Author: Richard

One can hardly call the Leica SL a system yet but with the adapters to use M glass and S glass plus TL lens available if you can put up with a crop factor it has options.

This week Leica announced the second native lens. Instead of the traditional 70-200mm they have gone for a 90-280mm. Available to order now and released on the 24th March 2016.

In general with wildlife photography getting close is an issue and so many photographers including myself revert to the big guns, or in my case a 300mm f/2.8 and a x1.7 teleconverter.

But often with patience the wildlife will slowly come closer to you.

In fact in the above shot a puffin eventially got too close and I could not take a photograph as it was closer the the minimum doc using distance.

Mirrorless cameras are gradually gaining traction amongst professional and semi professional users.

The advantage of a smaller, lighter body appeals to many.  We now have full frame mirrorless cameras such as the Sony A7 and the Leica SL.  When Leica released the SL they also released a huge no compromise zoom lens for which they got a lot of criticism, but now we have the Sony G range of lens coming out.

The point people keep missing, is that for 35mm full frame, high quality fast lens are large and heavy.

I have to admit, I like having the choice.  As a Leica user who also uses a Nikon SLR, when the focus system gets as good as pro DSLR’s I can see me  having the latest Leica SL and a few large pro lens for when I need them, and for times when I do not, either a small M prime lens or a DX crop Leica TL lens on the body.

 

This weekend I made one of my monthly visits to Lincoln Cathedral.  I generally wonder round the uphill area of the Bailgate taking photographs and then go into the cathedral for a while.

Generally I take black and white photographs.  A job that the Leica M8 excels at.  This time I took two cameras, my Leica M4 loaded with Kodak Tri-X and my digital M8.

My outdoors street photography was all done with the M4, and as I have not quite finished the film yet, you will have to wait a while longer before seeing the results.

In the Cathedral itself, I switched to the Leica M8 so I could crank up the ISO some more.  I was shooting the 24mm lens which on the M8 is an effective field of view of about 35mm.  My 24mm is only f/3.8, so shooting film was not really an option, unless I was willing to push the film, but the rest of the roll had already been exposed at 400 ISO.  One of the many advantages of digital is the ability to change the ISO from shot to shot.

For a change I have decided to post a colour shot.  Despite it still being winter, we still had the odd moment of sun breaking through the clouds and the light through the stain glassed windows is always remarkable.

Below is a snap from a couple of years ago.

This week there have been a few interesting Leica M rumours flying around.

Leica used to have a M called the M-D many years ago and this week the name started to make the rounds again on the rumour sites.  The rumours are contradictory.  Some say it will be a Leica like the Leica M60 limited edition which is an M 240 but is missing the rear LCD.

That will appeal to some but I prefer the Panasonic GX8 and Epson RD solution to those who do not want a rear screen.  They both have reversible and foldable rear screen, so you can either have the LCD or fold it over and have a plain leather back.

But there is a second rumour going around that is much more interesting, and that is that this Leica M-D is going to be a Leica that has no rangefinder but takes M glass, instead of the optical viewfinder it will have an EVF.  Now that would appeal to many photographers.