Shooters.

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

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

Life isn’t easy these days for enthusiastic photographers. Especially when you’re looking for the gear that perfectly fits you and your needs or wishes and try and keep the compromises as small as possible.
My name is Wolfgang Spekner and I’m a “the perfect gear addict”.

In analog times, the camera I did everything with and held dear for a decade (I still like it today), was the Nikon F90x (N90s). I started to do real photography, when I was 7, with an old Praktica and a 50mm f1.8 lens. Later, when AF-times dawned, I got myself a cheap Yashica AF200 with 35-70/3.5-4.5 and the 70-210/4.5 (I think). After using this camera for about ten years or so, the shutter broke and I bought my first Nikon, an F50. A couple of months later I upgraded to the older F-601 (N6006). Again a couple of months later I added a F90x. That was in 1996. I have used these two cameras until 2004 for almost everything I shot (I had also some compact cameras like the Yashica T5, Leica’s Minin III and two Olympus Mju coming and going.) My F-601 was gone in 2004, but I kept the F90x and still have it and maybe will never sell it, for it was my affordable dream camera at the time.

All that changed in 2004. (Read on after the break.) weiter lesen

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

Since so many of you asked, here’s a more comprehensive realworld test of the Leica Elmarit-M 24/2.8 Asph. on the Sony Nex.

The lens looks and handles great on the Nex. Of course you have to focus it manually. Being a wonderful street shooting focal length, it’s not very fast to focus. You definitely need the LCD magnifying function to focus it accurately and I never got really fast doing that (maybe it’s my eyes…). Maybe that’s why there are so many still samples among my test pics. At f2.8 you have quite a shallow depth of field (which of course is the goal), but I missed the eyes of people quite often and got there breast hairs sharp instead… weiter lesen

When I first published my comparison of the Sony Nex-3, The Olympus E-PL1 and the Leica X1 I stated, that the Leica is my personal favorite (you can read the full comparison here). This verdict comes actually out of personal taste and not out of scientific findings. I just liked the handling of the camera.

Now, 2 months later, I got the chance to give the X1 another try. (Read on after the break.) weiter lesen

Since so many of you asked, here’s a quick review of the quite affordable Voigtlaender Super Wide Heliar 15/4.5 on the Sony Nex. On the used market you get this lens for about 250 Euros. The newer P-Type lens, where you can even use filters on it, can be had for about 480 Euros new. I use a Kipon adapter to get M-mount lenses on the Nex, so the lens performance may vary among different adapters.

On the Sony the Voigtlaender becomes a 22,5mm lens. So you get a nice wideangle for landscapes or things.
I’ve been very impressed with this little lens on the Leica M8. It was brilliant, sharp and pretty much free of distortion. You got some dark corners, but that was easily fixed in post processing.
To give you an impression of the very nice performance on the M8, here are a couple of shots from a trip to Trieste in Italy last year (continue after the break!).

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Just a quick look at this very nice lens, mounted on the Sony Nex with a Kipon adapter. It handles great on the Nex, though the smaller Summarit-M 35/2.5 is handier, but then it’s not a 24mm. Eventually I really hope for a nice, small and fast 24mm from Sony or even Zeiss for the E-mount.

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