Shooters.

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

When it comes to a compact combo, this is the way to go. The small leica lens feels great on the Nex, it feels much better than any other lens I’ve tried on that camera.

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Next up for a review are two cameras and one amazing little (and quite affordable) lens – at least for Leica price standards:

The Panasonic GF1 and the Sony Nex-3, both with the Leica Summarit-M 35/2.5 lens. The lens is part of Leica’s “low-cost”- or “nice-price”-line of lenses and can be found for EUR 1.350,– new and for EUR 1.150,– used.

I already did a few shots with it on Panasonic’s GF1 recently and was quite impressed of its sharpness and brilliance. So I decided to give it a real try, not only on the GF1, but also on Sony’s Nex-3. I will use the whole week to test the two small combinations quite extensively and let you know my findings immediately afterwards.
From what I saw on the first pics in a 3 meter radius around my desk, this little Leica lens seems very competent with the Sony Nex (click to enlarge).

^Sony Nex-3 with Leica Summarit 35/2.5 (via Kipon adapter)

^Sony Nex-3 with Leica Summarit 35/2.5 (via Kipon adapter)

^Sony Nex-3 with Leica Summarit 35/2.5 (via Kipon adapter)

Since I got my Kipon Sony E-Mount to Nikon lens adapter I was eager to try out different lenses on the Sony. I did so recently with some Nikon lenses and basically felt pretty much disappointed (see for yourself here).
For a couple of days now Lightroom 3 is supporting the RAW files from the Nex and so I thought I’d give it another try.

This time I wanted to know how these lenses are performing on the Nex – Kipon combination at different aperture settings and how they compare to the Sony kit-lens, the 18-55/3.5-5.6 OSS:

• Nikon AF-D 35/2
• Zeiss Distagon T* ZF 35/2
• Sigma 50/2.8 Macro
• Nikon AF 85/1.8

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