These great 2nd-Saturday-of-the-month early morning get-to-getters have always started with the April meeting and go through October, after which time the weather just gets much too chancy for an event of this nature to be enjoyable. Last month, on the second Saturday it rained like Hell across the Bay area and folks, including yours truly stayed away in droves, but certainly made up for it this past Saturday.
I'm sorry to be so late in posting this, but my wife, who accompanied me the first time ever to one of these affairs, and I continued down the coast for a much needed R&R bed & Breakfast weekend given the splendid weather recently.
Great turnout, interesting cars everywhere ( please see my other post in the "Other cars" forum ) it was a genuine pleasure to see old friends and acquaintances and more or less get the season off to a fine start this year.
As always, I'll try to answer any questions you may have .............if I can.
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On a more personal note, and please do not misinterpret this as bragging because that is certainly not my intent, but to explain why some of the following photos may look a little different than my past & previous offerings, I'm working with a brand-new camera / lens combo which is as far from what I've been using for more than the past 40 years than you can get nowadays - I've switched from using my trusty, fully manual ( including manual rangefinder focusing ) digital Leica M-P 240 with the collection of several fixed focal length lenses which I've accumulated over the past 30 years to Leica's latest digital full-frame offering.....the "mirrorless" SL 601 body and their remarkable 24-90mm APO - ASPH. f2.8 - 4.0 auto focus, optically stabilized zoom Vario-Elmarit lens. Since the SL uses a slightly different bayonet fitting than the M, I've also purchased the Leica-made M adapter, which enables the SL user to use almost all manual M lenses on the SL with incrdeible results, but of course without the automation offered by the SL dedicated lens. For financial rerasons ( good, used Leica lenses hold their value to an astonishing degree ) I have kept all my M lenses. Thus, I see the new camera really presenting the best of all worlds..........the customary unique Leica image quality of the highly developed, superb and fast but small. light & fully manual Leica lenses originally designed for the M when that's the appropriate choice for the subject, and the equally sensational new, auto-focus, automated and motion-stabilized SL zoom lens(es). Later this year, the range of SL lenses is to be expanded with what Leica promises to be the 'world's best' 50mm f1.4 fixed focal length auto-focus lens, and to continue the progression to longer telephotos, a f2.8 - 4, 90 - 280mm APO-ASPH lens, available now in limited quantities, which is just what I've wanted for track and motorsports photography. My new SL 'system' should be complete and I should be much more familiar with it by the time the Monterey Historics roll around later this year.
The above changes in photo gear, combined with the installation of the latest Apple El Capitan software and Adobe's latest version of Lightroom processing software ( included with the purchase of the Leica camera ) on my Apple computer have been a big change in my photo workflow and will undoubtedly result in delays, screw-ups, mistakes and probably some questionable, less than presentable images, but all in all, I firmly believe the overall result will be better images that come closer to realizing my vision than what I've been using. I didn't embark on this change in school of thought lightly or on a whim, rather, gave it a lot of deep thought and have concluded that the new gear, incorporating the latest in technology ( the high ISO performance in marginal light conditions is particularly noteworthy ) will be for me a more suitable, appropriate and effective way to capture the many aspects of the collector / vintage car hobby that I passionately love and want to continue recording in my own way until the day I drop.
As you can imagine, the learning curve has been rocky and exceedingly steep, while also very rewarding, since in an environment such as at Canepa's for instance, where cars and people pop in and out without much time to compose, focus and set all the other important parameters, the highly automated new body / lens combo allows me to enter what has previously been for me inaccessible territory.
All very exiting and interesting...............can't wait until the second week in August.
Thanks for looking,
JZG
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