jonathan_r

Odd, the 50 Summicron is the worst flaring lens I have ever had, although in all other respects I love it. I have the version with the integral sliding hood, but prefer to use a round rigid hood for its physical protection. I find one or the other hood essential. My 35 Summicron also performs better with a hood, but is much less flare-prone.

I started with only a 50 'cron, then bought the 35 ASPH 'cron. I would like to use the 50 all the time, but in reality it's the 35 that gets left on the camera, perhaps because it's just so much less bulky and easier to use. I take both street/social documentary and landscape with it. I tend to use the 50 for (environmental) portraits and landscapes if it's on the camera at the time. I think the trouble is that the human eye sees in two different ways. Our bifocal FOV is wide like a 35, but once we fix our attention on something it's more like a 50 or even 75. I love the sense of space the 35 gives me, but find it problematic to fill blank foregrounds except by falling into compositional cliches.

Good stuff from everyone! #3 Butcher's Boy - 3 points (but needs more work to make it pop) #10 Pomegranate - 2 points (surprised this hasn't attracted more votes yet - what a melting look!) #24 Old white beard - 1 point

Avoiding the specifics of the LCD to get at what I think inspired the OP... Leica sold the M6 with the strap-line 'Concentrating on the essentials', which cleverly made a virtue out of the absence of bells and whistles present on contemporary SLRs. I may be a mug, but the advertising worked on me, and today an M6 is the only camera I own. I don't find it easy to take the photos I want, but the barrier is in the mind rather than a lack of technical functions. I know that I can coax top quality out of my Leica when that is critical, but most of the time it's the subject matter that concerns me. A good photo blurred is still worth having, whereas a pin-sharp photo with nothing to say is not. I need to be 100% intent on taking photos, without family around me or other distractions. There's a lot in that Zen stuff which fascinated HCB, though I'm no mystic and would prefer to describe it in plain Anglo-Saxon. When I develop films, no photo is ever better than I expected. I know in the instant of taking it whether it might be a 'hopeful'. Hopeful ones do sometimes turn out to be keepers - the others NEVER do. Am I a better photographer for not having an LCD? I've no idea, but for me an LCD is irrelevant to my successes and failures, and if I had one it could prove to be one of those fatal distractions.

For those who have encountered greyed-out adjustment tools causing un-editable image versions: Can you please check whether the Master image is still editable (using adjustment tools, apart from the non-functioning retouching tool)? If so, can you distinguish whether those versions which cannot be edited are those with retouching edits? Or has anyone got newly imported greyscale images that can't be edited at all? In my case, Master images and un-retouched versions are still editable. Newly imported images can be adjusted but not re-touched. So I suspect that the problem with images that hang pending 'Loading image...', is linked to the non-functioning retouching tool. This would explain why adjustments lifted and stamped from non-editable versions make previously editable versions hang. Make sense?

UPDATE: I finally found time to consult Apple technical support by phone myself. Extremely helpful. Sent the guy an example 8-bit tif greyscale file, and he confirmed that he could not use the retouch tool on it. Converting to png did not help. Said he would 'escalate' the case as it was 'clearly a bug that needs fixing'. He too was of the view that Aperture must surely support greyscale. My other problem (Adjustment tools greyed out, frozen pending image loading) affects only certain images. Again, I'm send him an example, and hope to hear further on that too. I will report back on developments. If anyone else has found solutions independently, I'm sure we'd all be grateful to hear.

Very well put, Jeff.

David, the point you are missing is that we can no longer work on images that have already been scanned as greyscale images.

Oh, and with some images all of the adjustment tools are greyed out as shown above.

I have encountered the same problem with a fairly new iMac, upgraded to snow Leopard, and Aperture 2.1.4. I tried re-installing Aperture 2 and then re-installing the upgrade, but no joy. I've scoured the web for solutions too, but no joy yet.

Excellent presentation, thanks. Am I re-assured that Leica will always (a) manufacture new, and ( support existing, film cameras? No, not really. The attention each new camera gets is heart-warming, but we saw only 3 technicians, each well rehearsed and skilled at their tasks. What happens when they leave? Will they be replaced? I would like to see interviews (in print better than video) with the Leica top brass, freely discussing the likely scenarios for the future of Leica, and what the bottom line is for owners of film bodies and (especially) M-mount lenses.

ISO 64 1/125 @ f/11 ISO 25 1/100 @ f/8 These are both exactly the same as the sunny 16 rule as normally stated: 1/film speed @ f/16

It's just a neat aide-memoire, Allan, from which you can reconstruct the entire exposure table. But anyway, why not?

After a couple of duds which had to be replaced/repaired, I've now had my current Gossen Digisix for several years. It needed a simple collar around the function button to stop that being depressed by accident, causing battery run-down. Having done that, it's good as gold. My biggest complaint with it now is that the numbers on the scales are too small, requiring reading glasses.

The rule is actually f/16 at 1/(film speed in ISO) for BRIGHT sun and LANDSCAPES. For hazy sun, cloudy bright and cloudy dull respectively, open up by one-stop increments. Similarly for group photos open up one, and for portraits open up one more. As others have said, the elevation of the sun above the horizon also makes a big difference, which means that both latitude and season are important. There are more comprehensive tables which take these into account in the appendices of the old Ilford Manual of Photography. However, these are so far removed from a rule of thumb that methinks one is better off with a meter!