What’s Been Happening?

Where to start? It’s been over a year since I’ve retired. No more long days away from home, sleeping in a different bed every night and wondering what time zone I’m in. I guess it’s time to quit ignoring my blog and take some time to get caught up.

I have been making photos but haven’t taken the time to post. Plus I’ve recently added some additional equipment that I’m still working on mastering. My youngest son has taken an interest in photography and we’ve spent the last two Saturdays photographing in Cincinnati where he’s living. I will post some of those photographs below. I gave him my retired Ricoh GXR with the 28mm lens module to get started.

As many of you who have followed my blog know that I’ve been photographing with the Leica M-E, which is based on the original Leica M9, that I purchased at the end of 2012. Seems like forever ago and in this digital camera age that’s a really long time ago. But I still love how simple the camera is to operate and the images it produces. It does have the latest sensor since the corrosion issue cropped up.

For many years owning this camera I have also been interested in what it would be like to shoot with a Leica Monochrom. As I was purchasing my M-E back in the day, Leica released their first Monochrom camera based on the M9’s CCD sensor. In the course of developing that camera, Leica realized that their current lens lineup needed updating to take advantage of the amount of data the Monochrom sensor could capture without the color array. That’s the beginning of their current APO technology used in their updated lenses where the first one updated was the Leica 50mm APO-Summicron.

Well I finally found a mint Leica M Monochrom made back in 2012 and bought a used Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH FLE I.