Richard & Caroline's Blog

With the announcement this week of the new Nikon Coolpix A, most camera manufacturers now have a high end fixed lens compact.

The best of the bunch is the Sony RX1, and the Fuji X100.  I had a play with the RX1 a few months ago and apart from needing a viewfinder Sony have gotten just about everything right with this camera.  Its expensive and not coming with a lens hood or battery charger is just ridiculous, but it is a very good camera.  Personally I like the Fuji better, but then I have a thing about optical viewfinders.

Some manufacturers seem to get it but others are not quite there yet.  The Nikon is a little disappointing.  Focal length wise 28mm is a good option but is playing it safe.  I would personally want 35mm or 24mm; 28mm is really a compromise option that I am not personally keen on.  Then there is the lens speed, it really should have been f/2 at least.  Still its good to see more options available, and once again Nikon have taken the brave option of not including a low pass filter, the anti-aliaising filter to stop moire.

As the cameras in phones get better and better, then compacts are going to have to go beyond just being a simple small sensor’ed point and shoot.

Some months choosing a picture to be my photograph of the month, can be quite difficult. In February I managed to get a good selection of quality wildlife shots as you can see from these two examples. In fact they are far better then January’s picture of the month.

Some months I might have only shot a some weddings or some corporate portraits. With these belonging to my clients there not really available for me to use on my blog.

With January’s picture being wildlife, February really had to be something else. It was quite frustrating with February’s shots were so much better. Luckily as well as some good wildlife shots I also managed to get some pleasing Street Photography shots as well as a few detailed architectural shots.

Altogether a good month of photography, and one thats produced a lot of shots to choose from for February’s Photo of the Month. Lets hope March is as productive.

Sunday morning with the weather being somewhat overcast, I decided not to go out shooting wildlife but have a lazy morning in.  A late brunch consisting of home made Corn Fritters, Bacon, Honey and Fresh Coffee was the order of morning.  Then as I blogged yesterday, we had a fight with the bike in trying the so called simple task of changing a head light bulb on the GS motorcycle.

In the afternoon I grabbed one of my small cameras, a Leica M8 and we went for walk round the village.

When we got to the village church we had a wander round the church yard.  We both love church yards, there is something quite lovely and atmospheric about them, we don’t find them scary at all.

As we walked into the church yard, a young woman with a DSLR round her neck came out, obviously having been photographing round the church and grave yard as we were about to do.

We took a number of atmospheric shots, and I even had a go at some bird photography with the Leica and the 35mm Summicron lens.  I had to slowly approach him but finally managed to get close enough with my moderate wide angle lens to get this shot of the black bird sat on top of the grave stone.

A pleasing selection of images I hope you agree.

The post the other day titled Leica Fan Boy was extremely fortuitous. I was checking Adobe’s website out and spotted a new Release Candidate for Adobe Lightroom. In the notes it stated that it supported the new Leica M (240). This means that Leica must have finalised the software, which means the camera is imminent.

Then just a few hours later I find out that the Leica Dealer who gave me such great service and sold me my Leica M8. would have a demo copy from Friday.

If your after trying out the new Leica M, contact Stephen Premier.

I wish I was lucky enough to afford a new Leica but I have to admit, I would be torn between the Leica Monochrom. the CCD sensor’ed M9P or the new M.

Choices for Photographers just keep getting better.

I have not been a Leica user for long. I wanted one for a long time but the cost put me off. Still over the last couple of years I have slowly been trying to buy some M Glass.

Finding bargains is hard but I have managed so far to get two great Leica Lens quite cheap, in fact if I wanted to sell them I would make a tidy profit.

Camera wise there was two Leica’s I wanted a film Leica M made the year I was born and a digital Leica M.

Last year I finally managed to achieve this and I am now the proud owner of a film Leica M4 and a Leica M8 which the previous owner had sent back to Leica to have the shutter upgrade to the better one thats in the M8.2 and M9.

The digital M cameras have not been without issues. The issues are now all fixed, but the M8 and M9 based cameras are a little slow in some areas like image review. The M8 also has the problem of enhanced infra-red sensitivity, this though does make it a great Black & White Camera, and should I ever get a M9 or the new M (Type 240) I would keep the M8 for its great Black & White.

In a few weeks/months there will a new kid on the block, the new M (Type 240). So far all of Leica’s digital M’s have used CCD sensors. At base ISO these produce fantastic images, and the great thing is how little post production the RAW files need. CMOS sensors tend to produce images that need a little more work bur CMOS sensors have a huge advantage over CCD and that is the lack of noise.

While I would happily use my M8 at ISO640 and a M9 at ISO1200, a modern DSLR with a CMOS sensor would produce great results at ISO1600 or more. They just produce less noise.

Now though Leica have produced there first CMOS based Leica M. Its worrying a lot of us, will it produce the kind of files we love from our M8/9’s or are we going to get images like a common SLR.

Leica are still finalising the firmware so the image quality is not yet at its peak. Also there is no DNG profile for it yet so RAW files processed do not look at there best. The few shots that have appeared so far have not looked good, but finally beta testers like Sean Reid (Paywall Site), Jonathan Slack and Mein Thein have started to post promising images. From what I have seen so far, at base ISO to about 640, there is not a lot in it, the M8/9 are really very very good but as ISO climb the new M starts to leave the others behind. If you really want to know more about this camera I can recommend subscribing to Sean Reid’s site if your into Leica and Mirror-less cameras.

The biggest change is in the feel of the camera with the improvements to the electronics. If you like to check the image on the back of the camera after each shot then the M8/9 will very quickly frustrate you with its slow speed to write the image and then review the image. From what I hear from reviewers the new M is a far different beast. With functions like video, live view, and an optional EVF, weather sealing, GPS add-on, ability to shoot with Leica R Glass including zooms its a totally different beast.

Its really going to be interesting how traditional Leica Photographers take to it. Still, if you still want an M9 its still available as the new M-E.