Family, Photography and other misc news
Its been a stormy and wet weekend. Luckily for us in Lincoln its been nothing like as bad as in the north of England and Scotland. Despite the wind, the Lincoln Christmas Market has been in full swing and the wet cobbles of Lincoln have been packed with shoppers unlike this shot I took a few weeks ago.
This weekend is the Lincoln Christmas Market. If you have to commute into and out of Lincoln be prepared for a long wait. Even if like me and my wife you commute on a motorcycle it can take you a while to get in and out of the city.
Today I took my little Leica M8 into the city to shoot few street scenes. They were then imported into my iPad; I edited the Jpegs in Lightroom Mobile.
As an experiment I set the aperture to f/5.6 to give me a bit of depth of field, the ISO to 640 to give me a reasonable shutter speed and prefocused to about 4 meters. Then as views appeared I took a shot.
Most were rejected but a few had a bit of interest. It was also a useful test of Lightroom Mobile and how I could integrate it into my usual workflow.
Cameras and lens are a bit much but there are some presents that a photography would appreciate.
Here are a few ideas.
A well known news picture agency announced the other week that it would no longer accept Jpegs files from processed Raw files, but only out of camera jpegs with editing consisting of cropping, rotation or colour correction would be allowed.
Many people have issues with digital photography and it not being real, and there is a growing trust issue with more and more newspapers and magazines editing photographs to make them more newsworthy.
Leica M8
Leica Summilux 50mm f/1.4 ASPH 6-Bit
50mm, 1/200 Sec at f/1.5, ISO160
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom CC2015.3
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.11.1
Events are a good place to start, people expect photographers at events.
The above shot was taken at the monthly farmers market in Lincoln, its a more interesting picture because its taken from behind the counter. Shot on my little Leica M4 film camera, the people in it are busy with their shopping and are not noticing me.
The above shot was a test of two things. The first was my pre focusing technique, I selected the focus and aperture first then as the scene developed I raised the camera to my eye and took a single shot. Fast and unobserved.
Refocusing and using the zone focusing technique is very fast but does take practice, and is something that I am not that good at.
The second test was me working on my mobile workflow.
After taking this and a few other photographs, I took the memory card and imported it into my old iPad2. I had shot RAW & JPG (DNG and Black & White JPG), I then used Lightroom Mobile to drop the contrast and reduce the highlights of the JPG and boost the shadows.
For a JPG its not a bad shot.
So how many lens do you need? On the SLR front I have a wide angle zoom, standard zoom and a telephoto zoom.
Then I have a wide prime, a standard prime, a macro prime and a couple of big telephoto’s.
For my Leica its a bit different. Generally a rangefinder is only good with lens from 28mm to 75mm. Leica make a range from about 21mm to 135mm, but for the extremes you either need to use live view, or an EVF if you have a Leica M (type 240).
I currently have lens from 24mm to 50mm for my Leica with the hope to add a 90mm and possibly a 28mm.
Many people choose a lens for its handling or size, I know a photographer who owns and used two different 28mm. A very small f/2.8 version which is his favourite due to its very small size, but also has a f/1.4 for low light use.
I was hoping that the Leica X rumours were going to be a new X series camera with a viewfinder. Instead it seems the X-U may be a underwater X series camera. A new direction for Leica.
All the Leica rumour sites have been saying that there are two more Leica camera’s to be announced post the new Mirrorless SL announcement before the end of the year. Most people have been expecting a new X series camera and hoping for the new top of the range M to replace the M240 which is now three years old.
Well yesterday we had a surprise announcement of a new Leica Rangefinder.
The new Leica M (Type 262).
This is a new budget model to replace the Leica M-E, with the sensor issues Leica has had with the CCD based sensor in the M9 and M-E it makes sense to get all cameras onto the current 24 megapixel CMOS range.
For a budget Leica M this is really an excellent camera. Body wise its a cross between the M9 and the M (Type 240), think of it as a fractionally smaller, lighter M240 with the video and live view and EVF functionality removed. Its also got an all new quieter shutter possibly from the Type 240’s replacement that is due soon.
For people like me wanted to upgrade from their M8’s (or M9’s), this is now a tricky but pleasing position to be in.
The new M262 for a Leica rangefinder is a real steal and features all the best bits of the M240 with this new quieter shutter, we also have seen £500 price cuts in the top of the range M240, as well as lots of M240’s appearing second hand as people raise the cash for the upcoming M240’s replacement.
So what do we do, jump now and get this stunning M262 (I might regret not having live view), wait for the M240’s replacements release and then pick up a bargain M240 with the ability to use live view? Or even blow the budget and get the M240’s replacement knowing that that should keep me happy for another eight years or so?
As a side note the M8 is a great camera, while only 10 megapixels (but who needs more then 6 MP unless you print over A4), at base ISO it really is quite something, but take things to 640 ISO and your really pushing it, which is disappointing in the dull wintery days we have now.
As you can see in the shot above, it was shot wide open on a 50mm f/1.4 Summilux, hand held at 1/30 of a second, your about at the limit. If I had used my Nikon D800 I could have shot at a much higher ISO and gotten a much cleaner, sharper image; the big but is that as soon as I brought up a big DSLR to my face I would have gotten noticed, where they did not notice or worry when I brought up a little rangefinder.
Of course may would say use a small modern mirrorless, as you can see in the quick grab shot above with my Nikon V1, its a much cleaner image, but you need a camera that inspires you, one you want to carry and use, and I find most mirrorless cameras very frustrating.