Leica R4

What what?!  A film SLR?

Yup, that's right, the Leica R4.  We took a trade-in at work, and as part of our process of checking over the camera we normally run a roll or two of film through them to make sure everything functions like it should.

I haven't yet gotten the film back from the lab, so I'm just putting up this picture to prove that I am still alive and still blogging.  I'll come back once the film is scanned and finish this post off with my thoughts and some samples.  But I'll just say, what a camera.

Fujifilm X Pro-1

The next best thing to a Leica.

So I am pretty excited about Fuji's new X-system as it looks to be everything I've wanted in a mirrorless camera body: it's compact, has at least an APS-C sized sensor, has analog-styled controls, well-built, and has high quality, fast aperture fixed-focal length lenses.  I'm hesitant to say that this camera would make a good replacement for my M8, but...but this is the camera that Leica should have been developing, or perhaps the camera that Kyocera should have released as a Contax G3.

Anyway, I'm impressed Fuji, and I'm impatiently awaiting the official announcement and the first user reports.  And I'll update this post with any future thoughts once we know a little more about it.  Exciting stuff.

The Specs (possibly):

- 16 megapixels APS-CMOS "X-trans" sensor with better than fullframe picture quality

- no anti-aliasing filter

- new Fuji X-mount with flange distance of 17.7mm

- launches with three lenses: 18mm f/2.0, 35mm f/1.4, and 60mm f/2.4

- second generation hybrid viewfinder like the one on the X100

UPDATE Jan. 09, 2012:

Well it's official, and wow what a camera!

If I could have designed a camera like this, this would have been the camera I would have designed.  It would really do Leica well to look closely at what Fuji accomplished with this, because I think a lot of people looking at used M8s are now going to be looking at this camera instead.  I love my M8, and I don't think I could ever bring myself to sell it, but if I was buying from scratch today, the M8 would be off the table. Now, Leica has sort of hinted around that they might be getting ready to release just such a camera later this year, but I sort of wonder how far they would go towards producing such a strong competitor to the M9 level camera.

But anyway, after reading through a lot of the previews on the internet I'll add a couple of thoughts. 

One of the best things I've seen on the X-Pro 1 is the inclusion of a PC-sync port. I can't imagine why Leica decided that this was a feature that isn't useful on their cameras anymore, but considering that you occasionally need the hot shoe for a viewfinder or other accessory, it's very annoying to not have a PC-sync port if you're using off-camera flash or working with studio strobes. In fact, it's such a glaring omission on the Leicas that I question whether Leica believes that the M-series are truly professional caliber cameras. Fuji on the other hand, must really be commended for including this very useful feature, and it leads me to think that they may be committed to this new system on a professional level in a way that none of the other current mirrorless makers seem to be positioning themselves. Service and support would be the way they drive that point home, so we'll have to see if they offer something similar to Canon's CPS for X-Pro users.

One thing that I'm still not too sure about is the viewfinder. I know that was one of the biggest selling points of the earlier X100, but it seems to me that an all electronic viewfinder would be much cheaper to manufacture and probably more useful to the majority of photographers. That said, I've got a couple of objections to electronic viewfinders. For one I've always felt so much more disconnected from the scene with an EVF, but I'll admit I still haven't gotten to use the newest EVFs on the Sony NEXs and Panasonic GHs, so maybe things have changed. The other thing that bothers me with EVFs is that in very low light shooting situations staring at a very bright LCD tends to make it that much harder to see in the dark when the camera is away from your eye. So there's pluses and minuses to both optical viewfinders as well as EVFs, and maybe Fuji's taken the best approach to viewfinders in general; however, it still seems like it might be an unnecessarily complicated solution. I'd like to get one in my hands and see what I think; it might turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Anyway, there's plenty of reading on the internet if you want to look over all the hands-on previews that were posted today.  I'll probably post another update once we start seeing some good image samples.

Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital ELPH

Best looking point and shoot...ever!

I purchased this camera new in early 2007 for almost $400, and looking back now, I can't believe I spent so much money on a point and shoot. This was actually the first brand new camera that I'd purchased since 1996, and I bought it because I needed something to take with me when I traveled visiting friends, going to shows, for taking snapshots when I really just didn't feel like dragging out the big DSLR. I came very close to buying the G7, but when I saw the first press images of this camera, I knew immediately that I was going to buy this as soon as it was available. I'm not usually the sort of person that's terribly image conscious, but the original Canon Elph (back when APS was a film format rather than a sensor size) was what I considered the best looking point and shoot of the 1990s, and here was a wonderful little digital point and shoot that brought back everything I loved, style-wise, from the original.

Of course, aesthetics aside, I do expect a camera to have some basic performance capabilities. I knew from borrowing this camera's predecessor (the SD600) that these little cameras were to a level that I felt the picture quality all the way through the ISO scale was what I considered good enough for a pocket camera. I didn't really need a camera like this with manual control, because I don't honestly see the point in a camera with this small of a sensor (DOF wide open is already tremendously deep, and there's not much benefit with respect to resolution from stopping down). At the time, things like 24mm equivalent wide-angle lenses, HD video, image stabilization, sweep panoramas, and the like didn't exist--or at least didn't exist in anything but the top tier of cameras--and weren't even on my list of criteria for picking a camera. The only thing I wished this camera had was RAW capability to get the most flexibility out of it's files, and I still wish it had it.

I took this camera on several vacations and looking back through the photos that I got with it, the daytime snapshots are pretty much what you would expect, with good exposure, low noise, and nice colors. My camera's lens has always been kind of soft at the edges, but for your typical snapshots there wasn't anything wrong with them.

The photos that stand out to me are the ones that are far from perfect. Many of them are motion blurred, taken at high ISO in very low light, and sometimes slightly out of focus. None of that's the camera's fault of course, since I was shooting in some difficult situations: at night on the street, in bars, at shows, late night trips to the supermarket, places that I really should have had a DSLR for the best picture quality. And that's the thing, I would have never taken these photos without the SD1000, because I wouldn't have bothered to have the DSLR with me. Instead I just felt more free to snap away, because I wasn't using a serious camera and didn't expect much of it. And because of that I think these photos capture a much better sense of the feeling of being there than a more perfect photo would have. And some of these...I almost hate to say...are some of my most favorite photos that I took in those years.

So you know, it's worth considering whether you really need to be purchasing all this bulky, complicated photo equipment, when possibly you'd be taking pictures that you'd be happier taking with something much cheaper, and much less fussy. Naturally, I've had people look at those photos and say, "oh, these are terrible, too bad you didn't have a better camera," but they're the photos that I wanted to take, and I'm always happy to look at them again.

Would I buy this camera again?  If it were still 2007, absolutely. Today in 2011, I'd probably be looking at something like the Canon S100 or the Ricoh GR Digital IV, but not for the manual control, mostly just for the RAW capability and a better quality lens with less CA and unsharp edges. I'll always have a special place in my heart for the SD1000, however, and it still works as good today as it did a few years ago even if today's cameras easily out-shoot it.

Sears 35rf

I figure I've talked about the high end so I suppose I should talk about the low end as well.

This is the Sears 35rf, possibly from the late-70s or early-80s, but I'm not really too certain about that.  It's a store-brand clone of the Ricoh 35rf which I understand is a simplified version of the more nicely constructed Ricoh 500G, but the lenses used in all three cameras are the same.

With a 40mm f/2.8 lens this is no Canonet QL17, but I found this camera at a thrift store for $4 which included the working Sears brand flash.  Made mostly from stamped steel and plastic, this little camera certainly feels...um...inexpensive, but operationally, there's not much to complain about and it 's much lighter than a QL17.  Unlike the Canonet the light meter still functions when you're shooting manually, but there is also a shutter priority mode in which the camera indicates via match-needle the aperture being selected.  Fortunately the camera uses a standard 1.5V alkaline battery which is easy to come by.

The rangefinder patch is on the dim side, unsurprising given the inexpensive nature of the camera, but it's at least reasonably accurate when you can see it.  The focus throw on the lens is fairly short so there's not much use for terribly accurate focusing anyway, and with a maximum f/2.8 aperture you're not going to be getting super shallow depth of field to begin with.  The brightlines are also kind of difficult to see in dim lighting, but they're not really that accurate anyway so you're not loosing out on much.  The lens isn't bad, at least up to compact standards, but it's nothing all that special either.  The ASA rating only goes up to 800, so if you were wanting to push some HP5 to 1600 or shoot some TMZ3200 to compensate for the slowish aperture you'll have to deduct a stop or two from the indicated value.

All of this sounds like I'm pretty negative on the camera, but I'm really not.  No, the rangefinder experience is not up to Leica standards--does anyone honestly expect that from these pocket rangefinders--but it's perfectly usable and probably preferable to your basic AF 1980s compact cameras.  In fact, what so impressed me about this camera, was that in something smaller than a Walkman (the sort that plays cassettes rather than MP3s), and probably cheaper too, you had a camera that gave you all the manual control that you could expect from a much larger and more expensive SLR type camera.  Yeah it was cheaply made, but it was a cheap camera.

Anyway, for awhile when I was in college this was my go to travel camera and it rode along everyday in my bag, and made a couple trips to Chicago and St. Louis with me.  I was never unhappy with it, but ultimately I replaced it with an Olympus Stylus Epic mostly for the built-in flash.

Examples:

Leica M2

Well I figured since I've got Leica's on the brain, I'd might as well get it out of my system.

So this is my lovely 1958 Leica M2 and the equally lovely 2008 Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50mm f/2.0 ZM.  On top you will notice the later model MR-4 Leica-Meter.

A few years ago, I had this massive camera collection with one conspicuous omission:  I had no serious rangefinders.  Sure I had a couple of Canonets and some Soviet-built LTM copies, and some other consumer grade rangefinders, but nothing...dare I say...professional.  So I decided, gosh darn it, that I was just going to do it and go right for the top and get a Leica.  I certainly spent a good deal of time considering alternatives:  Konica Hexar RF, Contax G2, Voigtlander Bessa, Canon Model 7.  But nothing other than a Leica was going to be a Leica.

So after checking around and spending a lot of time going through the used market, I determined that the M2 was the best buy at the time, and the lower magnification viewfinder allowed the use of a 35mm lens better than an M3 did and was considerably cheaper than an M4.  Of course the M2 has no built in light meter, but the MR-4 Leica-Meter was actually fairly inexpensive and worked far better than I ever expected it to.  Sure you have to manually reset the frame counter and it's not as quick to load and rewind as some of the later models, but I don't think there's a prettier M-body except maybe for the MP.

The body is really like no other film camera that I've ever used.  Compact, light, quiet, extremely well built, but still elegant.  I used to own a few Canon F-1s and they were massively heavy and felt like solid bricks of metal, but if the Leica was a fine blade, the Canons were cudgels; both deadly weapons for sure, but obviously of different character.

Using the M2 is really effortless in a way that I didn't expect considering it's age and relative awkwardness, but compared to say the M8 that I use most of the time now, the M2 just gets out of the way.  I'm not really sure if it's the character of film versus digital capture, but once I've shot a photo with the M2 I'm looking for the next one, not thinking about whether I should check the histogram or not.

Lens selection is a whole different ball-game in Leica land.  The Leica lenses are perfection, no two ways about it.  And there's a lot of people out there that would say that it's a waste to buy a Leica body and not use Leica lenses on it.  I call baloney on that.  There's no one else that makes a body like a Leica, maybe a Zeiss-Ikon or a Voigtlander, and I have picked up a Bessa R2a, but when I go out shooting film it's usually the M2 that goes along.  If you enjoy rangefinder shooting, but you're not wealthy enough to buy top-tier lenses, does that mean you should stick to your SLRs and hope that someday you're flushed with cash?  No, of course not, get the body that enables you to shoot the way you want, and then get the lenses you can afford.

So once I had the body I set about looking for lenses.  I temporarily used the old Jupiter-8 50mm f/2.0 that I had on the M2 with an adapter, buy I found that I couldn't quite get infinity focus with that combo.  It was a pretty nice lens for what it was though, and it helped me settle on getting a 50/2.0 of some sort as my first lens.  I narrowed the search down to a used Leitz 50mm f/2.0 Summicron-M, and I suspected that I'd go with the Dual-Range Summicron as it was the most affordable.  But after looking long and hard at the Zeiss ZM line of lenses, I realized I could get a brand new 50mm f/2.0 Planar for the same price that the Dual-Range Summicrons were going for used, and it had been acknowledged to be nearly as good a performer as the current Summicron.  I figured it'd be good enough for me, and I wouldn't have to mess around looking for just the right used lens.  So I sprung for the Zeiss, and my word, it's a beautiful lens.

Examples (not all with the Zeiss):

Leica M8

Looks like I've gone Leica mad!

If you've read anything about the Leica M8 on the internet you've undoubtedly heard about all of its "issues," so I won't bother going over them to any great extent, but I will add my thoughts on them.  

The shutter is louder than a film Leica, no doubt about it, but it's not really loud either.  I'd agree with what some people have said about the shutter making a different kind of noise, but honestly it's as loud as pretty much any DSLR these days.  Of course, there are a couple of advantages to the noisier shutter in the M8 versus the quieter one in the M9, M8.2 and so-called M8.1, such as 1/8000th second top shutter speed and 1/250th flash sync.  In a professional-grade camera, I really appreciate the higher flash sync, so I'll put up with a slightly noisier--but not really noisy--shutter.  

One thing that really bothers me:  why no PC-sync port?!  I know a lot of people say, "oh, well a M-rangefinder is about natural light shooting," but that's stupid.  Photography is about controlling light, whether it's existing or not, and sometimes I'd like to be able to plug some studio lights into the camera and still be able to use the shoe for additional viewfinders.  I can't believe the M9 still doesn't have a PC-sync port.

The camera itself is really rather unobtrusive--it's smallish and it looks like something you dug out of your grandpa's closet--unless someone happens to recognize it as a Leica.  It's sort of funny to watch people process why an "antique" camera like this has an LCD on the back, and inevitably they ask, "Is this digital?"  I've always wondered what they'd think if I said no.

I sort of have mixed feelings about removing the bottom plate to change the battery and the SD card, but it's not too much trouble; I know some people think it's a bother, but it is what it is.  Battery life is as you've heard: on the low side.  I usually take my M8 on vacation with me and I'm always careful to charge the battery every night; I'd like to just carry an extra battery pack, but they're stupidly pricey.  I'd guess about 400 shots to a charge when you're not doing a lot of image review.

It has a 1.33x crop factor compared to 35mm film, and that's a little annoying, but to me since it's a rangefinder and you're not actually looking through the lens it seems easier to me to adjust to than the 1.5x or 1.6x common to most DSLRs.  I would still appreciate a full frame sensor, but the M9 is just more than I can honestly justify spending on a camera (and sometimes the M8 is as well).  I sold my Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 PII and replaced it with their Nokton Classic 35mm f/1.4 MC, and I'm fairly happy with it as a basic "normal" lens, and it wasn't too outrageously expensive.

The general conclusion on the internet is that the M8 is too noisy regarding higher ISO settings.  And I'd maybe agree, but while it's no D700 or 5D Mark II, it's also an improvement over most APS-C DSLRs out there.  Noise aside, I've worked with files from a lot of different cameras and the M8 files have a crispness that I haven't been able to find in other cameras, and I'd wager that the lack of any anti-alias filter in the camera is the reason.  I've compared the M8 against the Canon 7D, and I'd conclude that, in terms of resolution, the M8 is a match for the 7D.  A camera like the 5D Mark II has an advantage at large print sizes, but I think up to 11x14 or so the M8 is a strong contender.

IR/UV sensitivity is an issue, and the whole black-into-magenta thing shows up pretty easily.  Leica sent me two filters to block it, but even with coded lenses the whole cyan corner shift is still a bit of an issue at times.  I've coded my lenses with markers, but my Zeiss and Leica lenses rub off too easily.  Voigtlander lenses have a nice groove in the mount to prevent the self-coding from wearing off, but I tend to favor Zeiss lenses, and I find myself recoding them every four or five lens changes.  But having an infrared sensitive camera is actually pretty nice, and a simple Hoya R72 visible light blocking filter is all that's needed to take advantage of it.  The best thing is that unlike on an SLR, focusing (and metering even!) is as easy as ever.

I actually sold off nearly all of my Canon kit in order to purchase more M-mount lenses.  I thought I'd keep the Canon stuff for the things that a rangefinder isn't suitable for, but it turned out that for what I was shooting a rangefinder could do 90% of it.  One thing that turned out to be pretty neat was that when I put my Canon ST-E2 wireless controller on my M8, I found out that if I used the 580EX II Speedlights set in manual wireless mode I could fire them off with a maximum sync-speed of 1/90th second!  I just had to make sure that the M8 wasn't set to second curtain sync or it'd miss the flash, but I was surprised that this worked at all.  In the end though, the 580s were sold and I've picked up some Nikon SB-24s that work great with the M8.

Anyway,  I really like the M8, but it's not a camera for everyone, and there's times that I really miss having a DSLR.  Having such an anachronistic camera is always going to be a bit of a struggle unless you're either wealthy enough to not really care about it, or have a specific enough shooting style that you can make the most of it.  I wouldn't really say that I'm either of those things, and I'd probably be better suited with a camera like Sony's new NEX-7, but every now and then everything comes together correctly and the M8 is the greatest camera I've ever used.

Examples (not necessarily of greatness):

Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 PII

Hey, another M-Mount lens!

This is the Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm f/2.5 PII; what a nicely built and compact lens!

I had wanted to maybe pick up an older Leitz Summaron 35mm f/2.8 with the goggles, but I just couldn't ever seem to find one in decent shape for a reasonable amount.  Naturally this isn't a Leitz lens, but as a third party alternative I'm very impressed with it.  It's not quite to the same level of build as the Zeiss 50/2.0 ZM Planar that I also have, but it's about right for the cost.

After having used this lens for awhile, I would agree with everything that's normally said about it. It's nice and contrasty, it's fairly sharp even wide open, it has a surprisingly nice out of focus rendering, and it's compact.  It also doesn't really flare that badly, but, as a warning, when it does it is quite ugly and really has the possibility to ruin a shot so I'd recommend getting a hood with it; although, that then reduces the compactness of the lens.

I actually wound up selling this lens after having it for a couple of years, thinking that the 35mm focal length wasn't one I was using much, and boy did I regret it.  I eventually replaced it with the Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm  f/1.4 MC, which is another lens that I like quite a bit, but something about that Skopar still sort of tugs at me.  I think in retrospect, it's easily the best value in the Voigtlander line-up, and if you're shooting mostly out doors in sufficient light, this is the lens for you; don't get suckered by lusting after those ultra-high-speed lenses.  More modest lenses, when done correctly, are some of the best lenses you can buy, and this one is a gem.

Examples: