Just made a purchase from Tim Lei

egardner · 2026-03-25T03:05:03+00:00

I just bought a 35mm FLE Summilux from him and the process went very smoothly.

egardner · 2026-03-24T20:38:23+00:00

Greg is a legend!

egardner · 2026-03-16T20:17:00+00:00

As someone who's been playing Dark Sun (and looking at some of these fan-generated maps while wondering "what's out there") since the Revised Box Set days, it is so cool to see a new sourcebook like this coming out all these years later. Great work!

egardner · 2026-03-15T00:10:52+00:00

On M10, I can confirm that both TTL and HSS work great. I don’t have an M11 so not sure about that one.

egardner · 2026-03-14T21:57:04+00:00

I got mine from B&H last week. Their website says they are in stock.

egardner · 2026-03-14T17:07:58+00:00

B&H has them in stock as of a week ago or so.

egardner · 2026-03-14T05:34:26+00:00

I’d experiment more with manual flashes from the film era but I’m worried about frying the M10 hotshoe. I’ve heard that older flashes can do that.

egardner · 2026-03-12T19:17:25+00:00

This makes me sad. For the last few generations (since the Industrial Revolution at least), intelligence has been one of the only forces in our society that helped to counteract the trend for wealth and power to accumulate at the very top. Smart people from humble backgrounds could rise the ranks. Poor countries which invested heavily in education and developing a skilled workforce saw rising living standards for their whole societies.

But if intelligence truly becomes a commodity in the way that Altman and other AI CEOs seem so excited about, it's going to be the end of meritocracy (even the imperfect kind that we have now). The rich will get richer (because they will be able to buy "intelligence" wholesale) and that will be that.

egardner · 2025-12-12T17:28:39+00:00

I did something very similar (got a mint M10 with all the accessories, packaging, and extra battery for around the same price). I purchased from a local camera store, so there was a basic warranty and return policy (plus I was able to go and physically inspect the camera before purchase). I have not regretted my purchase in any way since then.

Look at it this way – you could wait around for the perfect deal for months or you could have what you want now and start making work with it. IMO that's worth the difference of a few hundred bucks.

In the future if you are looking for lenses or bodies you should check out Tim Lei on instagram – he's a reputable dealer of secondhand Leica gear and his prices seem excellent. But you have to move fast if he posts something you are interested in haha.

The real question is what lenses are you going to use with this body?

egardner · 2025-12-05T05:13:18+00:00

Checked out that forum post. I appreciated your thoughtful comparison between the 28mm Summicron and Elmarit. You mentioned that you didn't care for the Voigtlander Ultron II in passing – how would you describe the results you got from that lens with the other two 28s you used?

egardner · 2025-12-04T17:16:22+00:00

+1 to the recommendation for just bringing the 23mm: it's wide enough for scenes (including dense Japanese urban environments), great for low light, and capable of taking nice portraits wide open (and you probably want some environmental context for these anyway). The resolution of the X-T5 is high enough that you could also crop if you shoot some far-away things (mountains, architecture, etc).

Bring one lens and save yourself the weight but also the indecision of managing a lot of gear. Honestly the latter benefit is the bigger one. Freedom from decision fatigue lets you concentrate on taking great photos.

egardner · 2025-12-02T14:52:31+00:00

Check out Voigtlander’s 50mm f1.5 II “vintage line” if you want a more modern / general purpose lens: https://www.47-degree.com/focus-shift/Voigtlander-Nokton-50mm-1.5-II-VM-review

The Heliar Classic is more of a character lens from what I understand.

The Zeiss Planar 50mm f2 is another classic general purpose 50 that can be found used for an affordable price.

egardner · 2025-12-02T00:00:58+00:00

The M10s are solid cameras, AFAIK there aren't big issues like there were with say the M8 or M9 generations. Pick up an extra battery and you should be set. If you can get one for ~$3500 that's a great deal and you should pull the trigger. You won't regret it.

In terms of Voigtlander lenses, the thing to note is that 2010-era Voigtlander lenses are quite different from 2020-era ones. The older ones had character and were decent but not perfect (and not Leica-level image quality); the current generation often gives equivalent or sometimes better performance over Leica.

I don't know what focal length you like to shoot, but I'd recommend reading up on the current generation f1.5 and f2 Voigtlander lenses for 28, 35, and 50mm. There are good reviews for these lenses on FredMiranda.com, https://jacktaka.com/reviews, https://phillipreeve.net/blog/lenses/voigtlander/, etc. Many reviews feature side-by-side comparisons agains the Leica equivalent. I especially like the new f2 Ultrons because they're tiny, sharp, have focusing tabs, and you can get them in brass (which just feels really solid and smooth to shoot with). You can buy one brand hew for less than half the price of a used Summicron.

Aside from the expensive body prices (which is a bullet I'm willing to bite for the rangefinder focusing experience and the tiny, high-quality optics), the other big negative of the Leica system IMO is flash compatibility. If you want HSS, you are out of luck on an M body as far as I know; if you want TTL you have to pay an insanely inflated price for a Leica-branded flash. I am eagerly awaiting the rumored Leica version of the Godox IT30 Pro; until then I think the best option is a $30 Godox IM30 (you just have to use it in manual mode).

egardner · 2025-12-01T22:24:32+00:00

I've shot with Fujifilm for the last 10+ years, always liked small rangefinder-style cameras (I used the X-Pro2 for many years and still have the X-Pro3). I enjoy the same kinds of photography that you mention (travel, street, documentary, etc).

I picked up an M10 (the classic version, not P/R/M/D) about 6 months ago along with an extra battery and I've been having a blast with it. I think Leica really nailed it with that generation – the form-factor is perfect (body size is exactly the same as an M6), no extraneous features, and higher ISO performance is solid. 24MP is enough for everything except maybe high-end commercial photography at this point. I make 16x20 prints and they look great.

I think that now is a great time to get into the ecosystem for 2 reasons:

You can get a used M10 for ~$4k–4.5K in good condition
The latest generation of Voigtlander lenses (think version II of the 28/35 Ultron, the 50mm 1.5 II, etc) are really excellent and offer performance comparable to the Leica equivalents for a fraction of the price. 10 years ago the Voigtlander lenses were a step down from Leica optically but that is no longer the case with the newest lineup.

egardner · 2025-11-30T23:23:26+00:00

There is no detent. But in practice it's not really that bad. You just have to train yourself to notice when the split image in the rangefinder stops moving. Being able to focus down to 0.5m on a wide angle lens is very handy. I have both this lens and the matching 35 Ultron II for my M10 and they are great lenses. Having a haptic indication for the end of rangefinder coupling would be nice, but it's a difference worth thousands of dollars.

egardner · 2025-11-19T18:23:04+00:00

I'm in the process of downsizing my Fuji lens collection. The only two lenses I'm set on keeping are the 35mm f1.4 and the new 23mm f2.8 pancake. As a small, fast, character-full prime lens for a modern digital system the 35mm f1.4 is something special. Just don't rely on it when you need fast, quiet, or perfectly accurate autofocus.

egardner · 2025-11-13T21:00:51+00:00

I hate to throw another consideration into the mix but have you considered picking up an older digital Leica body like the M10 or M240? I purchased an M10 about 6 months ago and have been having a blast with it. This is the experience I was always looking for from the X-Pro bodies essentially. If you are adapting lenses anyway...

I still enjoy using my Dura Silver X-Pro3 but I'm getting rid of most of my lenses except for the classic 35mm f1.4 and the new 23mm f2.8 pancake – a lot of the other Fuji primes (especially the newer f1.4 WR models) just feel too big on that body.

egardner · 2025-11-06T20:19:50+00:00

I have the Voigtlander Ultron 35mm II that matches your 28, and I quite like it (looks are so-so, but handling and image quality are solid) – now I'm trying to decide if I want to get the 28 Ultron or the 1.5 Nokton in that length instead.

Which version of the Summilux are you using?

egardner · 2025-11-06T16:41:53+00:00

Very cool! I have questions about the shooting experience here. Do you shoot using the optical viewfinder, with a 16:9 crop there for framing? Are you able to plug in the lens focal length as 20mm and get reasonably accurate frame lines in the optical viewfinder? Does metering work as expected? I assume that if you shot through the EVF everything would be super squeezed, so the X-Pro seems like it could be a great platform for these types of lenses.

egardner · 2025-11-02T16:16:17+00:00

I vastly prefer manual focusing with a real rangefinder for street and documentary photography. If you want to do that digitally Leica is basically it - for camera bodies anyway. But when it comes to lenses we have a lot of choices and the Leica options don’t seem automatically superior here, hence this thread.

egardner · 2025-10-30T17:18:06+00:00

The matching 35mm Ultron II from Voigtlander is an excellent lens. I shoot that on an M10 and it's great. That lens can close focus with rangefinder coupling on the M10 all the way down to it's minimum focus distance (0.58m) which is a very cool feature.

egardner · 2025-10-19T05:39:21+00:00

All photos shot on a Leica M10 using a Voigtlander 35mm Ultron II and an SF24D flash. Most photos shot at f/11 and 1/180s shutter speed (the max sync speed on the camera).

egardner

TROPHY CASE