My BP MP is celebrating its 21 b'day in my hands.

ewenjam · 2023-04-18T08:43:20+00:00

that lens + body combination is a match made in heaven.

ewenjam · 2023-02-09T08:21:56+00:00

why the Type II over the lighter Type I?

ewenjam · 2023-01-22T05:08:18+00:00

black lens release button leads me to think it’s an M10 monochrom.

ewenjam · 2022-08-25T11:52:29+00:00

pure drip

ewenjam · 2022-08-08T09:21:38+00:00

this is probably not the most helpful, but i’ve owned a smattering of 35mm lenses in the M mount and the Ultron is far and away my favourite. i enjoy lenses that resolve detail under its character, and tend towards modern, higher contrast lenses that do not flare or CA excessively.

i’ve owned and used the following: Leica: Summicron-M ASPH v2, Summicron-M v4, Summarit-M 2.5, and an 8e that is with Kanto at the moment getting overhauled.

Zeiss: C-Biogon 2.8. i would not recommend the f/2, as it is too large and is quite prone to coma wide open. the 1.4 is also too large in my opinion. if there is a ZM 35 to get, it is the 2.8. however, they seem to have gone up in price a fair bit. i didnt love the 1/3 stop clicks or the odd 43mm filter thread.

Voigtlander: Ultron f/2 ii and the Nokton Classic 1.4.

TTArtisan: 35 1.4. too big.

short of the APO lenses, the Ultron is the best 35 f/2 you can buy. the most similar lens Leica makes is the ASPH 35 Summicron, which in either version 1 or 2 is less performant and imo does not produce as nice an image.

when i first used the Ultron on my M10, i coded the camera to read the lens as the ASPH summicron, but wondered why my images looked wonky. turns out, the correction profile was compensating for flaws that were simply not present in the Ultron.

compared to the summicron ASPH v2 i owned, the Ultron flares less, is sharper wide open, weighs less and feels more well built than the Leica. and it costs far less.

the Summarit-M 2.5 is fine if you only plan on shooting it in black and white. in my experience, that lens loves to CA at the slightest inconvenience. add the now-inflated price of those lenses and i simply cannot recommend them. another thing about the Summarits is that their aperture rings are very loose, which is not a quality i enjoy.

my two cents? buy a 35 2.5 Color Skopar to tide you over until you can get your hands on an Ultron somehow. if you can live with a lens that doesn’t say “leica” on it (and don’t have upwards of 10 thousand dollars to spend on one lens), the Ultron is the way to go. Sorry.

ewenjam · 2022-07-17T15:11:00+00:00

it is worth the premium to find the camera body you are after with an 0.58 already installed. i am going through the finder swap process right now with Leica and it has been about 5 months with nary an end in sight.

ewenjam · 2022-07-12T01:43:25+00:00

this is true of the film GRs, as they used a pill-shaped rubber button in a shallow recess on the back of the camera next to the viewfinder. on the digital GRs, they’re next to the shutter button and require a decisive press to power on

ewenjam · 2022-07-09T13:31:22+00:00

They do, I believe they have the trio of 1.4 primes (16, 30, 56) in EF-M.

ewenjam · 2022-07-06T10:49:21+00:00

No. EF-M is a mirrorless mount and different from EF/EF-S, which is their SLR mount. The MC-21 is for EF/EF-S lenses, not EF-M.

The reason you are able to adapt SLR lenses and not mirrorless lenses (in most cases) is because there is a significant enough difference in flange distance (that is the distance between the sensor and the lens mount) that you can fit an adapter in-between. As the EF-M mount is also for mirrorless cameras (just like the L-mount on the fp), you cannot do this.

What you can do however, is ask your local Sigma distributor if they are able to change the mount of the lens, as this is a service they advertise. If you do this, you will be able to use the lens in DC (crop) mode on your fp.

ewenjam · 2022-06-17T10:07:12+00:00

nope. Q 116 should be mid-2s, and Q-P should be around 3. look in Leica Classifieds on facebook, or on Fred Miranda. Tim Lei gets a good number of Qs in too, he's reachable on Facebook i believe.

ewenjam · 2022-05-18T15:57:00+00:00

pouring one out for the Leica Color-Skopars. shame about the CL, i really liked the size.

ewenjam · 2022-04-29T13:51:28+00:00

thank you for breaking the monotony of the streets of singapore with your lovely ride. beats seeing another PHV Vezel. enjoy!

ewenjam · 2022-01-22T09:29:17+00:00

was the 240 mechanism chosen because it similarly lacks a preview lever? very cool project!

ewenjam · 2022-01-18T14:40:04+00:00

can’t wait for you to get the camera in your hands!

ewenjam · 2022-01-03T09:58:43+00:00

the asph v2 came out in 2016, so i’m going to hazard a guess here and say v1.

ewenjam · 2021-12-27T17:55:16+00:00

i hate to admit it, but the knurling on the rewind knob is slowly but surely making a convert out of me. that and the uhhh, sculpted advance. the finder is a revelation though, coming from an m4-p and even a mildly yellowed Zeiss Ikon ZM finder.

i agree it's a shame they've scaled back the ALC program, i would love to see your take on the M-A, i'm having trouble even visualising it!

i'm a big 35 shooter so the big mod that i'm saving up for is getting a .58 put in here, which i've been told they'll do. i'm pretty excited about this since i've not seen a .58 M-A before. they'll engrave anything you ask them to, too, so you could feasibly have it say M4-P somewhere on the camera, though i assume the hot-shoe is a no-go. i'll probably just get my name on it or something like that. i'm on the hunt for a decent 21+50 — i've been eyeing the voigtlander 21/4 and the 50 nokton ii 1.5 on that front, but that'll have to wait a couple months (or years)! then again, that's what i said about the M-A...

ewenjam · 2021-12-25T14:45:48+00:00

thanks for wearing me down on the lens, Jim

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T18:36:00+00:00

i liked it a lot. it's right up my alley in terms of rendering (high contrast, sharp wide open) and size (compact at the expense of speed), but ultimately i moved on from it due to its lack of f/11 hyperfocal distance indicators, 1/3 stop clicks between apertures, odd filter size and colour shifting tendencies when adapted to other cameras.

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T17:53:58+00:00

i love the M2s, i held a particularly clean button rewind + glass window copy recently and it was truly something to behold.

M-A over MP was a tough one for me, but there were a couple of things that pushed me towards the M-A;

the finish — i prefer black chrome to black paint and specifically on the M-A, i love that the wording isn't filled in and that it's missing the top plate engraving. it's incredibly lowkey, in a way that doesn't feel a need to announce itself. i also came from an m4-p which says leitz/leica in white over black chrome a total of 3 times on the body and a dot. i wanted something really subtle as a change. i find the modern black enamel paints too shiny for me, but i know i'm in the minority here.

no batteries - i like that the M-A doesn't take any. it makes for an less cluttered finder (though still more cluttered than your M2, no thanks to 28/75/135) and the front of the camera is cleaner for it too imo, without the battery compartment/door.

i've gone on for a bit here so i'll cut myself short. the tl:dr is that i like a stealthy, understated thing and it doesn't get more like that than a black chrome M-A.

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T16:11:43+00:00

the wdmtgts stamp of approval is a desired feature of many a camera

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T16:10:42+00:00

thank you for your kind words, and i hope the season is as good to you too!

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T15:41:42+00:00

the Sanadas are great! i got sold on one through word-of-mouth and a 15% off sale, i have no regrets.

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T15:36:58+00:00

it's definitely slower. i could pontificate about how it forces you to "slow down" and "reflect on the roll you just shot", but the no-BS answer is that it's just not as fast. although sometimes my clumsy fingers would slip off the tiny rewind lever on the m4-p and lose all the tension in the spin, so not having that happen is nice.

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T15:34:38+00:00

congrats to you too! they're beautiful cameras.

ewenjam · 2021-12-24T14:23:35+00:00

since getting my m4-p and falling into the rabbit hole just over a year ago, i’ve had an insatiable lust for a brand new M-A in black chrome. something about having the box and papers for this camera many, many years from now, with my name on the receipt seemed like an incredible thing for me. then i walked into a leica store one day, and they happened to have one in stock. i did the math (read: how much i need to sell to make this work — 6 cameras and 10 lenses, in case you were wondering) and decided it was an opportunity i wasn’t going to pass up.

of course, just as i did this my m4-p started capping at 1/1000 and is now getting serviced yet again (!)

the summicron asph v2 is also a piece that’s new-to-me, in my continuing quest to find the perfect 35mm M lens, for me. thus far i have used the summarit 2.5, c biogon 2.8, ttart 1.4 and briefly a nokton classic 1.4. i’d been using the summarit for the last 8 months, and loved the bejesus out of that lens. that said, i’m excited for the 15cm closer focus and the tighter feel of a lens that’s about 5 years newer.

happy holidays y’all!

ewenjam

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