GAS GAS: Please Share your Latest Desires Big and Small

It's a couple of hours till my "Friday" shift (I have off Wednesday and Thursday each week) and I'm sitting here wondering if I should consider selling my Leica M240 to finance a Z5 kit.

On the one hand, it's getting long in the tooth. Plus, there are lots of adaptors to use M & LTM glass on the Z.

OTOH, it's a Leica. There is a certain je ne sais quoi to the camera - it's heft and feel not to mention the simple act of focusing it watching the patches align.

That model is going for more now on ebay than when I bought it. 2500 ~ 3000 would put me in a new camera with several native lenses and the ability to use virtually every lens I have laying around here. A warranty on a new body would be a nice thing as well.

It's probably just as well there doesn't seem to be any place around here that I can get a hands-on trial of a Z5 ;) It makes it easier to keep this all as a matter of pondering over a mug of tea until it's time to leave for work and I grab the Leica on the way out of the door.
There’s all sorts of good reasons for getting into a Z camera, but I would firstly get a cheap used one in addition to your current setup. There’s no getting away from the fact that rangefinders are too different from a modern mirrorless EVF camera in use and thought. This was quickly apparent to me when I got my Z6. It’s great and the amount of things it does better than a rangefinder are numerous including the ability to utilise any legacy lens, the S line of native lenses which in conjunction with the camera provide unbeatable optically perfect images if that’s your thing, plus better and more accurate focusing. I personally love the ease with which I can utilise a manual legacy 180mm F2.8 lens, a nigh on impossible task on a rangefinder. But alas, it’s just not like using a rangefinder. At all. But that’s just me, you may be different which is fine but at the very least I would only sell the RF after you’ve spent some time with the Z camera along side it. Just to be sure. You don’t want to be in the position of wanting to buy a rangefinder to replace the one you sold.
 
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Yeah, it's not the same, a rangefinder vs monitoring a digital screen. Having to open and close the aperture is a hassle, compared to systems that do it for you (or don't case, in case of a rangefinder). And don't think for a second that Z5 can adapt to the M lenses to same fidelity the M240 can. The sensor stack is worlds apart and the lenses will not perform like they deserve.

(Yes, I am fairly certain that a native Nikkor Z lens on that Z5 will smoke most anything Leica can do, IQ wise, because of how little compromises a brand new system needs to make, compared to decades of legacy and custom.)

But I do understand the bug.
All I say is that if you have to succumb to the GAS, don't get a Z5 because it's perhaps too cheaply made. Get a Z that's more worthy of being the successor to M240 in your cabinet. Z5 is like an insult. Don't sell your old Rolls to finance a barebones Toyota. A purposefully crippled camera just so that it can be fit into a certain consumer market segment. Your Rolls of a camera, the M240, never was that.
I have M10P which I certainly enjoy using, but I also have Z5 and can honestly say it does not come across as a cheaply made camera at all. It seems solidly designed and manufactured with high QC. In fact, it seems more solid than my Df. The Df battery door frequently falls off!
Shame there is not a physical store where you can go a try one out yourself.
 
I have M10P which I certainly enjoy using, but I also have Z5 and can honestly say it does not come across as a cheaply made camera at all. It seems solidly designed and manufactured with high QC. In fact, it seems more solid than my Df. The Df battery door frequently falls off!
Shame there is not a physical store where you can go a try one out yourself.
I am glad that Z5 is better built than the impressions give.

The Df's battery door is indeed a very flimsy one.
 
So Nikon released a black version of the Zfc, and in certain regions (not the US) you can get different color skins. I want the black with chalk blue so badly…
214A10CD-F1AE-4FE4-9161-0A920453D708.png
 
So Nikon released a black version of the Zfc, and in certain regions (not the US) you can get different color skins. I want the black with chalk blue so badly…
View attachment 346940
I can relate - I own the Z fc ("original") and *still* spent ten minutes looking at the new skins ... The pure black also looks the part, and I also fancy the midnight blue ... But, no. One's enough, and swapping things just for bling thankfully ain't me.

M.
 
Ah, error is in the eyes of the beholders. I posted this image of La Diessa del Muerte (The Goddess of Death) on another board and was assailed for posting an image with camera shake. I hastened to point out that the spider webs in the photo were not smeared so, therefore, the chances of camera shake were minimal if at all. To no avail. "Camera shake" was the cry and "camera shake" it remained. I decided today to manipulate the RAW (3FR) image by clarifying it to see if it could be any more definitive. If nothing else the edits in Hasselblad's Phocus photo editor made me a believer in the usefulness of editing. The out-of-focus areas are shallow depth-of-field common to large format images and more so with a wide-open aperture. But I see no shake. I do like the camera. La Diessa is who comes to tell you that you got your ticket punched. El Tecolote, The Owl, then flies you off to The Underworld. They were carved in Tocuaro, Michoacan, a village famous for mask carvers.

Here is a link to the JPG as the camera produced it, unedited: B0000002

And here the edited version:

Job_0001e.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 
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Ah, error is in the eyes of the beholders. I posted this image of La Diessa del Muerte (The Goddess of Death) on another board and was assailed for posting an image with camera shake. I hastened to point out that the spider webs in the photo were not smeared so, therefore, the chances of camera shake were minimal if at all. To no avail. "Camera shake" was the cry and "camera shake" it remained. I decided today to manipulate the RAW (3FR) image by clarifying it to see if it could be any more definitive. If nothing else the edits in Hasselblad's Phocus photo editor made me a believer in the usefulness of editing. The out-of-focus areas are shallow depth-of-field common to large format images and more so with a wide-open aperture. But I see no shake. I do like the camera. La Diessa is who comes to tell you that you got your ticket punched. El Tecolote, The Owl, then flies you off to The Underworld. They were carved in Tocauro, Michoacan, a village famous for mask carvers.

Here is a link to the JPG as the camera produced it, unedited: B0000002

And here the edited version:

Well do please keep on posting. We are lucky enough to have two digital MF owners contributing here being @Bobitybob and yourself and it’s interesting (for me anyway) seeing what comes out of these cameras.
 
Well do please keep on posting. We are lucky enough to have two digital MF owners contributing here being @Bobitybob and yourself and it’s interesting (for me anyway) seeing what comes out of these cameras.
You may come to regret that encouragement. ;o) I can tell you that I am honestly happier with the X2D than I think I would have been with an M11. I am not sure I posted this but to make sure here is a link to a pot-bellied stove inside the Oysterville Church. The Full Auto selected ISO 25600 to shoot at and I do not see a lot of noise in this photo. Granted I am biased but you tell me how well any other camera would be doing at that ISO in your estimation. Here it is: B0000050
 
I can relate - I own the Z fc ("original") and *still* spent ten minutes looking at the new skins ... The pure black also looks the part, and I also fancy the midnight blue ... But, no. One's enough, and swapping things just for bling thankfully ain't me.

M.
i really don’t need one of these, but the black on black is very tempting…
 
i really don’t need one of these, but the black on black is very tempting…
Those guys in Marketing know what motivates us. They are a rough crowd. ;o)
 
I am not sure I posted this but to make sure here is a link to a pot-bellied stove inside the Oysterville Church. The Full Auto selected ISO 25600 to shoot at and I do not see a lot of noise in this photo. Granted I am biased but you tell me how well any other camera would be doing at that ISO in your estimation. Here it is: B0000050
Impressive indeed and to me, not being very noise-sensitive, that would be a fully useable photo.
 
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