With the Monterey Pre-Historics mere days away, I took the morning off from working on Ruprecht and on the house today to check out all the photo gear I will be taking to Carmel to verify that everything was clean, working as it should, the settings are all correct, the batteries are all charged, etc. Made a list of small stuff I needed and paid a visit to the local pro camera store, friends I've been doing business with since the 80s.
While I was there getting some new high-capacity cards, I decided to check out the latest, recently introduced Canon 5DMkIII body as a potential replacement for my now three-year old Canon 5dMkII. After playing with the MkIII for 1/2 an hour, snapping a few shots and studying all the differences between what I own now and the MkIII, I decided against the swap, but embarked on a different path altogether.
For those contemplating moving up to the MkIII, it probably is an upgrade if your equipment is a couple of years old, especially in the area of auto-focusing performance, a broader ISO range, the increased speed of the new on-board Digic 5 processor and a host of new automatic whiz-bang electronic features. The last part, all the new electronic features, in my view are all there in a classic display of the engineers and marketing boffins including them because they could, what with the new ultra-fast CPU, but I must question if all the new features would really result in a discernible improvement of image quality, or would they just help make it easier to snap away and possibly & only marginally improve the capabilities of the Canon L lenses I already own and whose capabilities I am thoroughly familiar with, and which I would continue to use on the new MkIII. The roughly 2k $ difference I would have to cough up for what would basically have been a tit-for-tat swap capability-wise said NO in a loud & clear voice.
Therefore, since what I am obsessively after is a massive improvement in image quality to the highest level currently available in optical performance in a sensibly sized, easily portable, 36 x 24 mm full-frame digital camera, it became thunderously clear in an instant that there was only one path for me to logically pursue........a new Leica M9 with Leica's newest, best, and sharpest lens ever ( their claim ), the Leica M 35mm f2.0 Asph. Summicron. The only down-side of this new combo from what I have been shooting up to now as I see it, is that I'm loosing one full stop at wide open aperture, but even wide open at F2 the Leica lens is already so dramatically sharper and superior in all parameters of measurement than the Canon lenses, especially in the Leica's rendering of the out-of-focus fore & back grounds, that there is simply no comparison. Due to certain limitations of the Leica rangefinder ( perspective correction lenses are not available, macro photography is extremely difficult, complicated and expensive to do with a rangefinder, and telephoto photography longer than 135mm is impossible with it ). To fill the vacuum in those areas, I am keeping my current Canon DSLR MkII with a 35mm f1.4 prime L lens for general use, although I expect the Leica will soon take over as my main go-to general use photographic weapon, due to its immense user-friendliness, and intuitive, almost completely manual operation. I am also keeping the Canon 24mm Tilt-shift f3.5 MkII L lens for landscape and architectural photography, the Zeiss 100mm f2.0 Macro Planar for close-ups, landscapes & portraits, and finally the Canon 400mm f5.6 L prime telephoto for shooting motor sports on the track, wildlife, etc.
I really feel like the prodigal son "returning home". The first photo of me at a couple of hours old, was taken by my father with a Leica, the Leica he gave me when I graduated from the equivalent of high-school in Vienna. It's the Leica I traded in on an M3 ( the first Leica with a bayonet lens mount as opposed to the earlier screw-in mounting ) using my own money, which I kept until '88 when I upgraded to the then latest M6TTL. Disposed of that body in 2006 mainly as a result of film hassles & lack of film availability, and moved into Canon digital equipment, but vowed not to go back to Leica until they produced a true Leica-quality full-frame digital range finder camera. In a rare demonstration of maturity and wisdom, I kept the four Leica M lenses I had accumulated for the M6, awaiting the day when I would be a M Leica owner again: a 24mm Elmarit f2.8 Asph., a 35mm Summilux f1.4 Asph., which I traded today on the above f2.0 Asph. Summicron -- the new, slower lens is actually that much better, a 50mm f2.0 Summicron, and a 90mm f2.0 APO-Asph. Summicron. That may not be my final lens array, but God knows, it'll do for the Historics and for the immediate future, and I still have to return them to the factory for retro-fitting with coding terminals so they can communicate with the CPU on the M9............one simply cannot escape some computerization completely, no matter which camera one buys these days.
I suspect this will be the end of my quest, that I'm done buying, it's time to shoot. I genuinely look forward to the overcast, subdued early morning light at Laguna Seca, the usually misty "Dawn Patrol" at Pebble Beach and all the in-between events and random photo opportunities, wherever I encounter them. I will post from the pre-Historics before the end of the Historics week if I can, and will post photos of all the other events when I return home, after the 19th, in addition to sending a selection of Reunion shots to John Dilger for the next issue of the ESSES.
What really had a large part in helping me make a quick & irreversible decision was a long. slow and more-than-a-little envious review of Ferryman's 19-page "Classic LeMans" thread in the Past events forum of the DDK site earlier this week. I highly recommend visiting the site and reviewing the thread for yourself - lots of great photos and neat cars. I'm also attaching a small selection of some of my own random shots, which I took to remind myself of precisely why it had been entirely too long since I owned a Leica M rangefinder camera. The shots are artistic zeroes, but the dynamic range, the color rendition, the sharpness, the manner in which the camera/lens holds details in the shadows, the virtually total absence of optical aberrations, the tonal range, and in general, the way in which Leica M cameras & lenses "write" pictures is quite astonishing......not said braggingly or arrogantly, but with admiration of just how good a product can be when no limits are placed on achieving excellence.
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Originally Posted by joegt3cup
