Leica X1 a new journey

[tom_ripley]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Hello Forum,

 

My name is Jorge aka Tom Ripley a little pseudonym from one of my favorite movies the Talented Mr. Ripley. I wanted to share a blog post in its entirety I wrote on my blog (Ledesma Photography) recently.

 

------------------

 

 

 

Leica X1 a new journey

 

Followers of this space know I’ve been on an extended hiatus for quite a while – a year plus but I’ve been pondering the megapixel marathon all that time playing with my Lightroom library (40K) and processing a few hundred images from the multitude of cameras (31 total) I’ve owned over the last 7 years. My personal conclusion, megapixels are just not that important to create the imagery I want and what’s more important are the haptics and ergonomics of the actual camera body and control themselves that really give me the edge.

 

 

 

 

Actually, when I shot with the D610 and its glorious 24 megapixels, yes I had an insane ISO capatilies and tons of resolution to crop but I quickly found out that I don’t really crop all that much (2-3%), I rarely print (something I’m definitely going to start doing but that’s another post), and I’m really ok with the ISO capabilites of most of the cams I’ve shot with. “C’mon Jorge are you serious” absolutely, when I scan my favorite images they usually are from smaller compacts and smaller apsc cameras. I won’t lie to you all and tell you I didn’t love the D700 (and other full frames I’ve had), I did but that kind of photography worked out great for me in more control scenarios and when being inconspicous wasn’t all that important, you know the type, family shoots, portraits, etc but for my main style which is more along the lines of pure documentary photography and street photography, or what I like to call “quotidian photography”.

 

 

 

Along the path I became well versed varous aspects of photography flash on and off camera, diffusers, soft boxes, etc etc but those are more application type of photography, they were not passion and that’s another reason why I became stagnant, I veered of the path and dove down into other styles and my passion slowly got put to a side. Regrets, I have none, I consider this a learning path in a long road, sort of like an apprentiship where you have to learn all aspects of photography before actually picking the one you love the most. Relatedly, wedding photography is actually quite interesting because it combines both my passions with various aspects of more technical photography including strobes et al, so I quite enjoyed the few weddings I shot.

 

 

Anyway, fast forward to September 2016 (all 31 cameras sold except the GRD4) and I decided to finally give attention to the camera that’s been whispering in my ear for the last 5 years – the Leica X1, a digital homage to the famous Leica A to Leica IIIf famously nicknamed “The Barnack”. It has an apsc sensor, no anti alias filter (or practically reduced to athin layer), 12 beautiful megapixels, and a lens to die for – the Leica Elmarit, oh its from 2009, so its considered a tyrannosaurus rex, an instinct breed which is no longer relevant in today current photography standard of insane ISO, 24 megapixels, and super sonic ballistic speed autofocus.

 

 

 

So there you have it the unadulterated truth of my photography and the start of a new journey and a new artistic path which removes all the nonsense from my camera addicted personality of the past. Well, I actually think I’m quite lucky because these realization took only 7 years. See you next time.

With the Leica X1, I have all that I need and everything I don’t to create the type of photography that sparkles my creativity and passion.

 

 

All images captured with the Leica X1 and processed in Capture One Pro 9

 

Some BW conversion from RAW (native DNG format) all manually focused or zone focused

 

------------------------------------

 

Thanks for reading guys and I hope to contribute to forum. I'm planning on doing a review of the Leica X1 from a documentary/street photographer in the months to come which I have not really found one online with lots of imagery.

 

Cheers,

JL