Category: Photography

Leica released a new firmware for the M10 on Wednesday, I have not yet upgraded but have downloaded and have started checking out the forums for any issues.

We have had quite a bit of news from Leica over the last few weeks.

On the camera front we have the new Leica CL (review here from Jonathan Slack), which is growing on me but I must keep saying no.  For how I would use that camera an Olympus Pen-F would do just as well and for the price I could get a few nice Olympus lens as well.  We also had a special edition Leica M240 in Red.

We had the second of Leica’s old classic lens released plus they have been releasing a few of the modern lens in the old classic look lens bodies.

We have been hearing rumours over the last couple of months of a new Noctilux and not a 50mm, but some have said it will be a wide angle others have been saying a short or long portrait lens either 75mm or 90mm.  Well this week we finally had the official announcement.

The new Noctilux is a 75mm f/1.25 ASPH.  In the sample photographs the images look absolutely stunning, the options available to you with depth of field and the stunning bokeh.  The look you can achieve is outrageous but then so is the price.

The Leica CL was a cheaper Leica M and did well, the new Leica CL is a camera I have been waiting for Leica to produce for the last few years and it excites me greatly.

The Leica Vario was marketed as a mini Leica M, and because of this if failed.  It was a good camera and fitted a niche well but because of the marketing people were expecting something it was not.

The Leica CL takes the best parts of the Leica X series, Leica Q and Leica TL and produces a real photographers mirrorless camera.

If your looking for a new camera then an Olympus, Sony or Panasonic mirrorless camera may be better but if you want a Leica and to be able to use Leica’s TL and SL glass plus all the old M glass and even R glass in a small modern mirrorless camera then its the one to pick.

I can imagine a lot of older photographers whose eyesight is now getting the better of them, trading their Leica M’s for this and still being able to use there favourite glass collected over the years.

For many photographers its what they expected the Leica TL2 to be.

 

I was doing a bit of market stall photography at the Autumn Market, so was shooting with my Leica M10.  We also took a stroll through the grounds of the local country house and came across the deer.

Now a Leica M with a 50mm lens is not the best choice for wildlife, but in situations like this you use what you have.

There is not much of the year left, and this year I have not managed as much studio work as I would have liked, so I have booked in a few sessions before the year ends, to try out a few ideas and to test shoot another new model to me.

With the recent released of mirrorless medium format cameras I thought I would give some thought to how they fit in with the use I would put them to, and how they fit in with those tasks.

On one side we have the Hasselblad, fixed rear screen weather sealed and only a leaf shutter.  The Hasselblad was announced and nearly released at the same time as the Fuji, but delay after delay hit them and the firmware was very buggy.

For outdoor use its a good solid camera but it excels when shooting fashion outdoors mixing studio and daylight with great creative options due to the leaf shutters built into each lens.

Fuji are less well thought off when it comes to medium format but they have a long history of producing well designed medium format; not only that, but Fuji built the built the Hasselblad X-Pan panoramic for Hasselblad.

The Fuji with its tilting rear screen, weather sealing and focal plane shutter is not quite as flexible in mixed lighting conditions but is possibly superior for landscape use.  With the focal plane shutter you can also use other lens with the Fuji.  It also has the advantage of the removable EVF which hopefully will get upgrades.

As an alternative there is also the Leica S.  An SLR styled camera with weather sealing and a focal plane shutter, but the lens are available in two versions one without a shutter and one with a leaf shutter, thus if you need a leaf shutter lens its available to you.

What would I choose, well if money was no option the Leica is the most tempting with its flexibility.  The newer Hasselblad and Fuji have the advantages of newer higher resolution sensors and they are also cheaper then the Leica.  So out of these two I would say my heart says Hasselblad but my mind says Fuji.  At the moment the Fuji is the better camera, better hardware and firmware.

Today was the annual Lincoln Photography Show run by London Camera Exchange. The major players were all there, Nikon, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Olympus, Fuji, as well as some of the bigger accessory companies.

Fuji had their Medium Format camera which I like, I also played with latest version of the Fuji X100, I camera I really want to like but I don’t know if its my imagination but the current version seems to have a very poor optical viewfinder and I would not pay the kind of money they are asking for it.

Sony keep charging forward, and while they have many good cameras there always seems to be either an issue or a replacement coming along.

Olympus and Panasonic both have strong lineups and Olympus have really rounded out their professional lens now.

A fun event and I enjoyed the seminars.

The most impressive camera was the new Nikon D850. My D800 is a real high end heavy hitter and when the D810 came out I could not see enough of an improvement but the D850 feels like a small Nikon D5, its a real top of the line pro model.

The price of the D850 is an issue for that kind of money its now worth considering a mirrorless system, you could get an Olympus and all the pro lens for the price of a D850 and a few pro Nikon lens.