efix:photography - News. Thoughts. Pictures. » biogon 35/2

News and article recap: May 8th, 2011

efix — Sun, 08 May 2011 13:59:26 +0000

It’s a warm and sunny sunday here in central Germany, and after spending the first half of the day in our beautiful garden I decided the sun’s become too hot and went inside to share with you some more interesting news and articles I found this week.

Leica Freedom Train Ernst Leitz II, son of Leica-founder Ernst Leitz, helped many people — Leitz employees as well as fellow citizens — to flee the Nazi regime before and during World War II. The Amateur Photographer recollects the story and reports on the ongoing efforts of a british Rabbi [...]

A photographic review of 2010

efix — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 11:12:49 +0000

So 2010 is over. And as it is with things past, we tend to forget them through the daily work that occupies us. 2010 was quite a year, though. Many things happened. I’ve learned a lot of stuff. I have so many great and some not so great memories. I can’t do justice to all of them. So, here’s a little photographic review of 2010. One picture for each month — except for April, since I’ve lost all my pictures from April due to a harddisk crash in late 2010. (This is one of the not so great memories [...]

Photkina 2010: A report in pictures

efix — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:02:04 +0000

As I previously announced, yesterday I spent the day visiting photokina 2010 in Cologne, and I brought back with me a huge load of impressions, pictures of latest models, of prototypes, and other stuff. So without much ado, here’s my report on the fair — by manufacturer, in alphabetic order.

Photokina 2010 south entrance

General impressions from the fair will be posted in a seperate gallery soon.

CAUTION! Massive amount of pictures ahead! Make sure your connection is fast enough, and that you have enough time!

Canon

The biggest players — Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung and [...]

Picture of the day (September 7, 2010)

efix — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:16:19 +0000

One of the many plants on the window ledges in my office. Note to self: Don’t forget to water …

"Office plant" | Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/2, 1/90 sec, ISO 160

Lightroom 3.2 and the M8′s high-ISO noise

efix — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:20:31 +0000

The Leica M8 has always had a reputation of being rather bad noise-wise at its higher ISO settings of 1250 and 2500. At least that’s what its opponents claimed – especially those with a Canon full-frame DSLR background. On the other hand, especially in black and white, the M8′s JPEG output has a very film-like look to it, and isn’t actually worse than what you get with 35mm film rated at ISO 400 or higher.

Yet with modern image processing software, noise isn’t really an issue anymore. Even if your RAW processing software has no sophisticated noise reduction routines, [...]

Picture of the day (August 26, 2010)

efix — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:57:19 +0000

"Calling grandma" | Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/2, 1/45 sec, ISO 1250

A few landscapes and sunset impressions from today

efix — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:32:21 +0000

When I came back from work, I took Emil out for a walk. The sun was already setting, and with all the clouds in the sky the light was truly magical!

Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/8, 1/180 sec, ISO 160

Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/8, 1/90 sec, ISO 160

Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/8, 1/350 sec, ISO 160

Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/2, 1/500 sec, ISO 160

Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ [...]

Can you take your self-portrait with a rangefinder?

efix — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:24:15 +0000

Why, of course you can! While it might sound awkward at first – at least to us spoiled youngsters who grew up with all-automatic cameras -, it is indeed possible, and quite easy, too!

The editor of this blog | Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/8, 1/60 sec, ISO 2500

What I did was set the lens to its closest focusing distance, the aperture to f/8 for large depth-of-field, hold the camera at arms length away, pointing to the right of my chin, let the auto-exposure do its job and shoot. The result needed only some minor [...]

Picture of the day (August 21, 2010)

efix — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:00:12 +0000

“Pitsch-Patsch-Plitsch-Platsch!” Emil having fun with a bucket of water on our balcony!

Converted to b&w in Lightroom 3, added some vignetting and grain, applied some burning to the background and some dodging to the water droplets.

"Splish Splash" | Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/2, 1/90 sec, ISO 160

Picture of the day (August 20, 2010)

efix — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:07:15 +0000

It seems summer’s come back for a coda! Today, we had as good as no clouds in the sky, and the temperature came close to 30°C again. So we decided to visit Wetzlar (the birthplace of the Leica camera), which has a beautiful old town and vast shopping opportunities Emil got waterproof trousers for the fall, and I got this picture, showing in the far background the place where Leica’s optical instruments are being made.

Wetzlar, Germany | Leica M8 + Biogon 35/2 @ f/2, 1/2000 sec, ISO 160