Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/10

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: [Leica] Hi from a Newbie!
From: "Bego Mario Garde" <bego@netcologne.de>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 11:24:39 +0100

I thought it might be a nice idea to introduce myself*:

I took my first photos, when I was 9 years old :-) (my father was a
photo-addicted), but it's just 1.5 years ago, that I bought a Nikon F90X and
got more involved in photography. Great camera and I learned a lot. I
started with "regular" color-prints, but soon begun to develop my own
b/w-films. My fiancée, who encourages my heavily, gave me a Leica Pradovit
300 as X-Mas-present.

The more I worked with my Nikon and the more I learned about photography,
the more I tried to switch to manual settings -- no programms! Still I
thought, that for weekdays photography handling all the equipment (body,
flash-light, 24mm, 50 mm, 85mm) was too much to carry.

So -- that's how I ended up with my first Leica (M6 TTL chrome with 35
Summicron Asph.) three weeks ago.

Weather here in Cologne wasn't too good in the past weeks, so until today I
only took a few shots with my new camera. But the results so far were
outstanding (at least from what the camera could do! :-).

The most amazing thing for me was, that pictures taken with 1/8 sec. at
aperture 2.0 just came out perfect. No blurr or anything. I took one picture
of my fiancée in a corner of a church, which was only illuminated by
candle-light. But -- Wow! -- perfect shot! Very warm tone, every detail
visible, crisp sharp. I never would have made that picture with my Nikon
F90X.
(BTW -- I ordered a Abrahamsson Softrelease today (i.e. sent a letter to
him). I'm very curious, if this still will improve the outstanding results
with available light.)

In the shop, where I bought my camera I was taught to set the rangefinder to
infinite, which works great. But the rest of camera-handling still is quite
confusing for me. Should I start with aperture setting oder the time value?

Probably it's so confusing, because I first set the aperture (which seems to
be more important to me), second set the time value and then find out, that
it is 1/2 f-stop, that I have to correct. So I have to correct the
aperture -- which makes it an endless process! Any suggestions? Or do I just
have to get used to this procedure?

Bego Mario Garde
Cologne, Germany

* PS.: Oops! I just recognized, that I only wrote about my cameras -- I'm 36
years old, work at the marketing department of a private bank and live near
Cologne. Besides photography we -- my fiancée an I -- love to travel. Well,
guess that's it for the moment. :-)