Shooters.

I wish you all a wonderful New Year. I’d like to leave you with a sweep panorama out of the Sony Nex-3 of the last sunset 2010, just a couple of hours ago (click to enlarge). See you in 2011. Thanks for reading!

Wolfgang

Had some real fun with the Panasonic GH2 and the excellent Panasonic 20/1.7 today – unfortunately only for 5 minutes or so, since a friend of mine handed it to me. It feels great in your hand, the EVF is quite good, even if I’m no EVF-fan. It’s quick, AF is awesome, noise seems quite well controlled for a micro 4/3 camera (at least at ISO 400). I hope to get a chance to use it more extensively after Christmas. Here are four shots to give you an impression. All from RAW, processed in Lightroom 3 (click to enlarge).

Another year goes by. There was hardly a day, when I didn’t take at least one picture. Looking through all the images I realise, it’s been quite a European year. Didn’t cross an ocean in the last 365 days physically and didn’t miss it.
Looking through the images I also realise, how many cameras I’ve been using this year. Some were cool (actually most of them were), some I couldn’t really relate to or get warm with and with some I fell in love as far as love for cameras can go.

I haven’t been writing a lot recently as you know. The reason is, after all that testing and reviewing I needed to take care of my photography instead of cameras and lenses. I found myself doing test-images and forgetting about the primary goal of this blog: the everyday, reallife-use of photographic equipment. I’ve been actually testing quite a few cameras and lenses in the meantime, but with an emphasis rather on their fun-factor than on their high ISO-performance or technical image quality. I’ll give you my impressions of such things as the Canon EOS 60D or the Sony SLT A55 in the next days.

For now I’d like to give you a short summary of which cameras caught my heart or mind and which ones didn’t. (Read on after the break!) weiter lesen

Some things are still best be made with a DSLR. In order to add IQ to the great mirrorless cameras on the market all using APS-C sensors or smaller (except the M9, which isn’t affordable for me), I decided to go for the Canon 5D Mark II. And after a couple of meaningless pictures I’m already a lucky man. The amount of detail has almost got forgotten after using so many APS-C cameras lately. I figured, if I take the burden to carry a DSLR, which always is big compared to the mirrorless offerings, it’s best to go for the best affordable quality. I’ve used the D3s of a friend, had a D700 of my own for quite a while and they all are stunning cameras. But during my choice making I remembered the Detail of the 5DII during a backstage shooting for FireGirls ( www.clubfiregirls.com ) in Arizona last year and I went for that camera again. I think it will be a long-time companion now.

Don’t flame me for that, I couldn’t resist! Today I had a business meeting in Southern Austria and I was driving through the village of Frantschach. I remember crossing that village quite often, when my parents and I drove to Italy before the highway was built. Frantschach is famous for one thing only: its paper factory. I remember the uttermost stink of the smoke. You could already smell it miles away and even as a child I thought, how can we do such a crime to that beautiful landscape, not to speak of the whole planet. When I thought about Frantschach, I thought about smoke and vice versa. Today the smoke is still Frantschach’s number one landmark as you can see from the picture I shot out of my car today.

It doesn’t stink anymore and I guess with the rigid environment protection laws in Austria the smoke isn’t a lot more than just clean steam nowadays. But what has all this to do with Leica?

The paper factory was once owned by the family of Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, president of Leica. He bought Leica in 2004 and basically saved it from bankruptcy presumably with the money, his family had earned with the paper factory. Mr. Kaufmann himself – as reported in the media – has been a Waldorf teacher and a left-wing supporter before he bought the German camera manufacturer. I take a bow to the achievement of saving Leica and I love Leica cameras. But sometimes it’s good to be reminded where good things like a Leica M9 come from – in this case from producing a lot of smoke. In every bad thing lies something good. Maybe the people and former workers from Frantschach can now put their minds at ease: their bearing of stink and bad air has saved Leica and has produced utterly great cameras. Thank you people from Frantschach and thank you Mr. Kaufmann for saving Leica!

The Leica has always been the dream camera for many. Even if the German manufacturer started out slowly into the digital photography era and went through hard financial times, it stands on both feet again and delivers high quality digital cameras that make some of us invest their private pension funds. I’m far away from being able to invest so much money into a camera, but am lucky enough to get them to shoot with from time to time.

This weekend has been a real bliss to me, since I had a Leica X1, a M8 and a M9 to use and enjoy. I’ll let you know a couple of my findings in the next days.

Today I’d like to start with a crazy quick comparison of the image quality of the M9 and the X1. They aren’t really comparable in other aspects. The X1 has a fixed lens, autofocus and is rather a large-sensor compact camera and not a rangefinder like the M8 or the M9. The X1 costs about 1.600,– Euros, while the M9 sells for about 5.500,– Euros. But – as the M9 – the X1 delivers digital images. So how good are they compared to the M9? (Read on after the break!) weiter lesen

I’ve been a big fan of the Nikon D40 and D40x at their time. They had great image quality in 2007, were small and handy and it has always been a joy to use them. Their successors, the D60 and the D3000 never really caught my interest, since they didn’t improve very much over the older models.

Three years went by until Nikon introduced their new D3100 recently with an all new 14MP sensor, with full HD video and a couple of other improvements. You know by now, that I really grew out of big DSLR cameras, so the D3100 came in handy for a short review.

Before I got a review sample, I was handling the camera a couple of times at my camera store, but wasn’t too eager to try it. I have still a D3s laying around and the viewfinder of the D3100 was just too small to awake my lust to take a photo. Eventually I decided I’ll still give it a try. Here are my findings (read on after the break). weiter lesen

I personally know a lot of Nikon full-frame photographers, who were hoping for a high performance wide-to-short telezoom for their FX camera. Eventually Nikon has introduced the AF-S VR 24-120/4G ED.

I had the chance to try the lens on a Nikon D3s, which by itself is an awesome camera, if you don’t mind the weight and its size.

The 24-120/4 isn’t exactly a small lens, but on a D3s or a D700 (both rather big and heavy cameras) it handles very well. It’s smaller and lighter than the 24-70/2.8 and I bet many will prefer the 24-120 over the 24-70 because of its weight, size and flexibility. I have produced tons of image samples during my 5 days with the lens and I can tell you, I would definitely miss it, if I owned a D3s or a D700. weiter lesen

Being a 11x zoom lens I didn’t expect a lot, when I first put it on the Nex, but to say the least: I’m quite impressed of the image quality of this lens.

On a Nex this lens is big, of course. Its build quality seems very good, though zooming is not really smooth and easy. It takes some strength to handle the zoom ring. (Maybe I’m just a weak nansy-pansy )

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I’ve always been impressed by the great performance of the Micro Four Thirds cameras. When I first used a Leica Summilux-M 35/1.4 Asph. with an Olympus E-P1 I was stunned, how sharp and brilliant the pictures were.

In a couple of days I’d like to show you, what the Leica Elmarit-M 24/2.8 Asph. can do on the E-P1.

But for now, here’s a comparison of the Sony Nex with the Leica 24/2.8 vs. the Olympus E-P1 with it’s 17/2.8 pancake lens. weiter lesen