[Leica] Leica lenses on the Pana G1 - a few photos from today

[drodgers at casefarms.com (David Rodgers)]

Howard,

Many thanks for that update. I like the direction things are going. More
and more options all the time for using M and R. That's good news.

DaveR 


-----Original Message-----
From: H&ECummer [mailto:cummer@netvigator.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 10:50 AM
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] Leica lenses on the Pana G1 - a few photos from today

Hi Luggers,
Ray Tai and Chris Topher and I met at the China Tee Club today and  
mated my L > M4/3rds adapter with
Chris's black G1. We used my 15 Heliar, the 24 Elmarit, the 35  
Summilux Asph, The Tri-Elmar, the 50mm Summilux Asph,
the 90 Summicron APO, my old 135 Elmar (from 1964) and Chris's 50mm  
Zeiss f1.5.

Pictures taken with some of these lenses can be found at:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Howard+Cummer/M+Lenses+to+Micro+4-3rds/

http://tinyurl.com/9bh9zx

The EVF is better than I remember it at Photokina. Under fluorescent  
lights
there is strobing in the viewfinder but with daylight or other  
lighting the EVF works quite well.
A Leica rangefinder viewfinder it isn't but still it is usable. You  
have to set the G1 to fire
the shutter without a lens on the camera and that takes some digging  
through the instruction
book to find the menus within menus.
What is very appealing is that in manual focus you touch the left  
arrow of the control wheel on the back
and that brings up a 10X magnification box. You can move the box over  
the area you want
to enlarge and then push the set button in the center of the control  
wheel to enlarge that section.
You have to be quite fast to fix focus because the magnification shuts  
off in about 3 seconds. It is easiest to use
with wide angle lenses because the magnified camera shake is not so  
great. For telephotos like the 90 Cron and the
135 Elmar - the shaking of the hand held camera is so magnified that  
it is hard to fix focus before the magnification
turns off. Chris believes a firmware upgrade has already been  
announced to allow the user to extend the timing
of the magnification.
I didn't get to take the camera out for any street shooting so I can't  
comment on its use there and I didn't have
time (nor inclination) to work through all the camera's features and  
menus.
Still, as you can see from the pictures it performs pretty well -  
although we did notice that white balance when set to auto
fluctuated quite a bit from shot to shot.
A feature which appeals to me for street shooting is the moveable view  
screen on the back but I will have to test it
another day.
Bottom line: Would I buy one? Could be, but I wasn't so blown away  
that I ran next door to get one today. Still, I might
when the new prices fall a bit more.
Comments and questions welcome.
Cheers
Howard