lovinglife wrote: jojomon11 wroteExcellent captures all! Love those surf/beach shots Charles and those environment shots all! Working on my portrait skills, loving this 50 noct 1.0! Using my wife as a model again
It was almost dark outside on this shot! Well not that quite dark
PhilPhil beautiful shot of your beautiful wife! and nice lens.
i look fwd to more pics from the noct!
Thank you very much Ashok, and can't wait to see what your new lens brings you
Well, I can tell it's going to take me another two weeks to catch up from the last two weeks here! Some interesting technical discussions here too. Maybe I should add a third week to wrap my head around it all! I just want to take pictures and forget about the computer...
Ty- in answer to your question from many pages ago, the aerials are from a helicopter.
KL- I like the lighting for your portraits. Are there any concerns with using a non-leica flash with a leica? I remember people used to tell me not to use a Nikon flash on a Canon body, even in manual mode, because of the signals going through the other pins.
Luka, it looks like there's something wrong with those boats. They appear to be in ice. And Ron, your boats are perhaps even more desperate under cover and up on the shore! Those icicles on the fence look great!
Charles, Kyle, I like those shots back aroudn page 192. Joe, still enjoying those B&W street shots, particularly one you had of a woman and child.
I see you guys got into some cool shots of cars a bit too. How about aircraft next?
I saw a bunch more great shots in the past 15 pages that I'm going to have to go back and take a closer look at.
It's been interesting trying to incorporate the leicam into my professional work shooting yacht racing, some interiors, and some seascapes and travel over the past few weeks. Looking back at it, I found myself mostly relegating it to wide angle duty, predominantly around infinity focus, while shooting out on the water where I work very fast. Actually, it made me realze how quickly I do work, as a result of how prolific I have to be.
Having such a small and light camera did help speed me up and get me into cerain situations more easily, albeit ones where close focusing and/or focus speed was not essential. I also used it a lot more for my shore-side shots on the docks and for dusk scenics where I had the luxury of a bit more time. Some friends teased me for looking like a tourist, wandering around with a little camera in the evenings, so mission accomplished there!
There was too much spray to risk using it from the chase boats I was on in the breeze we had, but shooting onboard sailboats worked out well with the 18. I used the 50 cron a bit onboard too, for portaits and details. I chose that over the 75 lux for the speed and ease of focusing, but the shots are a bit static and boring for my taste though. My fault. I've previously mainly used that focal length from chase boats for a nice classic boat portait, where static is the style.
I also got a few nice shots with the 18 from the air, although not too many as the working distance from a helicopter is usually not so close! 50 or 75 would have been a good range here, but that was covered with my zooms (I normally fly with 24-70, 70-200, and 500 mounted on the SLRs), and since this was my first real trip out with it, I wasn't ready to throw the leicam in the mix for important shots just yet.
All in all, it has really opened my eyes to just how nice a lens can be and how sharp my pictures should be!
Phil, thank you Beautiful portrait of your wife. The 50 Nocti is a very special lens. Also a very nice shot, with the rendering and textures
I don't advocate for heavy and unnecessary PP, but I think what I am learning is that the information in the M9 DNG files contains so much info, and with the right PP(Lab...a lot of practice needed here ) can take the image from an average to great image with very little loss. I liken it to understanding dark room techniques to another level and really an extension of the hidden M9's capabilities.
Luka's BIF (birds in flight) shots are outstanding - Luka, your focussing technique is being memorised by this newbie!
Hi Silken, Gorgeous pics!
Tx for your comments - I think it's safe (can some one back me up) to use non-leica flashes. Try this thread for the tech talk on Metz http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m9-forum/101461-reidreview-review-leica-sf58-flash-unit-5.html
The only 'odd' thing i experienced was my flash would not fire for the first shot, then it would work fine (in a series). This kept happening for a while (like for a few series of shots, the 1st one would not fire the flash).
Full sized sampler pics of the shoot are here http://www.antidotepictures.com/Photography/Cyril-2011sample-shots/16453426_zHaAv#1237752040_6C4ZY
if anyone's interested.
Pics are still a little rough and all in the name of experimenting, have not had time to try Capture One pro (been meaning to use this) but will try to squeeze in some time for that later this week. I feel a little down about missing quite a few shots (handshake due to loss of use of ThumbsUp and also on some, i had to hold the flash in left hand) - next time i should just bring a light stand and mount the darn strobe. Or use wireless triggers. Also, i am certain my RF front focuses in the near distance shots (far is fine) which made it harder. My friend had a Cactus brand trigger that i should have tried that day - it worked when I was playing around with it but i forgot all about using it as the hour progressed.
Cory, excellent series. #1 is my favourite
KL, wow.. great set of portraits! I really like the feel and rendering to the B&W shots.
I have used the Nikon SC 28, extension cord too, and it works very well with the SB 58 flash other than needing another pair of hands to juggle. I have read that this cord will work well with other flashes in manual mode.
Tx Charles! I am still marvelling at your 35mm lux Bali shots.... man, oh, man - i better go figure out how to use Capture One Pro real quick before my demo version expires!
See a difference in the character of the shots? Yes there is some overlap, but the difference is unmistakable.
Earlier quoteLinking this to -in this case- leica is kind of absurd to me.
The fact that you see many of these kinds of shots with leica is that it's very popular for street photography, photojournalism,...Is it absurd or not then? First you say that it is absurd then you say that it's natural...
Leica hasn't been popular for photojournalism since the 70's. There are very few photojournalists today that don't use DSLRs. As for street photography, yes - but these are for the most part not at all cases of street photography but portraits.
I think it has more to do with following the examples of others. For various reasons there are styles that become mainstream within a subgroup and not another....Show more →
First of all: sorry for this late reply. I was in a car accident last week.
I thought it was absurd when linking those kind of shots only to Leica, when in fact other brands also have groups that really enjoy these kinds of photos the most. This just doesn't stand out that much, because of the sheer size of the userbase compared to Leica.
That "natural" was only about the style of the photos themself.
But it doesn't matter:
After reading it all again I think I misjudged your opinion, because you say that it has more to do with following the example of others. I agree with that and think that's the main reason why a leica gallery has more shots of a same character.
Three shots from a few days ago, with a complete reprocess in Lab mode in CS5 adjustment for smart sharpen, levels and saturation only. Initial RAW conversion in C1 Pro, just WB adjusted. There seems to be a lot more latitude for adjustments
Wow....great shots all. I was out of town for the weekend and it was hard to keep up. I got caught up this morning. I'm not singling you guys out, but they were all awesome! I barely got a chance to use my M9 but got some shots in:
charles.K wrote:
Ryan, congratulations on your new M9
Excellent shots! Competing with Luka, BIF with DIF Beautiful portraits of your daughter.
Thanks. The 50 Lux II on the M9 is unbelievable. I was happy with it on the M8...I am thrilled with it on the M8. I now have the 50 Lux ASPH desire tamed (for the time being ). The 50 Lux shot of my daughter was wide open and you can count the eyelashes. My focus is better on the M9 vs the M8. My focus was spot on with the 35 Lux on the M8 but the 50 seemed a little off. I was about to send it off but figured I will wait for the M9 before doing so. The M9 both are perfect
whoops, that was supposed to be .5 billion, not 10! Still an inconceivable amount of money. And what's the point of having a boat without an airplane...or museum of airplanes including four of the last few remaining WWII planes that still fly.
Phil, nice shot - I really like the texture and the somewhat confusing geometry of the scene
Cory, very nice boat series
Charles, you're killing me with your beach shots. We have rain one day and snow the other here. Great shots!
Ryan, congrats on getting your M9! Excellent shots - I particularly like the last 50 Lux series. The bike shot is my favorite. Those Mandler double gauss lens designs are really something.
Corey, love the boats, love the vintage WWII aircraft even more. Here where I live we have the Canadian Warplane Heritage museum with the only flying Lancaster bomber this side of the Atlantic. Most of the WWII era planes in the collection still fly. Back when I was a kid, one of the things I looked forward to every summer was going to the air show. A while ago they had funding issues and had to cancel it, but it's back this year, though not as big as in the past. I'm looking forward to it.
Thanks for sharing your feelings about working with the M. I can sympathize with you on numerous points.
Regarding the use of non-Leica flash on it, I use the Canon 580EX and haven't had an issue. Obviously it's manual output only, but interestingly, half-pressing on the shutter release will wake the flash from sleep, which is a handy coincidence.
Charles: Yes, the reprocessed images have more impact. I like that second image, and also like it in the first version which was softer and more delicate. Both versions are appropriate, I guess it just depends on one's mood at the time of processing.
Here's something colorful I've meant to photograph for a while, but it's about an hour out of town and in the past various factors, such as the weather have conspired against me. This time, the delay of a meeting by an hour and a nice clear day worked out perfectly:
The outside of Waterloo Region Museum is made of colourful glass panels. In the spirit of quilting, the panels - and the museum - represent the stitching together of many pieces to create a whole. The 16 colours were selected from quilts in the museum's collection and represent the textile heritage of Waterloo Region. The colours and their arrangement on the façade are not meant to be a literal interpretation of a traditional quilt pattern, and have a hidden layer of meaning translated into hexadecimal code used in mathematics and computer programming. Combinations in the layout of the panels represent the 26 letters in the English alphabet and spell words from a speech made by Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier in 1905: "We do not want, that any individuals should forget the land of their origin or their ancestors. Let them look to the past, but let them also look to the future; let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children."
Thanks for the info on the flash. It doesn't sound like there's any danger of majorly screwing something up so I'll give it a whirl. I usually use pocketwizards when I'm using strobes, but occasionally have need for on camera flash.
Wow, excellent photos everybody!
Ryan - Great shots with your new M9! How do you like it compared to the M8? BTW, I just sold my M8.2.
Ron - Love this new series.
Silken - Nice planes!
Phil - I really like that shot. Nice compo.
nice shots charles!!
This is a little OT, but I was wondering what editing software you guys use? Currently I use Aperture and when I want to I import a shot into Photoshop, but this is kind of a pain. I might consider Lightroom if the photoshop integration is better or maybe adobe Bridge. Please let me know what you guys do/ think.