Leica M4

This is the Leica M4 along with two Summicrons. The monster is a 90mm cron, known as the v2. It's a hefty lens and simply towers over 90mm rangefinder lenses. All this heft has a purpose - even though its about 50 years old the optics are still stunning (when it focuses correctly). Which brings me to the problem. The rangefinder mechanism in general is pretty inaccurate and prone to errors. For a wide angle lens a bit of focusing slop isn't necessarily a deal killer - any slop will probably be covered up by increased DOF at with a wider focal length and with the lens stopped down. At telephoto lengths the slop becomes harder and harder to ignore - on a 90mm lens at f/2 the DOF is razor thin.  Unfortunately my lens has a pretty big front focusing problem, about 30mm or so by my measurements.  As soon as I saw the test chart I immediately boxed up the lens and sent it to DAG Camera.

This is a shot with the 35mm Summicron, shot wide open on an M9 (see original here).  This particular version won't win any beauty contests, it has a rather large blob on an interior lens element that was attacked by fungus.  The fungus was cleaned out but the coating on that section is completely gone.  This is at the edge of the lens, so there's a slight loss of contrast wide open.  Stopped down to f/2.8 and it's razor (I mean razor) sharp.  And by f/5.6 it's game over - the amount of micro-contrast is nothing short of spectacular.

And the 90mm Summicron, here on Acros 100 and an M3 (original found here).  It was very sunny out, so I stopped down to probably f/11 here which explains why everything was in focus.

OM-1 Results

Overall verdict: a great camera, I'm really needing a split image screen though (the matte screen is alright but I'm having problems adjusting).  I liked it so much that I found a 28mm f/3.5 OM lens to add to the collection.

Olympus OM-1

It's a new toy :) While shopping for a fresh bottle of fixer at Calumet (a hopeless quest btw), I noticed they had a couple of new shelves full of old 35mm gear.  The strange part - most of it was reasonably priced (especially for a big name old-school non-online store not named ebay, craigslist, or rangefinderforum.com).  There was the standard Nikon AI/AIS lenses and some old Canon FD stuff, but this little guy stood out from the pack. 

First Impressions

1. Very small.  I have pretty small hands and this thing just disappears into them.  It's comparable (and probably smaller than) the Nikon FM2n I used to carry around.  
2. Viewfinder is clean.  By clean I mean uncluttered - besides the analog meter in the lower left corner the viewfinder is completely free from shooting information.  To some this is a bad thing - I'll admit that seeing aperture/shutter info in the VF has its benefits - but sometimes you just want to see the scene without clutter of any kind. 
3. The On/Off switch is inconvenient at best, straight annoying at worst.  You can see the layout from the birds eye picture above, instead of following almost every other SLR company Olympus decided to put the meter On/Off as a rotating switch that's decoupled from the shutter mechanism.  This is annoying for a couple of reasons - the first is battery drain (inadvertently leaving the switch in the On position will drain the battery).  The second reason is ergonomics - if you're framing with the camera and notice that the meter is off it's almost impossible to reach up with your left hand and switch on the meter without taking your eye from the frame.  
4. The control layout is different from any other SLR I've used.  The standard configuration is to place the shutter speed on the top plate next to the shutter button and the aperture control on the lens. Olympus decided to buck this trend by putting the shutter speed around the base of the lens mount and the aperture control of the lens around the filter area of the lens.  
5. The film advance isn't quite as smooth as I'd like it to be.  I've handled damn near every 35mm Nikon, along with a couple of Leica's and the Oly isn't even close - the F3HP just absolutely destroys the OM-1 (and the M3 dual stroke just back from a CLA is just heavenly).    

That's it for first impressions, I'm working my way through a roll of Tri-X so I'll be able to write more on this camera later - hopefully the shutter speeds and meter are accurate (they seem pretty good so far).

The Faces of Occupy Chicago

I recently processed a roll of film from a trip to LaSalle Street in Chicago, which is where the Occupy Chicago folks have set up camp.  I've been shooting events like that with a wide angle (either a 17-35 zoom or a 21mm prime) - it gives me enough depth of field where I don't have to worry about shutter speed or focusing accuracy and allows me to focus more on the content of the shot rather than the mechanics behind it.  Shutter speed - constant. Aperture - constant. Focusing distance - constant at 5-6 ft.  Then it's all a matter of positioning yourself where you want to be and closing the shutter.

I'm out there and for some reason I decide to take out the 90mm Elmarit. It's a great portrait lens (low contrast, kind of flare-y if stray light hits, but a great looking "glow"), but not really your first choice for a cramped-quarters street lens.  It turns out that putting a 90mm lens on naturally turns you into a street portrait guy as opposed to a pure street photographer.  I was mostly setting up in a corner, waiting for someone to come into my field of view and notice me, then hitting the shutter the split second after the deer-in-the-headlights look went away (there's a microsecond where befuddlement turns to puzzlement turns to slight anger turns to acceptance turns to resigned acceptance - it's a great moment to hit).  And that's the moment I think I caught here.  And it planted the idea of a future project (hopefully something I can get done before the Big Cold One hits Chicago) - The Faces of Occupy Chicago.

One of the faces of Occupy Chicago.

Me And My Girl

Leica M3
Jupiter-12 35mm f/2.8 (LTM - Leica threadmount)
Fuji Neopan 400, shot at EI 800
Kodak HC-110 Dilution H (1:63) - 14:30 at 68 degrees

Sloping

This is from a recent photowalk with the Chi-togs Facebook group.  This is a group of individuals I met through the Eric Kim street photography workshop.  Eric was back in town for a day so a few of us decided to get together and walk the streets.  This is a great group of guys, I'm reserving some time to blog about them later when I get a chance.

I think we ended up doing more talking than shooting though, as I only ended up with 30-40 shots out of which only a few were good enough to post.  This is one of them, taken during the Halloween festivities in Daley Plaza.  I'm not going to pretend this is a great shot or anything, I do like the angles and slopes of the metal sculpture - I've noticed that I tend to gravitate towards triangles.  Purely unintentional as a matter of fact.

One other notable thing about the photowalk is that I finally shot with all film.  I've tried to balance my film shooting with digital by carrying a Leica along with my D700, this time I took an M3 (w/ Tri-X @ 800) along with an F6 (Acros 100).  The Acros 100 (this shot was taken with it) was a particularly bad choice on an afternoon that was partially cloudy day made worse by the shadows from the Chicago skyline.  Shutter speeds were pretty slow even with a 17-35 2.8, I ended up switching to a 50/1.2.

Leica M3 CLA

I recently had the pleasure of dealing with Youxin Ye, who quite simply is one of the most remarkable camera repairmen around.  When it comes to photography equipment, I tend to buy everything used.  You lose the possibility of warranty repair, but gain 30-40% in price reduction.  Unless you're talking Leica of course.  Then you're more likely to see a 30-40% increase in price (I'm exaggerating of course but prices are still pretty silly).  The only way to get affordable Leica gear is to buy used and to take a trip in the photo time machine.  I've bought a 60 year old 35/3.5 Summaron in absolutely horrible shape (hazy, scratches on the interior elements, stiff focus, the focusing cam was in backwards [!], and my 60 year old Summitar 50/2 had an incredibly stiff aperture ring - so stiff that I tended to set the aperture once per hour and vary my shutter in response to variations in exposure.  So, shutter-priority by necessity.  And finally my M3 - supposedly the crown jewel of rangefinders, I bought cheap and I bought in heavily used condition.  The vulcanite was starting to fall off and my primary concern was that the viewfinder seemed dimmer than it should - this was my first Leica so I didn't really have anything to compare to.  But most of the online cognoscenti seemed to agree that looking into an M3 viewfinder was like Staring Into The Eye of God.  I couldn't see the hype though - it was so-so bright and the 50 framelines are very big but I wasn't really entering a Nirvana state (didn't stop me from running more than 15 rolls of film through it in the first month).

For all of these repairs, the first person I contact is Youxin Ye.  He's extremely knowledge, priced very reasonable, and works incredibly fast.  I mean insanely fast.  As in he may finish your repair/CLA on the same day that the lens arrives.  And ship it the next day.

He took the Summaron and disassembled it, cleaned it.  The haze didn't go away fully (it's probably etched in the glass by now) but it did help matters.  The Summitar came back in fabulous shape, the aperture ring is Leica-smooth now, perfect.  And the M3 is now back in my greedy little hands in amazing shape.  The film advance (dual stroke) is just phenomenal - I dry-fired the shutter at least 10 times in a row just to feel how buttery it was.  The viewfinder is like night and day, the brightness was doubled (seemingly) - now I see why the M3 is regarded as the best camera ever.

So overall, I can highly recommend Youxin and his camera services.

Update [01/21/2015] : I thought I'd update this post with additional comments.  After shooting about 80 or 90 rolls of film with the M3, I noticed that the viewfinder was beginning to separate - it shows up as a light bar on each edge of the viewfinder glass (the inner element).  Eventually the separation gets worse and worse until the prism separates and the VF blacks out entirely.  My separation was getting pretty bad and the contrast in the finder was worsening so I sent it back to Youxin to recement the prism.  This work only took about 2 weeks and roughly $150 - way cheaper than I thought.  Now that I have it back it's even brighter and clearer than after the original CLA.  

http://www.yyecamera.com