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way of the WATE..


brill64

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i love my WATE. it's never out of my bag EVER! it's an incredible mix of clever engineering, brilliant optics and versatility. that said, i love it. hand-held with the universal finder attached, i get my verticals straight every time. whilst i occasionally have minor issue with reflection from the uvir when light gets in from behind the filter holder, which is a bit of a no brainer to resolve, i am experiencing some difficulty avoiding flare when taking photographs directly into the sun. sometimes the flare is pleasing but at other times it distracts from the subject completely. could members offer some useful insight or tricks which help in reducing flare further in such lighting conditions as this with such a wide-angle lens?

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Neat flare! What about the old hand-blocking move? It is perhaps a bit tricky when the WATE covers such a large angle, but it should be possible to just stick your hand where it is needed. You see where by the shadows it casts on the front element.

 

B.t.w. I will be listing my WATE in the B&S section again as soon as I find the old photos I took of it.

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Suggestion: Use John Milich's adapter instead of the Leica one. You also need to buy an additional, smaller filter and make the effort of disassembling it, but once you've put it into John's adapter, your hassles are over.

 

The adapter works only with the M8's crop factor, but it doesn't have the rangefinder-viewing cutouts and uses the standard hood.

 

Flare is greatly reduced with the Milich adapter both because the filter has much less area and because you use the lens' original hood. Nonetheless, in tricky situations like shooting into the sun, Carsten's suggestion of using your hand or hat to shield the lens is always helpful.

 

The Milich adapter is also much more compact than the Leica one, and you use the original front cap. You leave it all assembled when you put the lens away. Unless you know to look for the extra metal ring, it's easy to overlook.

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..thanks very much, Carsten and Howard..of course..the old hand-trick! both of these solutions can make some useful difference plus i prefer the original compactness of the WATE created by the milich adaptor, which i have just ordered. thanks a lot! now it will also slip in and out of my bag a bit easier :)

 

john

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A few more WATE shots. My WATE is on the M8 65% of the time. An excellent combination.

 

One from Helsinki harbour with a threatening evening sky. And two shots from the Stockholm - Helsinki ferry.

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Mine only arrived today so I am still getting to grips with it.

 

First impressions are that its going to need a big effort to get the best out of it (set the focal length in menu etc.) and I hate the Leica IR filter solution (where can I get a lens cap that size...

 

But the engineering is stunning, the viewfinder is a big lump but pleasant to use.

 

Hopefully I will get chance to shoot with it over the weekend.

 

Cheers.

 

-Tim (previous ID blovitch but I don't seem to be able to make that account work)

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Tim, it's a super lens, but as you say, it is fiddly.

 

Remember, Leica introduced the WATE with the M8. They weren't aware of the camera's IR sensitivity at the time, so the design made sense. (Steven K Lee remarked in LFI, I think it was, that no one at Leica had ever seen him so angry as when the company discovered the M8's IR problem.)

 

I rate the company very highly for the fact that they were quickly able to come out with a firmware solution for a problem they hadn't foreseen.

 

But it's just one more thing to remember--set the lens, tell the camera, set the finder--and I do occasionally forget to do one or the other. And when I forget, I sometimes make a number of exposures before I realize the error. It's my fault, but it's annoying. :(

 

Enjoy it! It's a perfect lens for the M8, and the so-called 'Frankenfinder' a perfect and useful accessory.

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Hey John, I really like my adapter and it worked great on the WATE while I was in Playa Del Carmen, right after you were there (I talked to you when you were in the airport). Anyway, what is the size of the hex tool I need for the adapter?

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Emile--

I think it's a 49 mm filter. John spells all that out in the adapter instructions; or you could use the Forum Search Function to be sure.

 

John's adapter has to be very efficient in order to be able to retain the lens hood despite the additional length of the tube. Therefore, it uses only the glass from the filter, without the mount.

 

I couldn't disassemble my B+W filter and used the Leica one instead. Even then, I scratched up the UV/IR-Cut coatings trying to get it apart. But I'm not mechanically handy, and an acquaintance took it apart in less than two minutes. (I rotated the part with the damaged coatings outside the image area--easy to do with John's adapter.)

 

I'm using the Leica filter. B+W 486 should do as well.

 

Officially, Leica says the reduced number of layers of annihilation coatings in their 67 mm filter is better. I'm using the standard Leica 49 mm UV/IR Cut filter instead and don't see any problems.

 

As I recall, Sean Reid's feeling was that it might be better to use the Leica filters with wider lenses, but I don't think anyone has come up with strong evidence that a 486 wouldn't do about as well.

 

Avoid the 489 because all the M8's built-in corrections are for the Leica extinction filter, and the 489 is an absorption filter instead.

 

(You can get fancy and use a 489 when you go to a lens for which the camera doesn't have built-in corrections, like the CV 12 mm Heliar. :) )

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