Akhil does these pretty regularly; because of weird blog time dilation, this one is getting posted a month after the last one, but the parties themselves were more like 6 months apart. This one was a little more low-key; I knew maybe half the people, and we rode bikes to get there because it’s mad close. Close enough that when I realized I’d forgotten my cigar at home, I went back to get it. I showed three pictures; one from amsterdam (I know, I’ll start blogging those next) and two from running around shooting with the z8. I just really liked that camera.
I used the Z8 with a leica M mount adapter to shoot all of these; it did really well in pretty tricky lighting. Nothing is perfect (and no digital camera will ever have the highlight detail of color negative film, unfortunately), but this is great. The manual focus lenses also performed pretty well; I was worried the screen wouldn’t have the resolution to really nail focus, but all of this was wide open, and all of these are what I would call ‘acceptable’.
Which brings me to the big reveal, and why I’m publishing these now instead of something else: I don’t think I’m gonna be a Leica guy any more. On the internet, we joke about types of guys, there’s a wife guy, there’s the flashlight guy, and in photography circles, there’s the ‘leica man’. He drinks the finest coffees, he has only the best glass. Does he take photographs? Probably not! Can you tell I’ve never really liked that association? Love the cameras, hate the baggage that comes with them. Well. Sometimes love the cameras.
The M11, I was cautiously optimistic at first, but the slow to turn on thing just reminds me every time I pick it up that it’s not really up to snuff. I’m a quick draw artist, gotta get the picture now. if it’s on and ready it’s pretty capable, but I think I need some time away from it, because it’s not ready too much of the time. Hopefully Leica will address the boot time with a firmware update and I can come back to it, or maybe they’ll have a -p model that doesn’t have the silly always-open shutter. Maybe both! Who knows.
Anyway, good party. There were a couple musical acts, a couple short films. Very chill. I think there was a reading of some description that I didn’t get because I was outside smoking. My fault, sounded like a good story from where I was.
And then, I rode home.
