Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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. :-)