Last night we got hammered by one of the fieriest storms I've ever been under. High wind, tornadoes just to the north, deluge of rain and most of all--golf ball size hail. Cars all over the neighborhood had windshields and moon roofs smashed out and the metal parts were badly dented. Mine was safely in the garage. In the first photo there's a small area circled in red. It's where a tiny patch of Species Tulips were just popping up. It was almost dark as night when I shot that.
A few minutes ago I looked out the window and saw that these three flowers had opened today. I have no idea how they survived.
Brent
Hail Storm, Back Garden
LEICA M10 MONOCHROMSummicron-M 1:2/50 lens50mmf/4.81/125s8000 ISO-0.3 EV
Survivors
LEICA D-Lux 8DC VARIO-SUMMILUX 1:1.7-2.8/10.9-34 ASPH. lens11mmf/4.01/200s200 ISO-0.3 EV
Sorry to hear about the brutal storm Brent. Glad your car had no damage and that the tulips survived. You captured a very nice image of them here! Wow, I'm impressed with the image quality from that D-Lux 8! Very clean and a beautiful rendering on that lens. Do you feel it has the quality of a true Leica? Or more of a Panasonic with Leica branding? I'm thinking of picking up the D-Lux 8 as a carry everywhere camera and would love to hear your thoughts - pros and cons.
adventure_photo wrote:
Sorry to hear about the brutal storm Brent. Glad your car had no damage and that the tulips survived. You captured a very nice image of them here! Wow, I'm impressed with the image quality from that D-Lux 8! Very clean and a beautiful rendering on that lens. Do you feel it has the quality of a true Leica? Or more of a Panasonic with Leica branding? I'm thinking of picking up the D-Lux 8 as a carry everywhere camera and would love to hear your thoughts - pros and cons.
Thanks much, Scott. Overall, I like the D-Lux 8 as a carry everywhere camera. The lens is excellent and compared to the Leica predesesor (D-Lux Typ 109), the image quality and color accuracy is quite good. It's the same sensor, so they've done something internally to improve image processing. The macro function is very impressive (used for the above image) and the files convert nicely to b&w. There are drawbacks. One is that it's overpriced. Also, there's no weather/dust sealing (although it's easy to slip under a raincoat). My biggest criticism is that due to the small sensor, image quality at ISO above 800 is very poor and requires a lot of work in post to clean up.
Knowing the limitations, I'd still probably buy it again. It's great when there's decent light and I like the zoom range of 24-70mm. The majority of people on the Leica forum who have one are very happy with the camera and I've seen some extremely nice D-Lux 8 images posted there in the dedicated section. Hope this helps.
Brent
