Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/03/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi all, I have been a member of the group for about a month and have silently been following the threads but never chimed it and thought that it's time to introduce myself briefly. I am one of the young Leica enthusiasts on the board, having discovered Leica only several months ago (besides, being young age-wise, with only 24). I have not had formal photography training but have had art training and art theory training. I hold a bachelor of arts in psychology and a master of arts in literary theory degrees but work in a managerial and marketing area at a university in Bremen, Germany. Originally, I come from Bulgaria but have been located in the past 5 years in Germany. I had had very few cameras so far: my first camera and the one I had for 4 years was a Canon EOS 300D and it served its purpose great until October when I decided it was high-time for an upgrade. The Canon 300D has been a very faithful servant throughout my work with chocolate artist Warren Laine-Naida and his book publication for which I did the photography ( http://www.chocolatecheese.de). At that time, I got a Canon EOS 500D but was disappointed with it - it did not feel like a new camera compared to the 300D - the only new feature was the video capability which wasn't important to me at all. At that time I decided to shop around a bit and I discovered Leica - of course I had heard of it before but I did never consider it because of the price. I was however able to afford one now and in January I got a Leica M8 and have been since then experimenting with a number of lenses (all vintage). Have tried a cron 90, a cron 50, a Voitlanger 50 f1.1 but none of these felt right until I discovered a pristine cron 50 from the 80s which is currently the one I am using (I have in the meantime returned all others). I love the bokeh of it and how it renders portraits. I recently made a purchasing mistake (as it turned out) of buying a second hand Elmarit 28 on ebay which turned out to be in poorer condition than described. The sale did not make use of PayPal which is probably the last time I am allowing such a mindless transaction and none of my actions against the seller helped in the communication. The coating of the front lens element is severely scratched and it creates a halo in the picture - very foggy pictures. I assume it is simply the coating and not the glass itself but I am no specialist. I have not yet sent it to Solms for inspection and I was wondering if any of you have experience with such conditions and if you would recommend sending it off to Solms or to another repair center. Do you also have an estimate of how much this may cost? I am looking forward to knowing you all better! I post pictures often on my website: http://imperfiction.com Cheers, KM -- *** http://imperfiction.com