No sports zone

As everyone who has ever touched a rangefinder camera has heard from several sources, you cannot shoot sports with a rangefinder. A big DSLR with a long tele or a zoom lens is indeed the usual weapon of choice in sports photography even for rangefinder users like myself. For sports, you often want to use long lenses as it is otherwise difficult or even impossible to get close enough to the action, and you want to have quick autofocus and a high frame rate to track your subjects and not miss the action.

With all that in mind I went and shot some sports equipped with a Leica M8 and a Voigtländer 50/1.1 Nokton lens. And I made things worse by using the lens mostly wide open. Number of shots missed due to shortish focal length? Probably about a zillion, give or take two. My approach however is not thinking in terms of what cannot be done; always think what can be done and have some fun instead. (And I had a DSLR with a tele lens with me, too, which really makes this a moot point to begin with.) Number of shots missed due to manual focusing at f/1.1? Basically zero. One was clearly off but useable, and a few others missed the critical focus by a small margin. The AF on my Canon failed much more than that.

Let's see some pictures then

The event is the Disc Golf European Open 2011, held in Nokia, Finland. This is the first round of the tournament, with scenes from three holes featuring Nikko Locastro and Jeremy Koling of U.S., Ilari Tuoma of Finland, and Mats Strömgren of Sweden. Locastro entered the tournament as number one in the world; see the PDGA World Ranking System here.

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/1000, f/1.1, ISO 160

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/180, ISO 160

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/360, ISO 320

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/180, f/1.1, ISO 160

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/360, f/1.1, ISO 160

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/500, f/1.1, ISO 160

European Open 2011 - Leica M8, 1/3000, f/1.1, ISO 160

Back to camera talk

High frame rate is close to mandatory — while good timing really is mandatory — in sports photography. With a measly 2-fps rate the M8 sure is lacking in the frame-rate department. This is not necessarily a problem in all sports, but for disc golf the rate is clearly too low. The throwing action is quick, and two consecutive frames at 2 fps fail to catch the visually most interesting moments around the release of the disc. Sure, with good timing you can capture one of these moments, but you miss two or three equally interesting frames. In terms of focal length, you probably want to be at least around a 100-mm equivalent to shoot the action, preferably between 150 and 500 mm. A big lens on a big camera makes certain things much easier.

The moral of the story however is that you can shoot sports with pretty much any camera, you only need to adapt your style to the equipment and the environment. With a relatively short lens, you either need to get closer or you end up with pictures of tiny people in distance (see above for a couple of examples). Just think what you want to achieve. Turns out I liked many of the Leica shots for their mood much better than the closer and more action-oriented DSLR images from this outing. Perhaps I need to post a few of those for comparison.

CV 75/2.5 at the Bangkok Grand Palace

As you have perhaps seen in my latest post I have planned on using the Cosina Voigtländer 75/2.5 Color-Heliar telephoto lens on the Leica M8. The goal was to have fun with this lens and especially test its usefulness for travel photography. The playground for this little experiment is Thailand, and below you can find a small set of photographs at the Bangkok Grand Palace.

A short telephoto lens is often seen as a portrait lens. Certainly, the CV 75/2.5 fits the part. For someone looking specifically for a portrait lens, there is a another good Voigtländer alternative: the new 75/1.8 Heliar. While the CV 75/2.5 is sharp across the aperture range, the CV 75/1.8 is said to give a softer look wide open. A razor-sharp portrait is seldom appreciated. You don't want your portraits to look like this:

2011 - Leica M8, 1/500, ISO 160

CV 75/2.5 as a travel lens

Few of us enjoy a large and heavy kit for travel. The CV 75/2.5 is only 64.5 mm long and weighs merely 230 g. The newer CV 75/1.8 is hardly that much bigger at 73.8 mm although at 427 g it weighs almost twice as much as the tiny 75/2.5. For travel any reduction in bulk or weight is however warmly welcomed.

In addition to portraits, a telephoto lens is useful for excluding unwanted distractions from your photographs, photographing details, and compressing landscapes and distant views. Below you can find examples of all three. It would have been difficult to avoid the crowds of tourist in the first photograph with a wider lens. Much the same is achieved with a telephoto lens in the third photo. More importantly, the scale of the buildings is better perceived due to the compression effect. I have included 100% crops of both close and more distant details to give some idea of the lens sharpness (see the links). I can say this is one sharp lens even wide open.

2011 - Leica M8, 1/1000, ISO 160

2011 - Leica M8, 1/750, ISO 160

2011 - Leica M8, 1/1000, ISO 160

Perhaps the only minor gripe I have about this lens is its close focus distance, which is unfortunately limited to 1 m. A 0.7-m limit would make it much more useful, especially for travel when you wish to get by with as little gear as possible. The CV 75/1.8 focuses down to 0.9 m, so it is only slightly better in this respect.

2011 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

Voigtländer 75/2.5

The next couple of weeks, I will be mostly using the Voigtländer 75/2.5 Color-Heliar and a couple of other lenses with the Leica M8 and Voigtländer Bessa R2A. The Voigtländer 75/2.5 is the new lens on the block for me and the first 75-mm lens I will be using on a rangefinder camera. Based on its reputation, I don't think I will be disappointed. So, I hope to share some photographs taken — and some user experiences — with this tiny tele in March.

Photographic déjà vu

Already seen, already photographed. I sometimes hear the argument that everything has been photographed. Why would you then take a picture of the same scene, building, flower, bug - or even person - which has already been photographed a million times before? To see how it looks when you click the shutter yourself I guess.

Sometimes you know that not only has a similar photograph been taken before by many others, but you have taken it yourself at least once. This is often the case with scenes close to home or your favourite destination, even more so with pets and portraits of family members. Sometimes it's however something mundane far away from home, like this scene in Rethymnon, Crete, which I photographed twice. I have to admit the second image was simply a snap that I quickly took, when witnessing a moment of photographic déjà vu.

Rethymnon, Crete, 2008 - Canon EOS-30D, 1/500, f/7.1, ISO 100

Rethymnon, Crete, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

The lens on the Canon 30D was the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM. On M8, I believe it was the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC. Note the difference in quality of light. Neither is excellent, but the difference is huge. The photo from 2008 was taken in late morning light, the photo from 2010 in the middle of the day beneath the hot Mediterranean sun.

Cats through lenses

In my latest post, there are five cat photos from Amorgos and one from Crete where I could not previously identify the lens used. I went back to them, studied them, and now have some conclusions. The photograph of a cat lying on a concrete wall was taken with the Leica Summicron-M 50/2. The same lens was used for the cat fight photo (on Superia 200) and for the cat sitting on ground. The photographs of the cat with the man fishing and the cat on the roof of a car were made using the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC. I believe this is the case also for the photo of the cat walking behind a fence, but I may be mistaken there.

Anyway, here is one final cat photograph for this year (with the Leica 50/2):

Amorgos, 2010 - 1/4, f/2, Kodak BW400CN

More cats from the islands

Nothing more than a bunch of random cat photos from the Greek islands.

Oia, Santorini, 2007 - Canon EOS-30D, 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 400

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/500, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Fujifilm Superia 200

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/360, ISO 160

And finally a more urban cat:

Iraklion, Crete, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/90, ISO 160

The photograph with the Canon was made with the Canon EF 70-200/4L lens. The rest? Your guess is almost as good as mine. I think I see at least the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC there. The film shot is a pretty heavy crop.

Super wide angles

Wide-angle lenses can be a lot of fun. Super wides are super fun. I liked the Voigtländer 15/4.5 Super Wide Heliar the moment I tried it, and it has since become one of my favourite lenses. It's tiny, sharp, and gives that extremely wide view on film — or a full-frame digital Leica. Using a wide-angle lens is however often quite challenging. They are pretty much the worst enemies of simplification, which is an important tool of good photography. If you have a single point of interest in your scene, a wide-angle lens can easily make it too small and distant. Let's look at a few photographs fresh from the scanner.

In this following photo, the temple entrance is very distant and occupies a rather small part of the resulting photograph. It is however the pseudo-symmetry of this image, the reflections on wet ground, and the leading line of the people that still make it work fairly nicely. I don't know if I like the helicopter in the sky, but I didn't want to remove it as it seems the people are looking at it.

Tokyo, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

In the next photograph, I wanted to show the size of the fortress. It gets somewhat cluttered, however the clutter is created by repetitive shapes. That's not a no-no in my books.

Iraklion, Crete, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

Wide-angle treatment can be effective for close-ups, too. You can either put some distance between your main subject and the background, or you can play the clutter card to your advantage. In this photo, I wanted to show the large pile of Hello Kitty's inside this UFO catcher.

Tokyo, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

This is a nice lens on the digitals, too. Here's a past post featuring a photo with the Leica M8.

Markets, street vendors

Markets are often great places for street photography. Or is that market photography then? Anyway, with people interacting with each other and going on about their business, the photographer is often ignored. The markets are also full of colour and interesting shapes. Sometimes too full which easily makes photographs too cluttered if you don't simplify them enough. Often you however don't have the choice if you really want the shot. It's also worth hanging around street vendors. They are basically small, simple markets, which helps remove some of the movement and clutter while providing good opportunities for interesting photographs.

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/125, ISO 160

Helsinki, 2009 - Epson R-D1, 1/2000, ISO 200

Tampere, 2009 - Epson R-D1, 1/450, ISO 400

Sometimes it's the advertising that catches your eye:

Tokyo, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/125, ISO 320

The Leica M8 photos were taken with the Voigtländer 15/4.5 Super Wide Heliar and the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC, respectively. The Epson R-D1 photos, on the other hand, were with the Leica Summicron-M 50/2 and the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC.

Going underground

Two photographs away from the sun light, two photographs of decay. One is from the Jaurés metro station, the other from the Catacombs of Paris.

2010 - Leica M8, 1/125, ISO 640

2010 - Leica M8, 1/20, ISO 1250

I used the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC lens for both of these photos. The shot from the Catacombs was taken wide open and pushed 2 stops in Apple Aperture. No noise reduction was used. I believe the metro station photo was taken at f/4, but it could be f/2.8.

Pictures from Paris

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, so let's follow up with some recent photographs. These pictures are from Paris. There is no central theme covering them all, but each three sets of two photographs have something in common: street scenes, kids reacting to their surroundings, and people sleeping. Enjoy!

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/125, ISO 160

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 320

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/180, ISO 160

Paris, 2010 - Epson R-D1, 1/450, ISO 400

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/500, ISO 160

Paris, 2010 - Epson R-D1, 1/600, ISO 200

All these pictures are pretty much uncropped except for the one of the boy chasing the pigeon, which I found best to crop to a square format. The lens I used for all the Leica M8 pictures is the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC, while both Epson images were taken with a Leica Summicron-M 50/2 lens. These focal lengths correspond to about 45 mm or 50 mm for the M8 and 75 mm for the Epson in 35-mm equivalent terms.

By the way, the Epson re-covering job mentioned in a past post is still upcoming and definitely not forgotten.

Paradise Snake Bessa

The looks of a camera is perhaps not the most relevant thing in photography, but a pretty camera is nevertheless a pretty camera and an ugly one is just ugly. If all other things stay the same, wouldn't you rather have a pretty one? Like one with real snake skin? Yeah, eh, okay... There is perhaps no great argument to support re-covering a perfectly good camera, but I did it anyway. Here's how.

You start with a camera that has some sort of leather, rubber, vinyl, vulcanite, or plastic covering. Basically something you can easily tear off. Like my Voigtländer Bessa R2A here:



Okay, stop! Before you start tearing the covering off, you had better have some sort of a plan, right? One alternative is the hard route of DIY. Many different materials are available as sheets, or you can even get more creative and use something you already have. The options are pretty much endless. This however takes some time, some skill, and some basic tools. There is also a simpler route. Some companies and individuals offer pre-cut kits for various camera models. One example is cameraleather.com. They have a good reputation and a pretty extensive catalog of materials to choose from. Kits are available for dozens of camera models, mostly classic cameras, though. That's in fact where I got this red paradise snake kit from:



So, when your kit arrives (or when you have your tools and materials ready, should you play ball in the big league), you can proceed to tear the old covering off your camera. That should be pretty easy in most cases. However, you may be left with some glue residue that is harder to remove. You don't necessarily need to remove all of it, as the new covering will stick there anyway. You should however note that any residue that you can feel as a bump on the surface may create a visible bump after you have applied the new covering. A pretty effective way of removing all the glue (at least with the Bessa) is to tap a chunk of the already-removed glue over and over on the surface. Little by little the residue is removed.

Once you have removed the old covering and glue, you can start applying the new covering. For a simple design such as the Bessa, this is pretty straightforward. There are two more difficult points worth mentioning here. The first is making sure you introduce no skewing (meaning all corners of each piece ends up in the correct place). This is easy to get wrong even if you think you have the first two corners in corrects spots, because any error gets larger the farther you apply a piece from its original point of contact. So, make sure that the tops and bottoms line up nicely. This brings us to the second point. The adhesive on the cameraleather.com kits is very aggressive. Don't just remove the carrier sheet and stick the piece on your camera thinking you can easily adjust it after you have it on the camera. That spells trouble, since the pieces really do stick to the camera (that's what they were made for!). Instead, remove the carrier sheet ever so slightly as you progress and you should be okay.



One more tip. The holes for the strap lugs can be tricky. If you have trouble getting the strap lug through the hole, simply cut the piece in the narrow part. I didn't need to do it, but the cut should be pretty much invisible as long as you line up the piece well.

Finally, we are all done. Let me introduce you to my new, old Bessa:



The camera certainly looks different — much nicer in my opinion. Not only has the look of the camera changed, though. The overall feel and handling of the camera has changed a bit as well, because the new covering is quite thin and lacks the molded shapes of the original rubber covering. The camera just feels a bit different, not necessarily any better or worse. In addition, a small thumb rest was removed from the back of the camera. This can be a real issue to some users, and I spent some time thinking about it. Should I remove the thumb rest and risk losing some of the ergonomics or rather keep it? In the end, I decided to try the camera without the original back cover (which I believe could easily be glued back if desired) and felt comfortable with the camera that way. So, I proceeded to apply the snake skin cover on the back as well. Note that the snake skin is mostly for looks and durability. It feels good, but it doesn't provide the greatest grip. If you are looking for the best grip, you need to consider some other material.

My next re-covering project is the Epson R-D1. Check that out later!

My latest camera — my greatest camera?

I'm about to discuss something completely different, but let me first make a short post about my latest camera purchase. It's the Leica M8, which was officially announced already in 2006. That's a long time ago in the digital camera domain, but there is only so much competition in the digital rangefinder arena that all the Leica offerings continue to be of current interest. And it's a very good camera to boot, perhaps even the best I own and have used. I believe I will be discussing using this camera much more in the future, so if you share an interest in rangefinder cameras you may want to wait and see what my future blog posts have to say about it. For now, here it is pictured with a Voigtländer Color-Skopar 21/4 lens and a Voigtländer accessory viewfinder. The Leica M8 has a crop factor of 1.33, which makes this 28-mm viewfinder ideal for the 21-mm lens. By the way, you should notice a purple colour cast on the front element of the lens. That is due to an infrared cut-off filter that is needed on the Leica M8 to produce accurate colours. This camera certainly has some little quirks.