Brainiac and Fred had a falling out. The details (or at least some of them) are somewhere in the archives.
Lotusm50, Rico, Andi Dietrich, ziyadj, ISO1600, pascal03, Mike Tuomey. The list is pretty long.
All the old Contax crew. My guess is that the alt world has changed so dramatically in the past few years that there really isn't much need to explore anymore. It's about aesthetics now, not "let's find the best". I'm sure many just get the new Zeiss lenses and are done with it.
And for me, I changed jobs a few years ago and kinda lost the fire because of time.
Yeah, I am aware of why Richard (brainiac) left, I just miss his banter. He was fun to spar with.
Lotus is around, saw him post just a day or two ago. Rico as well, I am pretty sure. Andi pops in from time to time, although it is a while since I last saw him. I think he has a Hy6 now?
I think that the Contax lenses have sort of fallen out of favour, now that there are ZF/ZE lenses. There are still those who prefer them, but only a few people prefer them, due to the stop-down metering and no communications. The 35/1.4 still has its fans.
carstenw wrote:
I think that the Contax lenses have sort of fallen out of favour, now that there are ZF/ZE lenses. There are still those who prefer them, but only a few people prefer them, due to the stop-down metering and no communications.
lets not forget the poorly chosen number of aperture blades.
I was mailing with him a little while ago. He also has a little family and was quite busy with his life, in good spirits. There are some of his Contax 35/1.4 photos here: http://cyberphotographer.com/5D/CZ351.4/
carstenw wrote:
Right, often 6 or 8, isn't it?
How on earth could we take pictures with such lenses ?
Thinking back to the old days of the 21 Distagon or later the big Leica DMR thread, there are a lot of people that are not around the alt forum anymore.
Jack and Guy started their own forum after their own spats with Fred. They are over on getdpi.com, a very nice little forum, much quieter than here but with some really friendly people. There are lots of people over there using digital medium format, and active Leica and Sony forums.
slungu wrote:
How on earth could we take pictures with such lenses ?
indeed.
seriously, i want to slap whoever it was at zeiss and minolta (well olympus too) that decide 6 was enough aperture blades for those otherwise wonderful lenses that are perfect for me in every other way. none of the new Z*s interest me so far and minolta doesn't exist anymore so i have to search for old cheap russian lenses to steal the apertures from.
carstenw wrote:
Jack and Guy started their own forum after their own spats with Fred. They are over on getdpi.com, a very nice little forum, much quieter than here but with some really friendly people. There are lots of people over there using digital medium format, and active Leica and Sony forums.
Yeah, they were the pioneers (as far as I remember), and a couple of guys whose names I can't recall right now. I think I learned about the Contax Distagon 21/2.8 from Guy and his cockpit shot. It wasn't long after that that D21 prices went up to $4,000 and we got booted from the Canon board. Haha.. I think Pondria gave the Alt forum its name.
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