These days I’ve been thinking a lot about stuff I’d like to treat myself with for christmas. Alas, the budget for new toys roughly equals zero this year. Still, being the gearhead that I am, here’s a list of what I would have Santa bring me 
- M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 — Olympus’ latest Micro Four Thirds lens offering, equivalent to a 90mm portrait lens / short tele in 35mm terms. Being raved about by everyone who has it, and generally getting quite favourable reviews. This would complement my Lumix 20/1.7 nicely for a two-lens kit.
- Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4 — The fastest 40mm lens for 35mm photography, and conviniently this comes in M-mount. Since its über-fast sibling, the Nokton 35/1.2, is not only two to three times as expensive, but also two to three times as large and heavy, this would make for a nice carry-anywhere 50mm-equivalent available-light lens on my M8.
- Leica CL 35mm rangefinder camera — the camera that almost killed the M series. Much smaller and lighter than its M siblings, the CL was manufactured by Minolta and features 40, 50 and 90mm framelines. It’s one of the smallest M-mount cameras, has an integrated light meter and would nicely lend itself at being used with the 40mm Nokton. Also, it’s beautiful!
- Leica M Thumbie — a less expensive and less obtrusive alternative to the Thumbs Up grip by Match Technical. The Thumbie is attached to the back of your Leica M by adhesive tape, and thus keeps the hot shoe free for accessories. It’s also smaller than the Thumbs Up and only half the price.
- Leather half case for the Leica M8 — there are many varieties of this very useful and very good-looking accessory. I would want one in light brown (“cognac”) with an integrated grip, preferrably the Mr. Zhou version. Protects the camera, makes it look nice and provides grip.
What would you like Santa to bring you for christmas?
My Contax T recently decided to act up, exposing only every other frame properly. The rest of the time the shutter would either not open or not close, yielding overexposed shots or frame not exposed at all. (It needs to be sent in for repair, and I found a small company in Germany who will be able to fix it.)
When I put in a roll of that rather expensive Kodak Ektachrome E100G, sometime late October, I wasn’t yet aware of the problem. Only while shooting it I noticed that the sound the shutter made sometimes wasn’t what I was used to hear — only a single “click” instead of two distinct ones. As it turned out — as with the roll of equally expensive Velvia 100 I shot before –, approximately 15 frames were exposed properly, the remaining pictures were either plain transparent or showed a blurred scene due to overexposure.
Magically, though, the ghost that had possessed the camera seems to have been aware of the scenes I was shooting — I can’t explain otherwise why exactly these two pictures turned out so nicely, whereas most other “keepers” are of mostly irrelevant content.
 Contax T + Kodak Ektachrome E100G  Contax T + Kodak Ektachrome E100G I like the first one especially, because the light was simply magical, and the wide open aperture of f/2.8 caused a very pleasing blurring of the background. In the second one, I like the light-hearted and natural expression of both my wife and son.
Two family moments to remember, captured in two pictures that had a less-than-50% chance of coming into being. As if the camera had known what it was doing.
Finished scanning and processing two more rolls of film — one roll of Portra 800, and one roll of Elite Chrome Extra Color (“EBX”), both shot with the little Contax T.
I originally loaded the Portra 800 to take some low light pictures during theatre rehearsals, but ended up finishing the roll in daylight, which worked pretty well except for having to stop down to f/16 most of the time. I find Portra 800 has very pleasing colours and very nice (read: unobtrusive) grain for such a fast film. Click the image below to see my stuff tagged “kodak portra 800″ on flickr.
 Contax T + Kodak Portra 800 Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Colour, which is available for 4 € per roll at German “Müller” drugstores, is absolutely lovely in sunlight, but almost unusable in all other conditions. It has very vivid and saturated colours, very low grain and is rather sharp (as far as I can tell from my scans), with very warm colour rendition in sunlight. However, once you get into the shade, the pictures tend to get a strong blue tint, in the worst case makeing then unusable. I gave my best at salvaging those pictures, here is an example that had a very strong blue tint originally:
 Contax T + Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Color It has still got a slight blue tint to it, but it’s far better than the original scan. However, I couldn’t get the colour any better in Lightroom.
On the other hand, when the light is right, you get results like this:
 Contax T + Kodak Elite Chrome Extra Color Click the image above to see my stuff tagged “kodak elite chrome extra color” on flickr.
While I really like the results I get from EBX in sunlight, I don’t find it’s a good allround film. I might use it again if I know I’m going to shoot in warm lighting conditions only, because then it has very nice colour rendering. But for an allround film, I prefer EB3 (the standard Elite Chrome) by far.
Next up: Kodak BW400CN (second try), Fujicolor Pro 400H, Kodak Elite Color 400UC and Fujichrome Velvia 100.
Velvia 100F, short RVPF, is a Fujichrome slide film emulsion with very warm and saturated colours, ideally suited for landscape photography during the golden hour. It has a very strong red tint that limits its use to suitable scenes.
I have recently shot a roll of this film with my Contax T. Click the image below to see all my stuff on flickr tagged “fujichrome velvia 100f”.
 Sunset over Cappel, Marburg, Germany | Contax T + Fujichrome Velvia 100F
A couple weeks ago I tried Fujichrome Sensia 100 in my Yashica Electro 35 GT, after I found its tonality rather pleasing in the Color Efex emulation. Well, it turned out I didn’t like it so much in reality. But this might also have been due to the fact that the Yashica’s lens isn’t colour corrected, and I was using the Epson V330 scanner which isn’t up to the task of scanning slide film.
Anyway, here’s my flickr stuff tagged “fujichrome sensia 100″, in case you’re interested. It’s only a couple of frames, though.
 My favourite shot from the roll, even though it shows a light leak.
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Today’s gear Camera: Pentax ME
Lens: Revuenon 50/1.4
Film: Kodak VR Plus 200
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December 12th, 2011, 5:55 pm | 
