Glad he's small & young !

[John Z. Goriup]

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Took a nice long hike on a trail at the base of Mount Diablo near my home yesterday to test my brand-new 50mm f1.4 Summilux Asph. in chrome ( not bragging, but I'm so eccstatically happy to have finally acquired this wonderful lens I've been lusting after for years earlier in the day ) and Lo and Behold, this is the very first photo I took with it.

 

Saw him slither accross the trail and found him coiled in a typical adult defensive position in the grass along the trail……..could not have been a foot long, but acting exactly like a fully grown rattler. The little guys are as poisonous as the big ones, maybe even more dangerously so, because they don't 'dose' their venom when they bite - they just inject it all, and their venom is just as potent as an adults.

 

Incidentally, that's a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake.

 

JZG

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[pauledell]

John,

 

Thanks for the fine shot and the information. I will try to stay away from them. We don't have that variety of rattlesnake in my neck of the woods.

 

Paul

[tundraline]

Nice shot, John. We have prairie rattlers and the rare timber rattler in these parts. They are beautiful animals. I have run over prairie rattlers three times by accident in the past few years mountain biking on the local trails (the snakes were not harmed, or at least I do not think they were). Their colors change with the season. I have a chrome 50mm Summilux as well. It might be my favorite lens, although it has the heft of a baby cannonball.

[John Z. Goriup]

Thank you, gentlemen.

 

As far as the weight and heft of the all-brass Summilux, after several years of schlepping Canon 5Ds of one generation or another with their huge auto-focus lenses and battery grips around, I find the M9P to be the perfect size and weight with ideal balance with all of my chrome lenses.

 

What I wasn't ready for is the manner in which the aspheric Summilux FE renders images, particularly in certain light conditions. The acutance, edge-to-edge sharpness, utter absence of detectable distortion, lack of flare and CA, color fidelity, three-dimesionality are simply breathtaking. I can readily see how it's going to require a lengthy learning curve to become as proficient with this new optic as I would like to become eventually, especially learning to make an informed decision when to use the Summilux and when to leave the 50mm Summicron on the camera, but on the other hand I also feel the journey is going to be a worthwhile, full-filling and rewarding experience.

 

As the Leica specialist at Camera West summed it up yesterday: " It's a different paint brush for a different style of creating a picture "…….I'm beginning to understand what he means.

 

JZG

[Guest Jeffbridge]

That is beautiful! Excellent Shot!!!

[Iduna]

John,

 

congratulations and many threedimensional adventures with this lens. The snake is so near that it is as if oneself had been there. Keep going exploring the potential. Thanks for sharing your first promising shot.