Luka, congrats on the new lens. First, love the Le Corbusier. When living in Nashville, my place was totally white. I love contemporary architecture. The bike shot on the fence is great.
Ron, great timing at the airport!
Charles, "Oh what a feeling!" Ha, love it.
Joe, as far as my scanner goes, I got a Nikon 4000ed for a couple of reasons. I looked into the 8000/9000 but I don't shoot MF at the moment so, it was kind of a waste. On top of that, my 4000 can scan whole rolls! I can setup silverfast, push a button and leave! Amazing! No more scanning 4-6 frames at a time. That kind of stuff will drive you nuts, or atleast me. It drove me to the point of seeing what it was going to cost to source it out. Then film was no longer fun to me. So, if you are looking for a pretty nice scanner that requires very little from you, the 4000 is not to bad.
Oh, just as soon as I pick up this M8.2, my Mac goes down on me. Ha, go figure. This is the third time that it is going in. Feels terrible no being able to do things.
Charles, I wish! In fact, I think if I do decide to use the M seriously for any work, I will need to get a second body. I find it much faster to work that way, not having to change lenses as often. As much as I like the M9, there are aspects of it that I'm not sure I can justify buying another one. Most problematic for me, as I've stated before, is performance over ISO 1000-1250 and the buffer, which allows a smaller number of images to be shot at high ISOs before filling, though working with two cameras somewhat but not fully addresses the buffer issue. It would also serve as a backup against the reason I was at Leica. I will probably wait for the M10 to see how it addresses these factors and at the least at that point could probably get another used 9 at much better prices.
joe88 wrote:
haha Ron.. did they fix it for you?
Nope. At least not yet. The technician says the problem with the camera not retaining the correct date and time is the internal battery. Unfortunately that item is on backorder from Germany and will probably take a few weeks.
They initially didn't want me to leave the camera because it still otherwise works, but since I made the trip already and I would prefer to avoid the expensive shipping from Canada, I decided to leave it with them.
Also, I got to meet Carmen in person and she's very nice. I think she felt sorry for me because I took the train to Allendale and walked to the office, which took about 20-30 minutes. But Allendale is a nice, small town, it was sunny without any snow and the walk was pleasant, so I didn't mind. And now after a few trips to Jersey in the past month or so, I've gotten the hang of the train system and it's pretty good.
The walk back to the train station felt a bit odd without the M9 and I was somewhat uninspired using the Canon, though I slowly got back into it and actually had a pretty good few hours with it in NYC. There are still aspects to it that I prefer for walkaround photos over the M, especially in a big city like NY, when I want to use around 200mm to pull in distant scenes. Instead of a second M I'll probably work on optimizing a combination of M and DSLR, for now.
Luka, nice set from the 35. Even if they're just 'snaps' they show an aspect of Stockholm not frequently seen in your work. Please don't stop. Great work pulling out the texture of the snow on the Mini.
Joakim, lovely rendering of the subtle tonalities and not letting the images cross the line into murky grays.
John and Joe: nice samples from the 50 f/1.5!
Thanks Shaun!
Another one from Newark airport, waiting for the hotel shuttle:
shaunmlavery wrote:
Joe, as far as my scanner goes, I got a Nikon 4000ed for a couple of reasons. I looked into the 8000/9000 but I don't shoot MF at the moment so, it was kind of a waste. On top of that, my 4000 can scan whole rolls! I can setup silverfast, push a button and leave! Amazing! No more scanning 4-6 frames at a time. That kind of stuff will drive you nuts, or atleast me. It drove me to the point of seeing what it was going to cost to source it out. Then film was no longer fun to me. So, if you are looking for a pretty nice scanner that requires very little from you, the 4000 is not to bad.
Oh, just as soon as I pick up this M8.2, my Mac goes down on me. Ha, go figure. This is the third time that it is going in. Feels terrible no being able to do things. ...Show more →
I really wanted to get one of the Coolscans, I looked at the 5000 and 4000 for the same reason you mentioned, auto feed, but the prices of these things are quite ridiculous nowadays. A used Coolscan 5000 goes for $2k? I think short of a Flextight or Imacon, these are the best you can get but I've decided on the Plustek 7600i with Silverfast Ai for now.. bought one for myself for X'mas , lets see how the manual feed works out.
Joe, have you used the Plustek yet....or surprising yourself on Christmas day ? I was always intrigued by those...I hear from some that it provides excellent results while being less durable and hear from others that the quality is nowhere near the Nikons. I lean towards more people going with the name brand for the name.
There's a new Plustek that people are making noise about. I think it's the 7600i. Supposedly better than the old ones.
As far as the auto feeder for the 5000, to be honest, for the sake of sanity, it's often very useful to preview your negatives on a light table and be selective about what you scan. If you do, scanning in strips of 6 doesn't add *that* much more time, since you probably won't be scanning all of your frames. Works for me and saved me a good amount of money since I bought a V.
Ryan, I'll have to wait till the weekend to check it out
I read the reviews on RFF, LL, Scandig and elsewhere and seen some samples, the 7600i is quite good, close to the Coolscans for a lot less money, plus its not out of production and from an imaging company. Newegg has the best deal on the 7600Ai this week, if anyone is interested.
Kidtexas, good idea with the lightbox especially on the Plustek, which is purely manual feed (one frame advance). Are the B&W pics on your Flickr page with the V? Very clean scans, nice!
Yep all from the V. I don't always scan at 4000 dpi (in fact I usually don't for a lot of stuff) which definitely bumps up the grain a bit, but I can't be bothered with 40 mb 4000dpi files for 'snapshots'.
I didn't realize the Plustek is fully manual feed. The Nikons will eat 6 frames at a time, all automated, which is nice. So if I actually did want all 6 frames, I pop it in, hit enter, and go do something else for a few minutes (like edit other scans). It still sounds like a good deal.
When it comes to shooting film, I am very selective in the shooting process. In turn, I usually get better results and more keepers. With the digital M, I shoot to much at times and then have to cull a whole lot more.
With my film M, I have a lot more keepers, therefore, scanning a whole roll works for me. If I were to add a lightbox in my workflow, that would be one more piece of equipment to own, use, store, etc.
I like being minimal. I really struggle with the idea of owning both film and digital at times. It is a little on the luxury side having both at my disposal.
To each their own, right? Hey, if your heart is set on one of the Nikon's, just wait it out a bit. I got a screaming deal on mine.
Joakim, lovely snowy shots and really good b&w conversions that bring out the detail despite the extreme dynamic range.
Joe, cool shots with th Nokton. I like the second one best.
Ron, great capture. I like how the trolly is stationary wile the person pushing it is blurred. Great timing!
I have ben playing around with the 35 lux some more although circumstances have been conspiring against me. First of all it's -20 degrees (C) outside which acts as a deterrant from going out and shooting. Second, I'm over at my parent's house for Christmas in Västerås, a smaller town some 100km from Stockholm - and there is not much to photograph here in the immediate neigbourhood. So I have not been able to take it out on a proper photo walk.. and I have yet to photograph a single duck with it!
As for the lens - I absolutely love it.
Here are a few more randomly selected shots. I'm sorry if the colors are weird but I'm working on an uncalibrated Macbook Air - the monitor resolution is also lower than the pictures below. I have essentially no idea of what I'm posting
Speking of film, I dug up my dad's old Pentax P30 and loaded it up with some Tri-X 400 film:
There was actually a roll of undeveloped film in it that has to be at least 12 years old! I'll get it developed - it will be very interesting to see what, if anything, was on it. The P30 + 50/1.7 is actually slightly smaller than the M9 + 35 lux, which surprised me.
denoir wrote:
The P30 + 50/1.7 is actually slightly smaller than the M9 + 35 lux, which surprised me.
ah, the good old days. oh wait, i'm only 29. still unnecessary size is my biggest complaint about modern cameras. it'd be awesome if the m10 was the size of an old leica III.
I really like the colour versions of your shots!
