Leica Leica Akademie "The Truth About Photographs: Developing a Distinctive Visual Style"

asiafish

All-Pro
Location
Bakersfield, CA
Name
Andrew
Has anyone attended this workshop? I am signed up for one in Los Angeles this coming weekend and am quite excited about it. Naturally I am having a great time pulling out my hair trying to settle glass, but I have committed to carrying only one extra lens and the usual cards and batteries, all in jacket pockets, with no camera bag.

So here is my dilemma for glass on the M Monochrom (no color from me this weekend).

On the body will be either the 35mm f/2.5 Summarit-M or one of my 50mm lenses (50mm f/2 Summicron v5, 50mm f/1.5 C Sonnar, 5cm f/1.5 Jupiter 3 or 5cm f/1.5Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar).

If I go with the 35mm, I'll carry the 90mm f/2.5 Summarit in the jacket pocket. If I go with a 50mm, I'll bring either the 35 Summarit or give another go at 24mm with the 24mm f/3.8 Elmar-M ASPH that I just put up for sale.

The workshop will be mostly street and urban photography in downtown Los Angeles, with a good amount of night photography on Friday. Saturday will be out on the streets most of the day, and I expect to get a lot of use out of my ND and yellow, orange and red filters. Sunday is mostly in the classroom doing post and then exhibit/critique of best images.

In addition to my own gear, I can borrow almost any current Leica lens or body, though I prefer not to play with anything I can't afford to buy, lest I not get too spoiled and frustrated.

Thoughts? Advise?
 
Sounds like a blast. Wish I could go. :)

Hmmm. The 35mm will be a nice scene capture lens, so great during most of the day set at a wide hyperfocal. At night, you'll want to open up aperture with whatever lens, so something so I could definitely see the f1.5 being helpful. So I'm with kingsfan, the 50mm f1.5 for night, and be ready to focus.
 
I recently spent a week in Paris and shot the entire vacation with three lenses: 24mm Elmar, 35mm Summarit, and 50mm C-Sonnar. One on the camera, and the other two in my coat pockets. At no time did I wish I had brought any of my other lenses. Considering you have available the exact same three lenses, that would be my recommendation.

I also own a 90 Summarit, but find that 90mm is not a terribly useful focal length for street work. YMMV.

Cheers,

Antonio
 
The 35 and 24 are easy choices, the hard part is deciding between my 50s. So far I love the C Sonnar, but the 1937 Sonnar and the Jupiter 3 have their own magic, though are both far more prone to flare. The argument against bringing all three is the bio of the instructor, who is a "one lens" advocate and in his case 35mm. I'm more of a 50mm shooter, but then my 35 Summarit hasn't had much love lately so I may start there.

The decision between the 50 Cron and one of the Sonnars is more difficult than which Sonnar. The Cron has a very different rendering that is more perfect and takes away my need to consider focus shift at all, though all of my Sonnars are optimized for f/1.5 and I'd probably just use ND filters to stay wide-open most of the time anyway, or when I wanted del depth of field f/8 makes focus shift a non-issue. The advantage of the cron is having the full aperture scale to work with without trying to compensate at f/2 through f/4.5 where my Sonnars are a bit difficult.

The 24 Elmar is very unpredictable for me, mainly because I don't have a 24mm viewfinder and don't do well with the M Monochrom viewfinder wider than 35mm (I hated the 28mm frame lines).

Decisions, decisions.
 
For 50's: bring the Summicron and a Sonnar as they are very different lenses. Summicron is highly corrected, Sonnars are faster and "not" as well corrected. If the class was mainly for portraiture, Sonnar hands-down.
 
If it was portraiture I'd bring just one (or more) Sonnars and the 90 Summarit. In downtown LA I imagine we will also get a lot of architecture, food and unpredictability in addition to street portraits.
 
Well, the instructor recommended just the MM and one of the Sonnars for Friday night (will probably go with the modern one for flare resistance) and then the 35 for almost everything Saturday, with the 50 and 24 in pockets. My thought for daylight is 35 for general use, 24 for expansive views and Sonnar for people.
 
Maybe I'll do even better and make the uncoated Sonnar my one lens for Friday night, instead of the C Sonnar. I'll have to be much more careful of streetlights and the like, but even the Noctilux guys won't get bokeh like I do.
 
1934 5cm f1.5 Sonnar, wide-open on the M9. This lens is nickel rather than chrome, and probably the first batch with the newer style construction that allows the conversion.

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The Bloom on these Sonnars act as a single coating. Flare and reflections are less than what you might expect.

Another, same lens on the Monochrom. The window to the hanger has produced flare on lenses much more modern than this.

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I have a book with production dates by Serial Number. I converted these lenses to Leica mount using a J-3 focus mount.

The 1934 lens, the aperture ring is nickel, not chrome.

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