The M7 is now back from its latest repair attempt in Leica, and I have shot a couple of test films to re-check the focus calibration and metering. So far, it looks promising. The metering is now usable at ISO 400, and ISO 1600 looks ok down to about 1/8th second (a huge improvement from before, where it was failing at 1/125th). But…
This is a very very late user review of the Leica M10, based on just over a year of use. It is a deliberately image-heavy post, with a varied selection of photographs that I hope show some of the capabilities of the camera.
I have not shot much film this year because my main 35mm film camera, the M7, has been at Leica for a shutter curtain replacement. The camera came back at the start of March, but to my dismay the first films showed a substantial front-focus that was obvious even with subjects many meters away. Rather than endure the six week round trip to Wetlar again, I opted to recalibrate the focus myself. Three test films later and with everything seemingly ok, I then set out to run some tests for […]
A quick look at the Zenit Horizon 202 clockwork panorama camera, which is unusual in that it uses a lens placed in a rotating drum to create ultra-wide-angle images with a 2.4:1 aspect ratio on 35mm film. If this sounds weird, it is – and It is probably easier to show the camera in a short video than to describe it:
Photokina is Europe’s largest trade show centred around traditional still-image photography and a photographic gear-lovers paradise. Surprisingly, I have never been to any photographic equipment fair before, so when the opportunity came up to go to Köln this year it was hard to pass up. This is what I found…
A brief review looking at three different options for polarising filters that can be used with Leica M series cameras.
This is a user-review of the Leica M typ 262, based on one year of use with a mix of street, landscape and architectural photography.
This is an incredibly late review for the Leica M7, which was released in 2002. Mine is an early version bought second-hand, and I have used it extensively for the last two years over which time I have shoot an average of about one film per week and traveled with it in Europe and the Americas.
People sitting outside of the MACBA, Barcelona. Shot on another old and leaky camera – this time a Photax IV-F.
I am gradually working through the stock of unusual film cameras here, today arriving at the Lomography Belair X 6-12 “City Slicker”. This is a contemporary medium format camera, which on paper at least should be able to offer some amazing photographic opportunities without a huge expense. Unusually, this is a folding camera with rubber bellows and an external viewfinder, making it very much a modern version of early 120 format Kodak folding cameras.
Some closing thoughts on the FED 5b that I have been experimenting with for the last week or so…
This is a short look at the FED 5b rangefinder camera. We found this one at a flea market in Barcelona, for the price of two reels of film. With some care, these cameras can be just as usable today as when they were first made 35 years ago. The Ukrainian built FED 5b was a very basic all-mechanical design, evolved over many years from a copy of an early Leica design. It uses the older Leica M39 lens mount and lacks modern frivolities such as a built-in light-meter. In form and function it is not […]
After returning from Brazil it was difficult to get back in to photography. And, not being a huge fan of flare/burns spots in every image, burning a hole in the M7’s shutter curtain made that a whole lot harder…
These are a short series of images taken around the cruise-ship terminal in Barcelona. They were taken using a mixture of Fuji Superia 200 and Ilford XP2 Super 400 films, both using the standard C41 process. The Ilford is interesting in that it is a black-and-white dye-based film, rather than traditional silver-halide. The first two shots were taken at ISO 200 using the Fuji, scanned using Vuescan and a PlusTek 7600i, and then converted in to black and white in Lightroom. A virtual red filter was applied in post-processing to help darken the […]
Early morning shot looking towards fishing harbour taken from alongside the Maremagnum at Port Vell, Barcelona. This is one of the first pictures taken with a newly acquired Leica M7 and 35mm Zeiss Vogon Biogon lens. To ensure even less continuity, this was also the first time that I have used Kodak Ektar 100 colour negative film. Shooting with a rangefinder camera is very much a different experience to a film SLR. The rangefinder itself is very easy to use and much faster to focus accurately than the usual SLR split-screen.Using the viewfinder with […]
In sudden burst of enthusiasm to try something slightly different, I have dusted-off the old Minolta XD-s and shot a roll of Ilford HP5. All the images here were taken using the Minolta MD 50mm f1.4 lens. There were three aims: to check if the camera light seals are still good enough (the camera is more than 30 years old…) to see if I can still figure out how to focus manually to see of the effect of the smaller camera on subjects… These images were shot in about an hour […]
Transient Eye 