[LRflex] First Leica Shooting Experience!
- From: Richard Ward <ilovaussiesheps@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: LeicaReflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:00:31 -0700 (PDT)
Hello Group,
I joined this group a few months ago as a "Fan" of Leica Equipment, but
hadn't yet found a way to acquire a R lens or two to get my feet wet using them
personally. Well I had the incredibly good fortune to acquire a Summicron 50mm
f2 and an Elmarit 90mm f2.8 from a SuperDuper List Member and now I finally
have had the opportunity to go shoot something besides things laying around the
living room! I have put together a Set on Flickr of a few of my favorites from
that day. The Link is
"http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeissfan/sets/72157622324552317/";.
I'm still pushing through the Raw's and Jpeg's due to some computer issues I
am having reccurent problems with, but I must say that the stunning files I got
from the Summicron and the Elmarit make my Digital Darkroom work a drop dead
easy experience now. The ONLY flaws in any of the images are entirely due to
either my focusing misses, handheld blurriness blues, or compositional /
content failures. My Tamron Zoom, my EOS wide zoom, and even my Zeiss Pancolar
universally required extensive Curve Manipulations, Levels Fiddling, and
UnsharpMasking to a fair thee well - less usm'ing on the zeiss's I must admit!
The Leica's Utterly STUNNED ME with how they held the jet black Lighthouse Top
with incredible detail and utter Blackness along with controlling the bright
white window frames and glaringly bright nylon flags. WOW! There is a 'so-so'
image of the lighthouse curator's cat sunning himself that was shot with the
sun just off frame that didn't flare at
all AT ALL and is sharp and wonderful (just not artistically so).
I uploaded 'full resolution' files to Flickr, but they unfortunately ended up
being down sampled from the full output of my EOS 20D. To compensate I did some
100% 1:1 resolution crops and posted them in the set too. I also want to note
that all I really did in RAW processing was tweak the exposure compensation
around some. When I saw even on my cameras dinky lcd how incredible shadows and
highlights were being controlled, I got a little overexcited and didn't mind my
technique as well as I ought to have in my rush to take oodles of pictures with
my new toys.
Richard Ward
Other related posts:
