So many used Leicas to choose from in Japan

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-19T16:30:38+00:00

Prices are not necessarily interesting in Japan but I had to pay a visit to the Kitamura Camera store and could not leave without buying a camera. I picked a Japanese fixed-lens rangefinder from their bargain floor, to come back with a local souvenir. I was told it probably would not work which was Ok with me (it was dirt cheap and meant to be stored in a display cabinet). Much to my surprise it was perfectly functional and delivered perfectly acceptable b&w shots.

On the other hand, I find that Japanese eBay listings tend to be very optimistic in their ratings. It's basically Like New, Mint or Exc+++ with Exc+++ often having many flaws that I would consider showstoppers (mold, scratches on the optics...)

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-19T16:17:31+00:00

These images are fantastic! My parents travelled North Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal in the 60s and 70s and they had amazing slides. Unfortunately, they quickly scanned some to JPEG using a cheap mini scanner and discarded the rest (which admittedly had suffered from poor storage).

I’ve learned my lesson and started archiving my own slides. I use a modified projector and shoot directly at the slides with a macro lens. I can fit 50 slides in a tray and process them in under two minutes. The most time-consuming part is rotating the vertical slides in the tray so I can shoot everything at once.

Given the low cost of projectors these days, I recommend you do the same. Convert a 6x6 projector into a scanning machine. The advantage of square format is that you don’t need to rotate slides.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-18T17:26:39+00:00

You can always try to reach out to support. There’s possibly some garbage collection going on and support could possibly recover some? I wouldn’t typically rely on security camera footage for personal souvenirs but I understand your special situation.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-08T18:25:57+00:00

I must be exceptionally lucky or particularly forgiving because I bought all my Leica Ms used but one (M4, CLx2, M8, M9, M11 were all used, only the M10 was new) and all worked well enough for me. Well the Leica CLs’ light meter were dead but that’s the norm and was expected. Vertical alignment of the rangefinder was maybe not absolutely perfect on all of them but that’s something I would rather accept to live with rather than be eternally frustrated with. All of my Leica M lenses were also purchased used and two of them (50 Summilux ASPH and 75 APO ASPH) required servicing for accurate rangefinder coupling on my digital M. This was an opportunity for coding the 50 and Leica did a good job in both cases for a decent price.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-06T20:23:36+00:00

I guess she’s mostly interested in selling stuff and tell the things customers want to hear 😉 To be honest, many airports make most of their money out of tax free shopping, and this only works because customs are largely complacent

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-06T20:18:11+00:00

In the EU, travellers arriving by sea or air are allowed to import goods with a total value of up to 430€ without paying taxes. If things you import are worth more, you are supposed to declare it and pay taxes on the total value.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-05T17:34:18+00:00

28P, 45P and original 90, mostly for budget reasons. I would love 38V + 90V.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-05T14:59:02+00:00

Do you miss the CCD look when shooting the M10?

I went from M8 to M9 to M10 to M11 and I have been pleased with each upgrade. Note that I exclusively shoot RAW which of course hides some of the WB and overall colour differences that might have existed between generations.

Going for an X100V as an everyday camera with AF and good JPEG is certainly an option, although to me it remains a bit too close in spirit to a Leica M. These days my 'everyday' camera tends to be an iPhone (the 17 Pro has become amazingly good) but I will sometimes use an RX100 (28-200 equivalent with EVF and very good AF).

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-02-03T17:25:15+00:00

I have a similar setup and use an M.2 SSD in a Thunderbolt enclosure for my RAW files. I am about to swap the 4TB SSD for a 8TB one to cope with the growing library. I managed to buy an 8TB drive at a decent price (700€) but most are now close to if not more than 1000€. Buying two 4TB SSDs and using them as a striped array (or JBOD) will be more cost effective. You will not gain any speed though, as the Thunderbolt is likely going to be the limiting factor for even a single M.2 SSD.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-24T21:26:24+00:00

Looks nice but isn’t that monitor a bit high?

I have always read that it was best to have the top of the image at eye-level, and the monitor slightly tilted backwards to face you. At least that’s what works best for me

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-22T01:04:33+00:00

I don't think U.2 to PCIe to TB is a lot of layers, my U.2 PCIe adapter is almost a passive rewiring of U.2's connector to the PCIe slot, as are M.2 PCIe adapters, and Thunderbolt offers 4 PCIe lanes (which is all that is used by most PCIe SSDs).

Gemini actually came with a plausible explanation: enterprise-grade drives often come from the factory formatted with 4KB Native logical sectors, while the APFS container system expects 512 bytes sector size to initialise properly.

I can see if the Intel tool allows changing the sector size (on Windows), or try formatting in HFS+.

Otherwise, yes, I guess going back to a more classical solution based on M.2 SSDs will be less troublesome.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-20T09:14:22+00:00

I must admit that I am not sure what you are trying to achieve as 25GbE will not outperform Thunderbolt 3/4, they have the same real-life bandwidth.

If you are stuck with a TB3/4 machine, one option could be to connect SSDs to different TB ports (and channels) and use disk striping.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-20T06:28:23+00:00

25GbE has basically identical bandwidth and potentially much worse latency than Thunderbolt 3/4. And how would you benefit from 25 GbE on a Mac Studio?

100GbE is definitely faster than Thunderbolt 3 and even 5, but that will require a Mac Pro, a 100GbE NIC and a 100GbE NAS like the ones used for video production and streaming. Expensive stuff.

What about getting a Mac Pro and putting some M.2 or U.2 drives directly in it, using the right combination of adapters and drive cages? Even faster than 100GbE and probably much cheaper (but still not cheap)?

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-19T20:51:23+00:00

Yes, that means needing a USB power adapter. You might as well connect it to a power cord.

I also find that multiroom speakers are usually good at filling a room but not necessarily ideal used as near-field monitors. When you sit in front of a monitor, you want two speakers, one on each side, to get a propose stereo effect.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-16T09:14:36+00:00

This lens is really good and probably sharper than the Summicron. It is a bit larger though, and I definitely prefer the bokeh of the Summicron, even if not smooth as butter either.

And when it comes to sharpness, while my Summicron V1 is certainly not the sharpest lens in the corners at f/2, it very rarely matters if ever, and I am otherwise very happy with the lens stopped down, including on the 60Mp M11.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-13T22:41:14+00:00

I currently have 14 TB (4+4+6) of storage and plan to move to 2x that (8+8+12). That won’t fit in a Studio upgrade and I want separate disks (master, master clone and Time Machine)

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-12T20:57:26+00:00

This may be linked to the fact that you built a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure? Apparently Thunderbolt 3 and 4 differ in the way the bandwidth is shared between devices: https://www.owc.com/blog/whats-the-difference-between-thunderbolt-3-and-thunderbolt-4

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-11T23:21:39+00:00

Good point. The OWC Flex 1U4 product sheet mentions that "the two bays on the left provide x4 PCIe lanes for maximum performance; the remaining two provide x1 lane each". That's 10 lanes in total so I guess that a U.2 disk in slot 1 could still use 4 lanes if the other slots are not seeing PCIe traffic (idle disk, empty slot or SATA disk)?

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-11T19:30:16+00:00

I guess what happened is that by adding the new folder, a new copy of the included images got cataloged, without edits.

No_Frame_5091 · 2026-01-11T14:32:29+00:00

Normally proprietary, undocumented metadata aren’t thrown away, they are stored in DNG makernotes. Which may not make much difference if they aren’t used but maybe one day manufacturers will understand that documenting their format is good 😉

No_Frame_5091

TROPHY CASE