If the rumours are true then this month is when Leica will finally announce the new M rangefinder, and i’ll have a key decision to make.
Leica M4 35 Summicron, Fuji Superia – Time for TeaCurrently for my Leica shooting, I use a Leica M4 for film work (see the first two photographs), and a Leica M8 with the M8.2 updates and upgraded shutter for Leica digital work (see example shot three).
Leica M8Once its announced I have to decide what I want to do.
As I have said before on this blog, I want a new M for full frame, better high ISO performance and live view for situations that require critical focusing.
New M10 (or what ever its going to be called)
M Type 262
M Type 240
The new M is likely to be at the top of my list and I expect it to tick all the boxes; the surprise for people is the Type 262, this is for some people a budget and cut down Type 240, it lacks live view, has no movie mode but is smaller, lighter and has a better shutter. Last in my order of preference is the M240 or even the M240-P with the bigger buffer. This again ticks all the boxes but is a heavier camera.
It was a little warmer yesterday so on the commute into Lincoln I decided to go without the heated waistcoat underneath my biker jacket.
Caroline and I both had reasons to be in town but for different purposes and as Caroline had to head home at lunchtime we went on separate motorcycles.
Because of that I had plenty of room in the BMW GS’S top box, so took my Leica M8 (with M8.2 upgrades) with me.
After a very busy morning, and it was after one o’clock before I thought I had better get some fresh air, so I grabbed the camera and did a little street photography.
With its CCD sensor and extra sensitivity to infrared the M8 is the next best Black & White camera next to real film or a Leica Monochrom.
I took the time to take a few snaps before heading off to my favourite coffee shop.
More rumours and details of the new Leica M are starting to appear on line. So far nothing official from Leica but the news is a thinner body, a new control wheel on the top right, which some rumours is ISO, other some type of mode or exposure compensation. They are saying only three buttons on the back, it will have live view but no movie mode.
With the Leica SL its likely that the Leica M will more away from the jack of all trades the M240 attempted and failed to be.
With some images to finish off and a new version of Photoshop, I thought it was a good time to practice my selection editing and testing some of the improved features.
With the black dress and dark shadows this was a difficult selection. I sometimes wonder if instead of trying to get it right in camera it would be better to produce a flatter less contrasting image and do all of the effect in post production.
After installing my Creative Cloud updates on Thursday, today it was time to have a little play.
It was the new reference view that interested me the most.
Trying to edit two photographs to look the same style and lighting can be difficult, even when you sync the develop settings from one image to the next you can often still get differences which are difficult to correct for.
While you can use loupe view for selected images (N shortcut key) or compare two images (C shortcut key) you can just view them, not edit them.
Now in the development mode you can access (if you have the toolbar showing) the reference mode by clicking on icon marked RA. Your selected photo appears on the right and you can drag and drop a photo from the film strip at the bottom to the left hand pane to act as your reference photo. You can then access the developer settings as normal with them only acting on the righthand photo, to make it look like your reference photograph.
While catching up on a few music tutorials on YouTube, look what popped up! A new update from Adobe, I updated the laptop and also my mobile devices. Not had chance to see whats new but I’ll try and find some time tomorrow to dig into the updates and see whats improved. The mobile on the phones like a major improvement.
I am not updating my desktop computer yet as I have some work to do and need to know I can rely on the Lightroom that is currently installed.
This months photo of the month I tried to pull off in camera, but did not quiet get the lighting on the models face right. It was close and I was sure that a bit of photoshop could bring it back.
I did the majority of the editing in Lightroom, then applied some skin softening via negative clarity; then I took it into Photoshop to sculpt the light. This turned out to be a mistake.
Red Dress Sculpting after skin softening
Its not a bad image but if you look at the models right arm on the left hand side of the photograph the transition from light to shadow just looks wrong and broken.
I was fairly sure it was because I softened the skin in the wrong order so I needed to process the image again. Lucky I had preserved the layers and it was a lot easier then I expected.
First I took the processed Lightroom image and cloned it, then found the skin softening control point and deleted it, this left all the other Lightroom processing but removed the skin softening. I then opened this into Photoshop and also opened the previous Photoshop image which still had the skin softening and looked broken.
It was fairly easy to duplicate my work, you can Command-Click on the selection layer and copy the selection over to the other document. You can also drag and drop the Curves layer and the masks, thus with just a few clicks I had recreated my Photoshop document but without the skin softening.
Saved then back to Lightroom for a touch of skin softening and a little sharpening plus vignette and you have the picture below and the picture of the month.
