Re: [Leica] Two quick questions, please

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

George Kenney jotted down the following:

> Tho I don't take pictures much, recently I bought an M6 .85 after
> looking at it in a store. Another M6 (.58) and a few lenses later
> (50/2; 75/1.4; 35/1.4; and Voigtlander 15/2.8) I'm getting ready to
> take a photography class to learn how to use all this great stuff. I
> haven't, however, been able to get the acquisition bug to be still, so
> I'm wondering what other lenses might be good/useful. (After this
> wild spending spree my girlfriend has imposed a limit of one new
> lens per month, so a full set of further acquisitions will take a while.)
> 
> Anyhow, here're two questions for those with patience enough to
> tolerate newbies:
> 
> 1) Would the Noctilux; the 28/2 (when it comes out); and the 24/2.8
> make sense? And tho I'm not much interested in longer lenses,
> would the 90/2 ASPH give much greater/different coverage than
> what I get with the 75/1.4 (which I love -- it takes better snapshots
> for me than I've ever taken in my life)?

It's not a question of "should I get A or B", it's a question of "should I
get A first, then B, or B first then A, or both at the same time."  And the
correct answer is, of course, "both at the same time."

The girlfriend's not a problem.  This list is a wonderful resource of tricks
and techniques on how to hide equipment from your SO.  It's made even easier
by the introduction of Cosina/Voigtlander to the market, since they will
shortly have a 21mm, 25mm, and 35mm lenses in the same mount and the
viewfinders look the same, so you can get all three and pass them off as a
single lens.  Their 12mm and 25mm f/1.9 also look rather simliar at a casual
glance, so there's another two for the price of one.

Leica lenses are a little more tricky, but the basic rule is that anything
with a square hood is a single lens, so the 28mm f/2 and 24mm f/2.8 and 35mm
f/1.4 will count as one.  And of course you need that 90mm APO/ASPH!  Doggy
headshots!

Of course, the real joy is in bodies.  If there is only a limitation on the
number of lenses you can buy, count yourself lucky!!  Black paint is the way
to go these days, and you have an interesting and wide choice of either the
old M2/M3/M4s or the new M6 LHSA, M6 Dragon, M6 Oresund, M6 Millenium, and
others.  A good trick is to equip similarly looking bodies (say, all black
paint bodies) with a similarly coloured SoftRelease, and dissimilar bodies
with a dissimilar coloured one.  The softie then becomes the distinguishing
mark between "different" bodies and you can have five black paint M6s all
with a red softie, and no-one will be the wiser!!

Ideally, you want one body per lens, to save you the trouble of having to
change lenses.  So, it looks pretty good:  "One" new lens a month (i.e., a
bunch that look sufficiently similar) and a body to match that "one" lens
(i.e., one for each lens).  Maybe you can put up a page with Dog PAWs?

M.

- -- 
Martin Howard                     |
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       | "Close doesn't shoot any rabbit"
email: howard.390@osu.edu         |                     -- Swedish idiom
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------