Category: Photography

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.

I have a large selection of shots like above.  I usually pass by here most lunchtimes.  Each time I take a few snaps if the sun is giving a nice amount of contrast.

I keep a lookout for the man with the placard and a reasonable selection of interesting people at key points in the frame.  I have a few shots that I am happy with but no knockouts yet.

This shot was taken today while I headed to the best coffee shot in Lincoln.

I promised that I would get out to Hartsholme Park and finally I managed it.

The weather was pretty good so I could get away with 1/800 second or above, stopped down one stop and still keep the ISO within reasonable limits.

The first set of photographs I thought were great, but then I rechecked  my settings and realised I had left the focus set to AF-S instead of AF-C.  I have the centre button on my camera set to do a deep zoom, one quick click and I can check focus.  Guess what?  That spectacle sequence of herons in flight were all blurred.

I quickly changed my focus settings but the herons did not bank past me in the same that day.  Oh well lesson learnt.