As the title says, this is going to be slightly OT: after considering this for a while, I finally ended up purchasing a Leica M8 for my street work - as lenses go, budget & availability in my local store didn't allow more than a (not so) lowly Voigtlander 35mm f2.5, for the moment, soon to be sided by a couple more CV lenses. Leica glass will, hopefully, follow - in the meantime, I will try and put what I have to a good use. Here a few samples out of my first day of shooting with the new M8: I love it already, feels like going back to the days I begun photography. My photographic story started more than 20 years ago, went through Nikon F, Fm2 - I got the chance to use a couple of film Leicas but never owned one - then F5 & finally digital with a short D70 time followed by D2x (2)... ok, enough talk, here comes the pics, from a day out in Istanbul, I hope you will not mind me posting non-Nikon pictures here for once, just I thought I'd share the news and the pics with all the old friends from the Cafe' :redface: Old lady & cat at the bodrum cafe', Istanbul: Istanbul is room for literally millions stray cats: one of my usual old door shots :wink: and, of course, one of my fiancee: last, my very first M8 pic: of course, the Leica salesguy... C&C welcome and much appreciated.
I like the first one and the portraits. I'm not sure I dig the cats and colors though, but that's just me.
Maybe its down to individual taste, but I love the colour shots here, there so different to the 'norm' Also a Beautiful portrait in mono, would be nice maybe to see that shot given the same colour treatment. Just looked at your website.... your good, very good!! Jase
Very nice (as usual :Crunk I like the #3 very much, nice mood. Would you be willing to share your color treatment? (can't make it out, something about adjusting saturation on certain channels?)
Vieri, As a photographer that mainly shoots digital, but who owns an M7 and loves the feel of a Leica I really appreciate your posting these here. I'm very interested in an M8, but I just haven't seen enough great shots taken with one to push me over the edge yet. These are stupendous!:biggrin: Please do share a bit on how you PP'd the color images and keep posting M8 shots whenever possible! Inquiring minds want to know........black or silver/chrome??:biggrin:
A Leica is a part of a photographer's normal progression. I used to own a Leica R system long ago, thought of getting into the Modul-R system and then just ended up with the M. The M system is not for everyone. You seem to be doing good with it... But its strength is not in the shooting/sniping capabilities but it is rather a great exercize for the mind (envision and anticipation, range focusing...). It's a cool system but SLRs are so much better in many aspects. P.S.: Stuart, I don't see how seeing good M8 shots would push you into buying one. You either need a M8 or you don't. And for portraiture, it's about the worst camera you could get, IMO.
Hey Alex, thank you very much for your comment :biggrin: I am glad you liked the BW shots, and no problem for the color ones - the beauty of it is, everyone has different taste and likes different things :smile: Thanks again! Hey Dave! No need being jealous - you can have one too, I am sure Leica will be happy to sell you one and a few lenses to go together with :wink: seriously, thank you for commenting, it's a great camera and I hope I will put it to a good use :smile: Thank you very much Gale! :biggrin: I am glad you enjoyed Thank you Gordon, your comments are as always very much appreciated :smile: Hey Jase, thank you very much - I am glad you enjoyed my color work :biggrin: thanks a lot to take the time to check my site out as well, i really appreciate it :smile: Thank you very much! I certainly hope so :biggrin: Hello Michael, thank you very much for your kind words :smile: as far as my PP goes, I use basically curves to achieve that look; unfortunately, I do not have a standardized process and I treat each image individually - these had at least 3 curves applied to them, to raise and saturate the different areas of the color spectrum... :smile: I started long ago using curves freely available on the net to achieve cross-processed look on digital files (I do not have them anymore - but you can easily find them googling "cross-processing") and moved from there to build my own "color palette" so to speak. Hope this helps, sorry I can do more to explain what I do :smile: Hey Stu, thank you very much for your nice words about my pics, I do appreciate it a lot! :smile: as far as the color treatment, see above in my reply to Michael - sorry I can say anything more specific, I just go on playing with each pic until I am happy with what I see :biggrin: ...and, my M8 is black - I know, old debate between silver & black fans; I am a black guy I guess :wink: Thank you Mathias, I appreciate it :biggrin: Indeed it is - I felt I needed to move to rangefinder (I don't want to assume I was ready for it as a photographer - I just felt like trying my hands and eyes at it... :wink. Indeed it is a very good exercise for the mind and the eye, and is a completely different way of doing photography. I am just starting what I feel will be a voyage in a different part of this beautiful art, and I hope to be up for it :smile: thanks for commenting, much appreciated!
Thank you very much Graeme! :biggrin: I am going to love the M8 (I am already loving the rangefinder way - though this doesn't mean I am going to give the D2x(s) up - ever, I think... :wink thanks again my friend! Thank you very much, I am glad you enjoyed :smile:
