Thanks Ron, nice set with great reds and blues.
Sounds great, I'll stick Hamilton on my bucket list - rusty steel seems to be back in vogue, about every third house on Grand Designs seems to feature it these days, 'pre-rusted'! in this particular example: http://www.archdaily.com/593806/grillagh-water-house-patrick-bradley-architects
I like patina, wabi-sabi and all that, something funny about having an object pre wabi sabi'd though (Lenny Kravitz's Leica?!)
Look forward to your industrial sector shots.
This is a temporary sculpture from a few months back with MM/red filter
These WO tonight with the CV 35/1.2 and some backfoucs. They were quick, but I need to check my calibration and adjust next time. I should have backed off a stop, maybe.
Ron I love the feel of those two images. They have an ethereal-like quality to them.
I just love going through these pages, there's always something interesting to look at!
I've been making some changes to my lenses recently as I figure out my priorities, so I have some new glass I need to test out still.
Here's one from last week in San Francisco, I was testing out the CV 50mm f/1.5 I recently picked up after selling the CV 35mm f/1.2 II. I think I still prefer my Summicron, but do like the aesthetic this lens produces. I still have to process the film I shot with it, but it plays nicely on digital. I tried to hand-code it but the M240 is too sensitive so I'm just using a manual preset for now until I come up with a better solution.
Thank you Leicaphiles for heavily stacking my poll in the direction I needed to go. My M9 will be travelling on its holiday
I think I will choose the Summarit 50f2.4 over the LTM Canon 'Japanese Summilux', if for no other reason than knowing it will be auto-recognised by the camera even if I have earlier specified my ZM25 manually.
This thread is by far and away the best one on FM for me and why I keep returning, if not posting or commenting much. I do hit the like button copiously however!
A brief aside on the A7R.
I bought the famed C/Y (Zeiss) 35-70 a while back and have hardly used it since I rarely use my A7R now. Anyway, I shot some long exposures with it and when I was PPing the files I was appalled by what seemed to be digital artefacts in shadows (before boosting). It turns out I had long-exp NR turned on and I think that reduces the fidelity from whatever the claimed max. is (14 bits?). I have never seen this type of horrible quality from M8, M9 or P645D files, although noise certainly builds in the P645D images when also trying 10-20s exposures.
I'm reluctant to sell my A7R. Aussies market prices for 2nd hand gear are appallingly low most of the time. Like many I dislike the tiny buttons, however most of the time the IQ is very satisfying and I shoot mostly with a wide range of alt lenses. I need to get it Kolari-ed or converted to full-spectrum, but XR is a killer for us now.
Apologies if this stuff on the A7R is misplaced in this thread, the only relevance is to reinforce my preference for the M9
BACK ON TRACK:
Charlie - thanks for your comment on the Segway shot. I'm pleased I nailed the focus since they crept up on me by surprise and I had at best a few seconds to position myself.
I love the insight into Idaho that your photography brings, indeed I first recall your ski-slope work from the Leica R thread (?).
Ron - like Abram, I love the ethereal quality to those two leaf-on-water shots.
Werner and René - you really nailed it with those recent street shots!
Abram - stellar tones in that image you posted.
Allen - excellence as usual!
Three from Dec 12 / Jan 13, when I first discovered 'The Joy of Leica'
My parents and stepdaughter (our trip to UK is to be at my Dad's 90th on 22nd Feb and my parents' 60th Wedding Anniv. on 17 Mar ) Untitled by David McI, on Flickr
With regard to a comment you made about the ZM 25 and then automatically recognizing the 50mm. Do you have your Zeiss lens 6-bit coded? I could be just missing some setting entirely after all this time, but I now have a few 6-bit lenses and in order for them to be detected properly I have to have the lens detection set to automatic, otherwise the manually selected profile for my non 6-bit lenses seems to override.
The less profile switching I have to do, the better. I would like to have all of my lenses auto-detect if possible.
How much does Leica charge for 6-bit coding?
No, My ZM25 is not 6-bit coded however I thought that recent swaps of the ZM25 (manually coded as 11809), Summarit 90 and Summarit 50 (both 6-bit); was such that the 6-bit lenses were being recognised even though I had sometimes left the coding on 'Manual'. I'll check again...
I don't know how much Leica charges but I'm willing to forego the expense, at the cost of some errors here and there!
BTW, I haven't yet packed for my 5 week trip and we are going to the airport in 5 hrs' time - this is much more enjoyable. I have the camera gear now sorted, of course.
Big Horn Sheep was near the distant ridge top. From my Dobsonian you could watch the snow fly as he dug for high grass in spring snow. Upside down, of course
René - I hope you managed to find something at the sale. Looks like great prices, especially for Switzerland!
Abram (and David) - thanks for the kind words! The sunset has great tonality and mood to it, too. CV50/1.5 LTM is in my collection (same optics as the M mount version, though coatings are apparently slightly different). It's a pretty sharp lens, rivaling if not beating the 50 Lux ASPH wide open, though the CV has a smaller sharpness sweet spot when stopped down a bit. It's nearly as smooth in rendering, too. A downside of the lens IMO is its tendency to purple fringe in higher contrast areas at wider apertures. I'm also not a fan of the new 'retro' design based on my experience with the new 35/1.7.
Re: 6-bit coding.... I've never had the camera waver off a manually set code to recognize another lens that was 6-bit coded. Learned this the hard way a few times accidentally shooting long glass when manually set to 21mm, etc... resulting in green corners. Leica NJ charges around $300 for 6-bit coding and it can take a bit of time to get it done. But their service is only for Leica lenses. I think someone was maybe offering the 6-bit lens mount engraving for non-Leica glass. Was it John Milich? Pretty sure you can get it done by DAG (around $100?). But apparently some of the CV and ZM lens mounts may not work quite right. At least the older ones where maybe a screw would be in the 6-bit area (ZM18?). With a lens like the CV50/1.5, unless I wanted the EXIF, which certainly is convenient, I'd otherwise opt to shoot it uncoded and leave the camera to automatically detect coded lenses.
David - safe travels! 90th birthday is a great achievement. As is a 60th anniversary! I hope they're doing OK. They sure look good (not sure how recent that photo was).
If the used market is poor in AUS, what about bringing some gear you want to unload to the UK and seeing what you can get for it while you're there? Might be a chance to trade towards something else? But yes, I can also appreciate why you might wish to keep the a7R.
Great pop to those Gary. BTW, which lens is that on the Leica? WATE sure would be smaller, but so would your bank account, particularly if it's CAD.
The two earlier photos were from my pond skating session on Sunday. I like to get out on the ice every winter because it's usually a different experience each time. Usually it's snow-covered, which often results in interesting sculpted snowdrifts (if you recall my images from the previous couple winters). But this time it was snow-free with some areas covered in really cool ice crystal 'butterflies' (how another skater described them - they're not leaves ). Living in a superficially manmade environment and seeing the same things day in, day out, then wandering 10 minutes to this nature reserve and seeing this, it's amazing what nature can cook up. I couldn't imagine it better myself. Just happy to be able to try to document and interpret it in a manner that appeals to me.
Some more ice:
What in some ways looks like a satellite view of a storm...
- rusty steel seems to be back in vogue, about every third house on Grand Designs seems to feature it these days, 'pre-rusted'! in this particular example:
Leica NJ charges around $300 for 6-bit coding and it can take a bit of time to get it done. But their service is only for Leica lenses. I think someone was maybe offering the 6-bit lens mount engraving for non-Leica glass. Was it John Milich? Pretty sure you can get it done by DAG (around $100?). But apparently some of the CV and ZM lens mounts may not work quite right. At least the older ones where maybe a screw would be in the 6-bit area (ZM18?). With a lens like the CV50/1.5, unless I wanted the EXIF, which certainly is convenient, I'd otherwise opt to shoot it uncoded and leave the camera to automatically detect coded lenses.
