m8 « efix:photography – News. Thoughts. Pictures.

PAD-Project: Week #3, Picture #6

Finally a subject that practically begs to be shot with a wide-angle

Even though the last world football championships are long over now, this lory is still decorated with the official supporters’ slogan of the French national team: “Go, blue ones!”

PAD #20 | "Allez Les Bleus" | Leica M8 + SWH 15/4.5 @ f/5.6, 1/1000 sec, ISO 160

PAD-Project: Week #3, Picture #5

Another day, another try. Still struggling with “seeing” in wide angle.

These apartments were built recently in close vicinity to the humanities departments of the university of Marburg. They’re directly adjacent to the main route between the humanities and the cafeteria, which is at the same time the direct route to the city center. This means everybody can look into your bedroom if you live there, especially on the ground floor …

PAD #19 | "Colourful balconies" | Leica M8 + Heliar 15/4.5 @ f/8, 1/45 sec, ISO 160

Even though the lens is coded as WATE, there is some residula cyan drift left in the corners. I suspect I forgot to set it to 16mm when I switched th M8 on, so it selected 18mm as default, which doesn’t completely reduce the colour drift.

PAD-Project: Week #3, Picture #4

Week #3 of my PAD project continues to be challenging. I decided to use my 15/4.5 Heliar the whole week, hoping to learn more about how to use the lens. But a mix of bad weather and lack of suitable subjects spoiled the experience a bit. Well, I will finish this week with the Heliar, but I’ve got a feeling it really isn’t a walkaround lens — at least not for me. It’s great to have it in my bag for those situations when I do see a scene it is suited to, but for general photography, I prefer narrower angles that see what eye see.

Now for today’s PAD: this was the only scene I came by today that looked like it could be photographed with a super wide angle. I didn’t care for it much in colour, so I converted it to b&w and added some vignetting and grain to make it look like a film shot. What do you think?

PAD #18 | "Breakfast from 7 a.m." | Leica M8 + Heliar 15/4.5 @ f/5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO 160

PAD-Project: Week #3, Picture #3

The SWH 15/4.5 continues to challenge me. I hadn’t much opportunity to take pictures today, for one because my battery died after three frames, but also because the weather turned bad during the second half of the day.

On my way to work, I regularly come by this construction site, which has been featured in earlier PAD posts. Today, I was curious how the scene would look like through a wide angle lens. Well, here is the result.

PAD #17 | "Stone, Bricks and Mortar" | Leica M8 + SWH 15/4.5 @ f/5.6, 1/1000 sec, ISO 160

I also added some fancy processing, to make the picture look a bit more interesting overall. But on a second glance, I don’t think it turned out too bad …

Zeiss Planar 50/2 ZM first impressions

It’s not so long ago that I posted my first impression with the Zeiss Biogon 28/2.8 ZM on the Leica M8, and I’m already writing about a new lens again! How can that be?

Well, a couple of weeks ago I remember how I loved the rendering of my Zeiss 35/2 Biogon ZM that I had last year, but which I sold because the focal length vs. speed vs. size ratio just wasn’t my cup of tea. So I switched to Voigtländer glass, which I used until very recently, when I sold almost all my lenses. Yup, I sold my 28/2.8 M-Rokkor, my 28/1.9 Ultron, my 50/1.5 Nokton and my rarely used Micro Four Thirds lenses, the 14-42mm kit zoom and the 45-200mm tele zoom. And then I got two lovely, modern Zeiss lenses, which exhibit that fabulous “Zeiss look” with strong contrast, bold colours and superb subject separation.

Today, I received my 50/2 Planar (in silver, like the Biogon, to match my chrome M8), which I had purchased from Leica Shop in Vienna, Austria, a dealer I can very much recommend as their service and products are excellent.

The Planar is a classic design that dates back several decades, but is still able to provide outstanding results. Like all lenses in the ZM line, it does not feature aspherical glass elements. Instead, Zeiss have focused on improving spherical design to the point where it delivers the best possible image quality. The Biogon line of lenses is especially renowned for their excellence, being very complicated and highly corrected designs which are tack sharp wide open and virtually free of distortion. While the Planar design isn’t quite as sophisticated, the Planar 50/2 ZM doesn’t need to hide behind its ZM siblings. While showing some slight softness and spherical aberrations wide open, it is already very good. Not quite as “clinical” as the 50/1.5 Nokton (which is an aspherical lens), but much more characterful, which I like very much.

So, for your enjoyment and as a practical demonstration of the Planar’s abilities, here’s a selection of pictures I took today. Mind that these were all shot without a UV/IR filter.