At last...an affordable digital Leica for using my M & R lenses.
I am now in early retirement and my spending ability is more limited, so I was extremely fortunate in that I was able to recently buy a used Leica T camera for about two-thirds less than the price of a new one. It has a condition rating of 9+ which is due only to two very minor fingernail scuff marks on the top of the body. It is definitely evolutionary but still delightfully Leica in styling and quality! Secure to hold due to its rangefinder-like weight, it feels like my M6 TTL is in my hands while using it and there is no change in obtaining outstanding clear, sharp images. It feels like I’ve already been using it for years. And there truly are no steep learning experiences to go through. I have waited a long, long time for a digital camera adapter for my Leica R lenses and before my T arrived I searched at Amazon’s site for that and —surprise!—found one strictly for the T. It is a perfectly solid, well-made Novoflex adapter that works exceptionally well. I can’t wait to use my R lenses above 135mm with it!
I have always used the aperture priority mode setting on my R8 and M6 TTL since I bought them long ago. The endorphins in my brain do not get excited with fast auto races, busy sports activity, and other moving objects, so I never use the shutter priority setting on those cameras. Since the T requires using aperture priority with M lenses, I am happy with that. Though the new Visoflex creates a new, unique way of focusing, I am again going to use the method I have preferred to use on both of the aforementioned cameras: depth of field scale focusing or hyperfocal distance setting. Two Viewfinder issues that were sent to members in 2014 that had very informative details about the T did not mention this, so for new, young Leica Society members and other young people who read this issue, I recommend searching the Internet for ‘hyperfocal distance setting of Leica lenses’. This is much easier and faster to use than the Visoflex focuser and the rear screen on the T body.
The first four images I obtained with the T are shown here. Descriptions follow next about the lenses used and some details.
Glorious shooting, all T owners! •
Pool
Accomplished with my 35mm ASPH Summicron-M lens, this displays a portion of our pool area. It was installed in 1958 but due to almost complete permanent clogging of all the galvanized pipes, massive aging of the plaster, cracks in many tiles, and out-dated coping, we got fed up. Ten years ago we had our long-term contractor remove all of these things and replace them. The cobalt blue tile is from Italy. We potted the two golden barrel cacti in 1978 when they were 3 inches wide; today they are 3 feet wide. The wax leaf hedges in the background are one of the ultimate privacy makers even though there are no two-story houses anywhere near our one-story house. We also chose them because we’d seen them and developed a passion for them at pool parties we attended at a house next door to Bob Hope’s house in Toluca Lake in 1976, two years before our now-40-year successful relationship began and two years before we bought the house. These are 25 feet tall, easy to trim annually, and do not need a lot of watering like rose plants do. I showed five people a print I made of this from my new HP Envy color printer and asked them how many representations of plants they saw. None of them saw the palm tree shadow on the bottom of the pool and only mentioned the two Golden Barrel cacti and the hedges, so they saw only two representations out of three. I nearly had to pry their cell phones from their hands in order to get them to evaluate and concentrate on this. Their vision and thinking processes were stuck in the left-brain analytical side from staring at their phones incessantly and I was certain they knew nothing about that concept.
Building Being Renovated
Using the right brain (creative side) technique1, I captured this in 15 seconds with my 50mm Summilux-M lens at 7 a.m. Rain was reappearing that morning yet at that time there was an area of glaring, excessively bright sunlight impacting the building at the right upper corner in the viewfinder. That area shows only immensely pleasing knife-sharp detail identical to perfect human eye vision that is so typical of Leica’s lenses. As soon as I pressed the T’s shutter release, my right brain gave me a title for this image: Major Surgery.
1 Betty Edwards—Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, 1979. (The techniques she teaches in this book are totally applicable to photography, too, inasmuch as the class sessions deeply benefited me with mastering composition. Motion picture directors*, professional photographers, architects, and other smart creative people learned this slowly through osmosis. Betty’s classes permit us to acquire composition expertise (and more and easier success when searching for great subject material, especially when it is in front of our faces and we miss it because we see the whole thing rather than parts of it). Although she is dead her son continues to create the classes, so do a Web search for them, enroll in one of them, and speedily benefit from the hands-on approach. This is much more effective than learning and practicing the same techniques from her book as the only source. *The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age by George Stevens, Jr.—2006.)
Bear
This was shot with my 90mm APO/ASPH Summicron-M lens soon after my right brain concocted the preparation of this whimsical scene and associated dialogue. Look at the fantastic quality the ASPH and APO elements create. The sharp clarity is mind-blowing, as is the 3-D look. I dare to say that this is the most astounding 90mm lens ever designed, assembled, and sold in the history of lens production by any camera manufacturer. It is absolutely astonishing!
Mom Bear: “Beary, dinner is almost ready. You are supposed to be studying that Leica book in preparation for your shoot with your dad tomorrow morning. Why aren’t you doing that??
Beary: I am reading it and I’m gonna finish it by bedtime
Mom Bear: You aren’t studying that, you’re reading something else. I can see its title above the Leica book and it definitely has nothing do with photography
Beary: It’s from a tear-out section in the book’s appendix where I have been reading about a fellow named Goldi----, uh, uh Oscar Bearnak. Maybe he’s one of our distant relatives, mom.
Mom Bear: That, dear boy, is barely plausible.
Crocheted Blanket This 50mm Summilux-M lens image reveals a small part of a 52 x 62 inches bulky yarn blanket I crocheted for couches and chairs in 6 hours with Lion Brands’ exquisite Wool-Ease Quick & Thick yarn. I have been knitting and crocheting for almost 8 years and it is a wonderful supplement to photography in that both creative hobbies are meditative, calming, positive, and ever-lasting influences in my daily life. This is the third blanket I have crocheted with this soft yarn and it has been so wonderful during our recent unusually cold winter months to come home after shooting images with my T, wrap one of these superb blankets around my legs and feet on our den couch, preview the latest images my Leica lenses have transferred to the smart card on the T, and work on yet another blanket which, this time, I will be giving to someone outside of our house who is a special friend.