Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/08

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Subject: [Leica] random Leica M stuff...
From: "Richard F. Man" <richard@imagecraft.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 19:51:56 -0700

Here I am, 9 rolls of slides (8 rolls of Provia 400F and 1 roll of Provia 
100F) over the last weekend, plus another 10 from the prior 3 weeks, all 
waiting for my Nikon LS-4000 to come back from the Nikon Service. Sigh.....

We went to the annual Anime (Japanese Animation and Manga/Comic) Expo in 
Anaheim during the July 4th long weekend. 13000 people, a good number of 
them dressed up as Anime or Manga or Console Game characters. Imagine 
seeing purple hair, full body suits, huge fake swords and other weapons 
etc. everywhere.Thousands of cameras, a good number are the disposable 
type, some film SLRs and of course probably more than half use some sort of 
digicams or digital SLRs. The guy with the huge Canon 1Ds was there again. 
I am pretty sure I have the only  Leica M7 though. There was a guy with a 
Hexar RF. He was very happy to see a non-digital camera in use but he was 
smoking so I didn't talk to him much.

Funny thing about the Leica is that most people won't notice it, but those 
who do would *know* it is a Leica despite I have the red dot and M7 taped 
over ever since I got the camera. It also still has the "battery cap" that 
I use sports tape to tape down. I shot a number of frames with the 35 lux 
at 1.4 and the 90/2 at 2 because I have to. The slides look pretty sharp 
under the loupe but wouldn't know for sure until I scan them in. I also 
used the Metz54-3 in a few shots when there just weren't much light at all. 
I have to say while the 90/2APO is big relatively speaking, I do not find 
it a problem at all. It balances very well and seems very natural on the 
M7. The Metz flash is definitely a wee bit on the large side so I avoid 
using it unless absolutely necessary. I bought the 1.25 magnifier and it 
definitely is a plus for my .72 M7 when using the 90/2. It is not a problem 
at all screwing it on and off. The major downside is simply that when it is 
dangling, running with the camera bounces it around, making annoying sound.

I used auto-exposure probably around 75% of the time. May be 10% of the 
remaining w/ exposure compensation for the backlight, and then the 
remaining w/ the manual mode to avoid the funky indoor bright spot lights. 
At first glance, looks like at least I am getting better at using the right 
exposure mode most of the time. A few shots were still messed up by strong 
backlight that I wasn't careful about. Oh well....

Another comment that guy's Canon 1Ds and his 11x17" prints. His stuff is 
really good, but at that large enlargement, slight miss of critical focus 
really shows. There were a few prints where the focus were slightly off the 
eyes, may be at the shoulder, or at the hair in front of the face etc. 
Perhaps he used too large of aperture and a greater DOF would have helped. 
Nice stuff regardless though.

// richard <http://www.imagecraft.com> 
<http://www.dragonsgate.net/mailman/listinfo> 

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