A small set of images I took a couple of weeks ago in the garden of the palace in Schwetzingen near Heidelberg, Germany.
First two Nokton 50mm f/1.5 ASPH, the others with Elmarit 90mm f/2.8. All with M2 and Velvia 50:
Ron, more excellent shots from the cemetery. #1 looks like a painting, really nice. The CV75 has a nice pleasant way of drawing the image, don't you think so? The lighting on the column shots are also excellent, nice compositions.
Charles, another wonderful portrait from your Bangkok series. Th3 75Lux group portrait is really nice, love the balance in the composition.
LL, nice shot of the Roses with the 90Cron!
Najibs, congrats on your M8. Nice first post.
Malkovic, really nice film shots. #1 is my favorite. Like the composition and details on this shot.
John, some excellent shots from DC!
Heinz, excellent set, #1 & 2 are my favorites.
Lovely shots all
LL, nice shots with the 90Cron!
Najibs, gratz on your M8. Very natural portraits, nice
Malkovic, nice!
Heinz, gorgeous set! I iwish i had the guts to try slides!
John, very impressive shot.
I have posted a 2nd interview on the +Photographer Interviews section of my blog - it's an interview with an X professional photographer friend of mine who used to own some serious Leica glass and an M8. Hope it's an interesting read http://plusphotographer.tumblr.com/
LL, more nice shots with the 90Cron. Nice film like pp, love the rendering on #1.
KL, great interview, excellent reading and thanks for sharing.
Charles, more nice shots with the 28Cron and 75Lux. I like the first 2 75Lux shots best. Just curious, how cold is the water temperature there now?
Najibs, nice set, I like how you captured the expressions of the boy on #4.
Charles, your 28 Cron shot is really great. And the last Lux75 shot is also very nice. But I think that from all your nice lenses I like the rendering of the Lux75 least. My favorites are the 50 Lux followed by the 28 Cron and then the 35 Lux. But that's just my personal subjective opinion.
Joe, LL, Malkovic and Boris, thank you guys
Joe, the water temperature is about 20 degC. Cold in comparison to summer of course
LL, credit here goes to KL
Malkovic, nice film shots
Boris, my favourite lens for seascapes/landscapes is the 28 Cron Asph! Rest of the time the 50 Lux is on the camera. I like the 50 and 75 Lux/ 90 Cron for portraits, in that order, but the 75 Lux I do like, for the paint like rendering in seascapes.
I've got an M8 with a CV 35mm f/2.5 lens. I'm relatively new to the world of Leica and range finders, but I'm lovign it already. Someone I know has offered me and 8 month old Leica 50mm Summicron-M, with all original packaging and receipt for $1900. New they are $2000, plus tax, but apparently very scarce and long waiting lists. I also hear it's the best 50mm lens ever made.
Thanks very much for everyone's comments from my images on the previous page!
Charles - very nice Thailand portrait! Also the 75 LUx group on the rock and the 28 Cron group among the rocks! Again, very subtle winter light.
najibs - Congrats on the M8 and nice images to boot. I recognize Toronto…
I guess if you normally would pay HST, then you'll save about $260 plus the $100 discount. Personally I prefer a greater discount on used items, but it's a Leica item, so it's probably in line. Not sure though about greatest 50. I'll leave that to others who have actually used that lens. I've been happy with my Zeiss 50 Planar, though comparing MTFs, it looks like the Cron resolves a bit better into the corners, at least wide open. But the Zeiss is considerably less $$$, though also difficult to find at the moment.
Malkovic - I like your take on German architecture in Berlin. It feels very appropriate and definitely reminds me of Germany, also the last two Dortmund images. I'm usually in Germany during the winter, so these feel familiar.
John - great mood to Abe and very nice set from DC.
Heinz - great German summer set from Schwetzingen. I like the look of #1 a lot. Maybe I should look into the CV50 f/1.5..
LL - nice greenery!
KL - haven't read your second installment yet, but look forward to it!
Last Saturday I photographed a football game and also brought along the M9.
The first few are quickie photos of a player I interviewed for a multimedia piece the day before the game. I only had a couple minutes after the interview to grab some images, but like how they look. I wasn't concerned about his dark complexion and the noontime sun because I knew I could pull some detail out of the shadows if needed. Only for the last image did I use the reflector I brought along just in case.
Lenses are the ZM21 and ZM50P. For the 21 I had it stopped down a fair amount, but for the 50 I set it at f/2.8, which is the widest I'll go in bright sunlight, since I still haven't bought a ND for it. I think f/2.8 is reasonable on FF as it has nice blur but still retains some background definition…
I really like the rendering of #2 below
And these are from the actual game:
All were done with the CV15, except the very last one which I'm pretty sure was the ZM21. Basically I used the M9 as a dedicated ultra wide, since the DSLRs I use are all APS-H croppers, so the CV 15 is the widest I have… for some of these I think I was standing literally 3 feet from the player.
As we know, it the new firmware doesn't completely fix the CV15 color fringing. Instead of setting up a Cornerfix profile, I'm fixing the residual red edge manually in Lightroom with a blue/cyan gradation and also additional brush tweaks as needed. But I have noticed that the somewhat stronger fringing/vignetting fix sometimes reveals banding, even at ISO 160. This can be seen in the top left corner of the second and third to last images. I'll have to test it some more to see how often this occurs.
Ron, thanks
Ron, wow.... awesome shots!!! I love #2 and 6 with the reflector. All the shots are amazing, and excellent story to follow up. Great set of shots!!!
All are just great, Charles. I love how natural they look and I also like the tones in the color shot. At which f-stop are you shooting those street images typically?
Charles - excellent shots the past couple of days. The beach portrait with the 75 Lux is just awesome! The landscapes with the 28 also came out very nice
Ron - your shots of the football players is also excellent! #1 & #6 are my favorites of the player and I really like the first group shot huddled up. Who says the M9 can't do sports .
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