the time and effort and there's nothing I can do about that. So this is a unique opportunity to shift, if I want to do so. Given my age, once I make this transition (no matter what I transition to) I may be using it for a LONG time. My last two serious apple bugs were with my phone and iPad. The phone suddenly decided it would crash to the desktop every time you tried to listen to a podcast. This was annoying as it's 70% of what I use the phone for. It was about a week before there was another update that fixed the error ... I think, I also did a full restore on the phone at the same time. One of those, or a combination of the two fixed the problem. The other was that the iPad would reboot frequently and without any apparent pattern. It may have had a connection to the apple cover/keyboard but I could never figure out the pattern. Once again I did a full backup and then did a full restore. This meant I had to reenter all my passwords, but once that was done (and it was close because the connection with the cord seemed to have another bug -- it took me quite a while to get it in there so that it would have a stable connection), it seemed to work properly again. And the cable was reliable again too, I'm guessing that was a bug that was fixed by the restore as well. Hardware has been a bit of an issue as well with the iPad keyboard. I'm on my 2nd one and I got the 2nd one free because I was getting weird intermittent errors which seemed to make the keyboard stop working. This was a known error, but Apple was only fixing them free if you knew the error existed and knew about the free replacement program which they were keeping very quiet about. I happened across it and brought in a printed screenshot of the apple site and the Forbes article on the problem. They replaced mine, and I appreciated them doing it. However that same day, a couple asked me in the mall (where the apple store was) food court about it and said they had just replaced theirs with the same issue. I told them about the replacement program. They didn't know about it and Apple had charged them full price for the replacement. I don't know about you, but that bothers me. It doesn't strike me as ethical behavior. These days I wait a while before taking any OS update to see if there is a catastrophic problem associated with it and I try to research any problem before I talk to Apple. It saved me $200 last time. Plus unless I really need the new IOS features (which usually I don't) I just never upgrade to the next OS. Sorry if I sound wound up but I don't like this sort of thing from Apple OR Adobe. Sometimes I can do something about it and sometimes I can't but it factors into my decisions, and I think it should.

Apple has a "preview" application that evaluates programs for the next OS (I think it's called migration assistant), and Photoshop PS3 came up on the list of applications that wouldn't work with the latest OS (and you can't "upgrade" to later versions of the OS earlier than the current latest one. So even though I'm running El Capitan, I can't upgrade to anything but the most recent and that wouldn't technically break Aperture but I asked around and I was told that it would work erratically --where CS3 wouldn't run at all). So sometimes in the next 2-3 years I will need a new computer and it either has to be a PC with a new photo management tool or I need to commit to a new Apple AND a new photo management tool anyway. So if I'm going to do that, I figure I might as well buy one that I can be sure I can be guaranteed to be able to repair. And maybe I WILL decide to play a few games, if that is possible on the new machine. Besides which, Apple is pretty high handed in deciding what your needs are regardless of what you want -- floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, SCSI, headphone jacks, etc. And in the last decade, my Macs and IOS devices have gotten buggier and buggier. Maybe it's time for a change. Granted it's going to be a brutally hard change but maybe I'd be better off when it was done. I used to be able to update my Macs with memory and new hard drives and even new processors now and then, but these days you can't do ANYTHING without bringing it to the Apple Store and even then, very few upgrades can be purchased. It's pretty much just RAM these days. I took my old iMac into the Apple store to replace the DVD drive but they professed to not be able to get the part. It's only a little older than my current iMac. Now on the positive side, Apple hardware tends to be nicely engineered and it tends to last quite a while in service. But those videos hit me hard because I had always believed that the reason I was using Macs was that I knew I could always bring them into the Apple store and get them fixed, no matter what. If that's not true, why am I spending more for Apple?

Currently I have a competent, but somewhat elderly iMac. I’m stuck with the OS I have because upgrading would lose me Photoshop CS3 and the proper function of Aperture, which has to be replaced soon anyway. It’s already a bit twitchy and Apple is no longer maintaining it. I don’t game and I do use my computer for lots of other things, but mostly for a photography library. I recently saw some youTube videos about Apple’s tendency to punish customers who break their internal rules even when they don’t know about them — the so called right of repair issue. In this YouTuber’s case, he is a channel that disassembles equipment and analyzes and tests it. They damaged their screen and CPU board and Apple refused to even allow their Apple stores (or anyone else) to sell them the part or to fix it for them (they weren’t wanting warranty service, they were just trying to buy the repair). That scares me frankly because having a multi thousand dollar computer that the manufacturer refuses to repair (even at normal prices) is a big risk for regular people. So, I’m thinking that even though it will be a big job to even replace Aperture on my current computer with say Capture One, maybe it’s not that much more work to buy a PC and begin the job of transferring the files over an extended period of time to Capture One or something similar on that new PC, maybe onto a RAID array. I don’t have THAT many files, maybe 300-400GB, so a lot but not terabytes. Lots of files, but I can pare those down too before I transfer them. My understanding is that Capture One lets you create your own file structure which should be easier to do the next migration when it comes, and the sooner I start the process, the quicker it will go since I’m always adding new files. Note before I retired I was a software engineer working on PCs, so I know what Windows is like. I prefer MacOS, but I’m not religious about it. Has anyone made this transition, and if so, can anyone offer any useful advice on the sort of PC to buy (or the kind of monitor) and the issues they might have run into? If I do make this transition, I might also go from iPad to Surface Pro somewhere along the line and maybe even to an Android phone. We’re really talking about a 5 year span or so for the total transition, if I do it. So what do you think? Would a PC be just as good a platform for photography work? Would Capture One be a good program on PC? Note I’m reluctant to sign on to Adobe because I don’t like the subscription model. Before that I spent a LOT of money on Photoshop and Illustrator, but I always felt like I could control when I updated the programs depending on whether I thought the new product was worthwhile. Creative Live would give me no choice. Thanks!

Thanks. I heard a podcast where there was a landscape photographer who said what he chases is really interesting weather rather than photographs or even light directly. I'm not sure how common fog is in Cade's Cove but I was lucky enough to see it 2 out of 4 days. I woke up yesterday morning here in Atlanta and it was pea soup here (which is not that common). I drove to the local state park and did some photography there. When I was working I couldn't take off work unexpectedly like that but I'm retired now, so it's just getting my lazy butt out of bed. Sometimes you're just lucky. REAL professionals probably make their luck by their watching the weather and planning.

What is the alternative site? Are there better photography forums we should be using?

I can't help but notice that there's a 113, a used X Vario, and a brand new 7 all within a couple of hundred dollars of each other, all at or about $1100 give or take.

Indeed, I read the writeup on DP Review. It's very good. Yeah, Leica does some weird things on product names. Don't forget the M9-M240-M10 progression either! I think they wanted to go to product numbers and then thought better of it. Same deal with the X 113 (which probably should have been the X3). I kind of think the Q is almost the X4 (except that it's full frame). Otherwise I can't help but think it's a pretty similar camera to the X 113.

It looks nice and of course the LX100 II is a nice camera. Does anyone have anything to say about the Leica version, or even the Leica version of the LX100 (the D-Lux 109) in terms of image quality or repairs or anything? The 7 has some additional cost over the LX100 II but not that much.

Bought one on an impulse. $94. Not bad so far. It's a bit stiff, a little bigger than the Domke.

I know it's not a DSLR, I'm just saying that I don't see any DSLR maker doing a screenless DSLR ... ever. Leica is an odd company sometimes. I feel like all he has to do is to go film and he'll have hundreds of great cameras (with no picture viewing screen, though some have small LCD ones) at bargain prices. And many of them have either no meters, or selenium meters or meters that, when they don't have batteries, still don't keep the camera from working. Or he can find a billionaire to fund his own special camera. :rolleyes:

Really only Leica could get away with putting out a camera like the M10D, so if that's what you want, better snap one up. And even with Leica, we'll see how well it sells. And I say that as a Leica M10 owner. And make sure you buy an iPhone so you can actually set it up and modify the occasional setting. Nobody else is going to make anything like the M10D. Heck, nobody else is going to make anything like the M10 either. Nope, there is a set of features that the mainstream is going for and a set of features the Sony insurgency is going for and none of them involves a screenless digital camera EXCEPT for Leica who believes it has enough customers who can be depended on to spend a lot of money on an ... unconventional idea. Heck I guess I'm unconventional enough to use a rangefinder, so I'm not throwing stones, but the M10D is just a bit too far for me. I'll say one thing. As easily as the Leica M meters are fooled by lighting conditions, it's pretty challenging to get it right most of the time. Back when I was shooting a Leica M2, I used a spot meter and was more careful. It was satisfying to overcome those limitations, but enough to go back to those days ... at least for me. So seriously, if you really WANT this kind of camera, Leica is the only brand who will ever make anything like it. Save your pennies.

If you think about it, having a color darkroom with the equipment (and talent and experience) to really make the best analog prints is a lot harder to come by than a first class (if super annoying and ink-expensive) color printer and an image editing program. You are correct Ed in the fact that the digital prints (mine and a few others) tended to be better looking and more striking than the REAL color prints. Yes a really good color darkroom printer COULD probably do as well (or even better) BUT most of the people doing color prints were having them made by someone at a color photofinisher who may not have been the reincarnation of Ansel Adams. Even black and white prints, which WERE more competitive still weren't obviously better. Plus most of the people in the club were dedicated amateurs and they were unlikely to have a really good darkroom and the years of experience needed even for really good black and white prints. Ansel Adams makes us think that great photographers and great darkroom craftsmen come mostly in the same package, but I'm not sure that is the case.

One of these days I want to try to go to an Ansel Adams exhibition. I suspect though that as far as the Mona Lisa or the Sistine chapel is concerned, the distance at which you might have to view them might argue in favor of digital. And by lost in translation I was thinking of what the difference between a great analog print vs. a great digital print by a modern printer. I suspect both would be pretty impressive. And while I'm thinking of it ... Happy Thanksgiving! (even if you're not in the U.S. I wish you a great day).

So long ago, don't even remember the camera!

Digitial scanning means that a lot more people will get the opportunity to see those photographs. I'll never go to France or Italy, so the only way I'll ever see the Mona Lisa or the Sistine chapel is by courtesy of digital. So if it somehow loses something in the translation (something I'm not convinced of), it's still a piece of art and made more special by the fact that you have to be there to see it right? Maybe that motivates you to go to photography galleries and museums. Also a little story which may not really prove anything but it makes me think. When digital printers (primitive compared to today) were first enabling us to print color from a computer instead of an enlarger, I was a member of a photo club. I bought a printer and participated in the photo contests and did quite well. There was a lot of talk about being able to "tell" a digital print, but almost no-one actually could (and that's when you could still see the ink dots with a magnifying glass). In fact those early digital prints competed quite well with the sort of printing that amateurs in the club could produce (and some ex pros). To me it means that what matters is the art -- the photograph, more than the media. That said, maybe we should all use the digital scans of those prints to provide motivation to see the real analogue prints, as I said above?

I don't doubt you can get an image, but what does it look like? I'll have to try something when I run out of Technidol. What I run out of first depends on how many exposures I wind into the cartridges I think. I'm not sure these days whether it will last, or whether the age of the developer will get me eventually. And I haven't personally darkroom printed for a few decades. I used to have a small darkroom in my bathroom in the old days. Enlarger was somewhat basic! I love the way darkroom prints look, but I don't have the talent.

Here's one explanation of Nikon vs. Contax lenses focusing. The Zeiss Ikon Contax Camera Repair Website - Nikon RF Vs. Contax RF Focusing Mount

Besides the M10D, I think there is another Leica D camera with no screen. Don’t see the draw myself, but if that’s what you want, you just need to pay $8K (plus the lens of course). Or you can buy any film camera. None have screens! Plus as sophisticated as modern digitals are, you pretty much NEED the screen to just set the options within the camera. We used to do that with LCD (tiny) screens and button press combinations (it was a PITA). Note also that the Leica M10D uses an IPhone to set its options! Is that really better? Anyway, just listen to Sandy and turn the screen off if you don’t want it to show you what you’re shooting. That way you can find out the meter totally misestimated the exposure due to the sun being in your frame when you get home instead of on site when you could have done something about it. Viva Adventure! Also, digital cameras require spare parts to repair (where old mechanical cameras can make some parts). No-one can really manufacture replacement circuit boards for my Contax RTS cameras and so 2 of 4 of those are permanently dead. On the other hand my 2 Leica M2s from the 1950s are both working great and I can get them fixed today from a variety of good servicers. It sounds like you REALLY want to shoot film, which is fine. Just shoot black and white and develop it yourself. Buy it in bulk rolls and you can wind as many frames on to the rolls as you want. It’s cheap and easy. You will just need a scanner (which is admittedly harder and more expensive, but not as expensive as a $1000-2000+ digital camera). Try that for a while, get home and find out that great shot you took was NOT in fact well exposed and you will find a new appreciation for chimping! And there are an awful LOT of pre-digital film cameras which are bargain priced — cameras I could never afford to buy which you can find for peanuts today. Now there is adventure on a budget.

You’re welcome. Bear in mind that Nikon didn’t copy the Contax lenses completely enough (supposedly) to focus correctly on Contax cameras. I’ve heard different stories, but supposedly, focusing is not totally accurate, and Kievs are copies of Contaxes, not Nikons. Do a little googling to see if this matters to you. In the meantime, from what I understand, Nikon cameras were fusions of Leica and Contax. They looked like Contaxes but inside they were more Leica Like. Great cameras though. Note that the Kievs were copies of Contax IIs and IIIs prewar which have a slightly different internal architecture. The Contax IIs (and the Kievs) have the wheel such that you have to arch your finger over the viewfinder window, but they have a greater rangefinder base distance. The IIAs have the wheel on the outside of the window so you don’t need to do the “contax arch.” Also the Contax IIs and Kievs have deeper penetrating 35mm lenses which don’t work on the IIAs (they damage the shutter). The later 35mm lenses do work on the earlier Contax cameras though. And even changing lenses requires some care. You have to set the lens on infinity before lining up the red dots (often 3, 2 on the lens, 1 on the camera) and then gently sliding the lens onto the bayonette. Makes me a little nervous. Leica IIs and IIIs have their ideosyncrasies too, but the Leica Ms are ever so much easier to use (which is why there are still Leica Ms produced today). Contax cameras take a certain dedication to use. I just got my 2nd body back from a refurbish (they do seem to need a lot of service) and I planned to shoot it today, but my location fell through. Will try again after Thanksgiving.

I used a fair bit of Tech Pan and it's a great film when developed with Technidol. Conventionally, it's a high contrast copy film (or was). At this point, of course, it's out of production AND so is Technidol as far as I know. And I've never heard anyone come up with a development strategy using other developers. But as Glen says, it's goal was not really pictorial. I really liked it though. Still have some in the freezer and fridge. The super low speed of the film is kind of annoying, but what's the point of using such a high detail film if it's not on a tripod, right?

Leica M10, 50/2 Summicron, Sweetwater Creek State Park, Georgia

Leica M10, 50/2 Summicron, Sweetwater Creek State Park, Georgia

Leica M10, 50/2 Summicron, Sweetwater Creek State Park (Visitors Center)