[Leica] More on Canon D60 and Leica R lenses / LUG Dinner Hong Kong

[Cummer <cummer@netvigator.com>]

Hong Kong Luggers had a dinner last evening at the Aberdeen Marina 
Club in honor of Bryan Caldwell who was visiting from California. 
Bryan brought his black paint M4 and Noctilux to the party as well as 
a recently acquired Leica Digilux which proved an interesting and 
capable picture taker. Sarah and Joseph Yao were there, Sarah showing 
her latest photographs from North India and Joseph using his Alpa 
50mm lens adapted to M. James Leung had travelled with Sarah and 
showed his pictures as well. It is interesting to see how differently 
two capable photographers approach travel photography. I took along 
three A4 prints from my Epson 1290 which illustrated that Leica R 
lenses do work well - with some reservations - on the Canon D60. One 
picture was of visitor Peter Belanger, taken by natural light, using 
the 28 Elmarit wide open - sharp with beautiful bokah, a second of my 
son Russell taken with the Summilux 50 and using the SF 20 flash. The 
picture is sharp but there is an operator induced white balance 
problem. The third is of the Hong Kong skyline, taken with the 180 
3.4 APO wide open, set at infinity (or beyond) and it is soft 
focused, despite using a tripod and timer to provide mirror lockup. 
The problem is, I think, that the APO is designed to focus slightly 
past infinity and you can't see clearly enough in the Canon view 
finder to accurately focus the lens when it is wide open. James had a 
variety of R lenses in his pack and I used the Leica 21 - 35 zoom on 
the Canon, which together with James's Metz 45 flash, is a very 
effective combination. I also got to use James's 80mm Summilux R and 
the lens is simply formidable on the Canon camera. I was able to get 
accurate focusing - most of the time - because of the brightness of 
the viewfinder and if I missed a shot, upon review, I just deleted it 
and shot it again. One technical aspect of using the 50 mm Summilux R 
on the D60 - the Summilux does not completely open its aperture when 
mounted. It is closed to about F2.0 to F2.8 when the aperture scale 
reads f1.4. Now that the novelty of seeing digital pictures taken 
with Leica lenses is beginning to wear off, the limitations of the 
combination are becoming more apparent and they make me wish that 
Leica could manage a cooperation with Canon to produce a D 60 with 
better ground glass focusing and a mount which would communicate lens 
information to the camera to allow TTL flash and use of the camera 
programming. I doubt the market would be large enough to justify the 
retooling - but what the heck - one can dream.
Cheers,
Howard.
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