Let’s Photo

A heavy little gun, or mini-tank. The camera, especially with this heavy lens does have the feeling of a weapon. Not that I ever had or want or ever will want a gun (I am very much against guns), but I could imagine that this is exactly what it feels like to hold one. It has this tempting, superior feeling of perfect manufacturing. The item is so well made that one only wants to take it for a spin and "shoot around a bit". It would be silly to say anything else about the noctilux on the M7, because the M7 is a rangefinder camera, so I did not really look through the lens. The lens felt a bit big, well it has to be, to collect all the and it felt a bit heavy, well it has to be to collect all the with its glass elements and “air lenses” (crazy). The m7 I handled also had a motor drive attached, which was turned off, preventing me from taking any pictures. One it was turned on, it was possible to shoot. No film. The shooting experience was a good one. The improvements in the M7 are so subtle for the naked eye. Everything just hidden and barely visible because of a tiny switch here, and a dial which used to be just a dial and now actually does something there. I wanted to hear how quiet the camera really is, as it is legendary for being such an unobtrusive little devil. And here came the first surprise of the day. In order to take off the motor, thus be able to shoot without it, the user needs to open the camera. The motor is the bottom plate of the camera, the plate that needs to be taken off to change the film. This means that it is not possible to switch film and motor independently. It is either a film that was shot manually, or with motor. Hmm, that does not feel right. The mechanical plate becomes just a piece that can be lost when the motor is on. How come this has not ever been improved? Even my old praktina can have a motor drive attached and detached at any time.
I guess my thinking is not professional enough. Why would I ever want to see a film as a series of 36 pictures. A film is usually one picture, when photography is to be taken seriously. We are not talking about a camera for Christmas parties here. So I guess my thinking is this of an amateur. But I like being an amateur.
On to the Digilux. The beautiful new Digilux. I did not want to believe my eyes. This thing is BIG. It is a big black plastic brick with additional plastic parts spray painted in silver. What happened here? This is not the first Digilux, even though it is called Digilux 1. Leica just switched partners. They used to work with Fuji, and now they work with Panasonic. The old Digilux used to be a sleek metal camera, basically a fuji digital camera with a Leica logo on it. Digilux 1 seems to be the first full Leica development. The housing was designed by friends of a friend in Frankfurt. I think I will need to wait for the digilux 2. The one currently out might have a fantastic lens , a LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON 7-21mm f/2-2,5 ASPH. (corresponds to a 33 - 100 mm zoom lens on a 35 mm camera) and all these unbelievable capabilities, but it just felt a tiny bit too big for my taste. I was expecting something much smaller than the minilux and in black metal. What I saw was much bigger than the minilux and in black and silver plastic. If Leica would like to send me a camera to test. I will be happy to change my mind, but for now.. Hmm... The Leica man could not really master the interface of the camera and we also could not find out how to shoot multiple pictures in succession. A very, very important feature for anybody who wants to get beyond the first “photo-face” of the subject. So when I shot a high resolution picture, the camera told me to wait and wait and wait, as it needed several seconds to cope with the amount of data it just had received from the CCD. I am certain that the next generation will be an incredible camera. This current one already is packed with features aimed at "real" photographers. It is for example possible to adjust the film sensitivity. (What film?), something a photographer would do, no? Another feature I really found interesting was the flash preview. The display changed contrast and saturation of colors to show me what the picture is going to look like. I first thought that it might be an energy saving feature, but it turned out that the camera flashed and that the picture that was then actually taken looked very much like the one that was previewed in the finder. Impressive. Another impressive feature of the camera was more mechanical. It is possible to attach regular filters to it. (49mm filters, the same ones that fit on most of my praktina lenses) and it will also be possible to attach the camera to the Leica - Televid spotting scopes, making the digilux a crazy photo sniper tool for paparazzi. The lens attached would technically give the digilux a 4600mm lens... (I can not quite believe it, but this is what the Leica man said.).
Then came the noise test. The digilux was the most quiet camera of them all, of course. Since it has hardly any movable parts. There was panic in the store when I took out a Contax G2 to compare the noise level with the m7. Almost as if I had pulled out a cross at a vampire meeting. The shutter sound was maybe a bit louder on the G2. But probably because the G2 needs to focus, to shoot and to advance the film. All in a split second, so it can shoot the next four in the same second. I should have compared the M7 with the drive attached. So the comparison is not fair. What surprised me was that the *minilux* was more quiet than the M7. It might have been because the minilux had no film in it, and the noise of the film being advanced can not be ignored, but otherwise, the minilux was the most quiet camera on the table. (I had a huge smile on my face.) It seems like the minilux is quite a superb little camera. I just need to get mine fixed really soon and shoot away again.
One more leica encounter. Leica - 0-Series. A beautiful little camera. Beautiful one with a collapsible lens, (the one on the minilux is a hommage to that) and this cute little leather lens-cap that would always need to be put on when the film was advanced. The release sound of this camera was a bit of a mini guillotine. Each picture a special event. One day... One day I would like to try to take pictures with this little friend. Just the way some pictures used to be taken 1923/24... This camera was really far ahead of its time. it was probably as revolutionary as digital photography is to us now. But this is yet another story.