mr._kenny

even smaller: contax t -- <br />

<a href = "http://www.dantestella.com/technical/contaxt.html" target = "_new"> details here</a>

it's great, but damn sloooow. i have one, bought it on ebay for cheap, and it's a good basic scanner. i havent' had a lot of luck with color neg film with it, but slides are great with it.

the only ice tool that i use consistently is the dust removal, all the others are nice to have, not dealbreakers. shadow detail is a bit murky, but for 1/4 the price of a coolscan 5000 i can deal. ultimately i moved on to a different beastie alltogether (coolscan 4k with roll loader) but for the price it's pretty good. slow but good.

was just at photographica in copenhagen last saturday -- crackin good store (hope this doesn't break any photo.net rules about sponsors!) they didn't have the lens in hand but they talked about it. they had a bunch of stuff there, including the rd-1. i wanted to try it out, but as soon as i stuck an sd card in it to get a couple snaps the battery died. they had a 50 lux asph in stock too. great looking lens, welcome back focus tab!

 

they have a great collection of leica stuff upstairs, some ok bargains up there too. if you're on a visit to copenhagen go check em out. you can get a refund of 19% of the 25% vat at the airport if you're not an eu resident, which is nice.

doris you crack me up -- expensive is for me something that's not HIDEOUSLY overpriced like a hermes bag that people wait 2 years to get and costs 'only' $12000? if that's good taste call me liberace. in fact it seems down right offensive.<br />

anyway, i rock a timbuk2 messenger bag with a kimbra insert, total cost $90. plus you're not freakin' out if it rains.

i'll spare you the usual and all too predictable "advice" from jay and argue for the 35 -- it's close up but not too far away. hcb for example used a 50mm almost exclusively for his cliches, so the lens length thing is really a personal choice. i use my girfriend's 50 cron on occaision for my aping of his style, but it's not my favorite. you could stand about 3 feet farther away with the 50, which may work for your subject, and certainly you'll get a lot more surreptitous snaps that way on the typical north american urban area, which evidently in the eyes of some floridian gearheads is just a waste of time.<br />

i feel the lens that works the best will give you enough room to frame but enough length so that the details aren't too hard too see in the print is the 35mm. i stand about 8 feet away -- in complete avowal of that stale old style-- and at f8 i get way more than enough DOF as well. true, you could get a lot more DOF if you switch to the 28 at the same distance, perhaps getting you the same at f5.6 with more shutter speed, but i'm not into standing even closer than 8 feet with zone focus. maybe you are. <br />

your m4p's frame lines are pretty much against the window if they're the same as my m6, which if it works for you, great. for me, the 35 frame with the .72 mag is really great, i can imagine the frame brackets framing just by looking at a subject.<br />

finally, i'm not familiar with the vc opton, but i'm sure it's a fine lens. of course you know you should just give up trying to find a better working system RIGHT NOW, you'll never excel over hcb or david douglas duncan or elliot erwitt or ralph gibson or garry winnograd or josef koudelka or andre kertez or brassai or weegee or pretty much any of those stupid street photographers. take pictures of flowers and monuments, they don't move.

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all the best,

<br />

Kenny

they seem vaguely sarcastic/pessimistic -- emphasis on vaguely (if that's possible!)<br />

kind of poor-man's martin parr.

lovely snap trev!

i am thirty-three and one half years old.

i would hope that leica makes the camera thicker rather than longer. sometimes i think my m is too narrow for my hands. but that would entail a good cooling system for the ccd, unless they went to a CMOS system, and leica's probably not ready to show up hat in hand to canon's doorstep. when i mean thick i don't mean canon slr thick either, i'm hoping for pentax d*ist thick. but yeah, who the hell knows, besides that the price will be leica sized.

patrick, you are right my tomodachi! what's with the big gray building? it looks like a backdrop from brazil... i wonder where buttle lives?

i forgot one other thing: get a pariscope -- EUR0.40 at any newstand and check out what's currently open or going on. read it on the way in, i wish i did :(

<br />

bon voyage!

go to the riboud exhibit, you lucky bastard. i was just there, but i heard about the exhibit the last day i was able to go --- didn't go, sadly. there was a great exhibit of US-based photographers in the 5th, literally across the street from one of the campuses of the ecole normale superieure, but it's in a private gallery, so no snaps i'm sure.

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take the #2 RER into paris from Charles De Gaulle, get out in chatelet(watch your back), gawk at st.eustache, walk up rue montegruiel(sp?) then head right(south) through the marais -- place des voges at lunch has great people snaps potential. definitely go to the picasso museum about 6 blocks away, and if you're looking to blow some cash, go to the leica store on rue bonmarchais -- actually not called that but it may as well be, they had 50 m-series cameras there! it's right in front of the chemin vert metro stop. <br />

get on the metro going over to the 5th, check out at least one cathedral -- my vote would be for st. germain de pres, oldest one in paris, est. 6th century AD (final resting spot of rene descartes, too.) if you're into modern art, at the musee maillol there's an awesome francis bacon exhibit right now worth doing. <br />

from there walk to the musee d'orsay, about 8 blocks, absolutely the most impressive museum i've been in, anywhere. stunning. <br />

go north to the rodin museum, it's cheap and really wonderful, but take the metro, it's not close; the hotel des invalides is across the boulevard. if it's later than that, i would stay on the left bank and walk to the eiffel tower (can't miss it!) from the tower, cross the seine to the palais chaillot, remarkable vista. plus tons of tourists getting hustled by locals, quite humerous! you can then walk to the arc de triomphe, but it's not so impressive right now, there's work (and scaffolding and tarps) bieng done all over it.<br />

8 hours isn't a lot, but the metro is awesome, you could do a lot in a few hours. for me, the musee d'orsay, the marais generally and

great work. nice to see a pic of a rather (in)famous landmark in britain. the fog and early morning light are very evocative of spring, the normal focal length emphasising the actual size of the building -- not an aerial shot or a tele lens -- and the foreground/backround contrast between busy and silent are good. well done Trevor!

no, none of the functions will work at all, either with the m6 classic or the m6ttl. i know this for a fact, i own the g2/flash and the m6ttl -- the m6 has no ttl at all.<br />

the tla200 flash sucks by the way.

Giorgio,

I have the 135 TE-- first version, first year. my example was owned for many years by another forum member, and it was cleaned a few years ago by leica here in the usa. the 135mm TE is a great lens, a real classic for the M camera. <br />

i purchased mine for US$230, without hood. the excellent reversing hood can easily be found used for US$50-90, depending on condition. let's say you're into both lens and hood for US$325 after shipping -- less than �300 after VAT/shipping.<br />

i have shot the lens wide open on a tripod and handheld at 1/500 second, and it's astonishingly sharp at infinity. when i bring the slides into my computer, my 2800 dpi scanner cannot resolve everything on the negative. keep this in mind, because leica/leitz changed the optical design of the TE 35 years later, which in my mind speaks to the quality of the older lenses.<br />

it's your money, and surely the 135mm apo-t is a fine lens, magnificent even -- i have not shot one to compare, and honestly, i don't need to, especially at 4x the price. i would get the 135mm TE and an excellent arca-swiss b1 with a carbon fiber lightweight tripod with the difference in prices. either that or a great vacation!<br />

ciao,

<br />

Kenny

nice snap jim (the first one.)

i'm going to go out on a limb here and state the heretical: use a flash. you have a super fast flash sync on your 90, use the flash.

35 summilux, for the money, is a lot of jack for a single stop. but it is worth it. i sold my cron asph, never regretted it.

tele-elmar f4 for me. i got mine -- first version-- from dr. hans. it takes 39mm threads. takes the 90/135mm shade, which reverses onto the lens, great (i wish the summilux asph did this.) i use the 1.25x magnifier to pinch-hit on the .72, focussing is a breeze, although the lens helicoid is slow, verrrrry slow. the head screws off for visoflexii. it only close focuses to 1.5 meters though, so a 50mm lens and it are tied at close distances. i bought it b/c i wanted a long reach to augment the 35 'lux outside, with plenty of light. somewhat heavy for long hikes, but much better i'd imagine than the 2.8 would be.<br />

the lens image quality is shocking! very nice wide open, recommended without reservation.

reichmann's work strikes me as bieng really heavy on the craft (or kraft, if you get my drift) and light on the inspiration. it's like painting another person's painting, and then 'improving the resolution,' like it matters. i'd be first in line to argue that a picture should be coherent and well done, optimally, but it's not a replacement -- at all -- for seeing.<br />his work seems really 'samey' in the most obvious way, not in the good way.

that said, i've never been attracted to nature/landscape photography, either as a practice or a viewer. i may not be the best interpreter of his work. he does like his equipment though, something we've probably all fallen into in some way. in that regard, he's probably a fine teacher, but maybe not an inspiration.

yes.

bill brandt was a f*'in genius

i have been keeping my eye on this one: a contax 645. zeiss. autofocus. medium format. slr. kind of the opposite of my little leica, but you asked! the real reason is that whenever i look at a modern slr i just think they're too dang big for the dinky little neg you get -- why not shoot medium format compared to a canon? and the 80mm f2 planar is a really good lens. add the 45mm 2.8 and you're done.<br />but when low light beckons, i'd get a contax aria with a 35mm f1.4 distagon, that is a good setup when lit by candles.

watch out though, the 6006 backs will overlap frames on the 6008 cameras if you remove the back and replace it mid roll -- at least mine does.

schneider's lenses for rollei do not use a rollei-mandated number system -- they use their own. a componon made one day and a tele-xenar made the same day will most likely have a batch of numbers that each comes from, but will be roughly made the same time. what i mean to say is that rollei does not stick the number on the lens, schneider does, and fortunately for us, they have a database accessible, although it's pretty primitive:<br />

<a href ="http://www.schneideroptics.com/info/age_of_lenses/" target = "_blank">here it is, YOU'RE WELCOME!!!!</a>