A few minutes with a Leica CL

With 2 small children, having a couple moments to spare is as rare as mermaids turning up on a Toronto beach, however, a couple weeks ago I actually did.  If you call minding a 10 month old at the same time as spare time.

So I threw an old film (use by date somewhere in the late '90s) in to what ever I could quickly pull out the draw.  I was first planning to use the F100, but discovered corroded batteries, so next in line was the CL, with which I found a 1958 50mm Summarit to go on the front.  This lens isn't very sharp wide open, but I needed a fast lens for shooting indoors with 100 ISO film.

I used up the roll shooting the kids round the house, however when a lens has a 1 metre minimum focus distance, shooting a 10 month old trying to crawl on top of you isn't that useful.

In the end it was all fun, and in due course the film will get processed, and may or may not produce anything at all.  We'll have to see.

Leica CL with Leica 50mm Summarit f1.5 (taken on a Nikon Coolpix A)

More interesting shots with the Leica CL

There were some interesting things that happened on, and as a result of the winter shoot that I wrote about in the previous post.

1) That damn filter

I had brought along a yellow filter to add a bit of contrast to some shots on the CL, and after managing to make drop it in the snow and make a mess, I also found out when I got back the photos that it also caused heavy vignetting, despite at 55mm fitment, being quite a bit bigger than the lens.

2) A shot crop

This photo, as a landscape, I quite like.  I cropped the top and bottom, which were just monotone sky and snow, and it turned out  much better.

3) Film scanner - NEX 5n

I ended up using the NEX 5n, and the Sigma 30mm lens perched above a light table with a tripod to scan the film.  The results were good, and the work flow speed reasonable.  A lot of the black and white shots I had to reconvert to black and white on photoshop, as they were shot in colour on the light table, some false colour snuck in.  Here's a none edited example of what I mean.

Leica CL in the park at winter time

         

A while back I wrote about my adventures here in Sunnybrook Park with a Leica CL, a Sony NEX 5n and a pair of snow shoes.  I fitted the cameras with the Voigtlander 21mm f4 and the Sigma 19mm f2.8, loaded some Fuji Neopan into the CL and ventured off.  

The CL is a cool camera.  It's really small, about the same size as a Sony NEX 6/7, and with the compact Voigtlander 21mm lens, it is almost pocketable.  The rangefinder is not even in the ballpark of the excellent Leica M3, but is comparable to cameras like the Fuji GS645S and the Canonet QL17.  With a slow wide angle lens like the Voigtlander, as long as you have focusing approximately right, there won't be an issue as the depth of field is so large.

Like I have written before, the Voigtlander is an excellent lens, and on film offers lovely tonality, commensurate with the Neopan film.  Compared to the shots with the Sony NEX, the contrast is much lower, with many more gradients of gray showing.  I will admit that I had set the NEX contrast artificially high, but I was still surprised to see the difference.

Sony NEX wide angle - Sigma 19mm f2.8 vs Voigtlander 21mm f4

A few weeks ago I snow shoe'd through the Serena Gundy Park and took both the Sony NEX 5n with the Sigma 19mm f2.8 and the Leica CL with the Voigtlander 21mm f4.  I decided to bring along my Leica M to NEX adapter and do a quick test on the  to see if I could see any difference between the two lenses.  I reasoned that I should use f5.6 on both lenses, as it was not the maximum aperture for both lenses, where performance would be weakest.

Just off centre, where I took these crops, the performance of both lenses at f5.6 is outstanding, easily out resolving the 16MP Sony sensor.  No difference, from what I can see.  A quick check of the outer areas of the photo also revealed no discernible difference.

Which leaves me with one conclusion, for $100, the Sigma 19mm f2.8 is a damn fine lens.

CROP - Sigma 19mm f2.8

Sigma 19mm f2.8

CROP - Voigtlander 21mm f4

Voigtlander 21mm f4

Serena Gundy in Black and White

Last weekend I decided to get out the brand new snow shoes that my wife had given me for Christmas a couple years back and try them out.  Though it was over a week after Toronto's big snow storm, there was still some deep snow, so it was fun.  I ducked down into Serena Gundy Park a took some shots in black and white with the Sony NEX 5n fitted with the Sigma 19mm and the Leica CL with the Voigtlander 21mm f4 Color Skopar and finder.  I took this lot for a couple reasons; 1) I wanted to shoot some film, and 2) I wanted to do a test between the Sigma 19mm and the Voigtlander 21mm (see up coming post).

The walk ended up being a lot of fun and I enjoyed the time outside, however shooting nature in black and white can be a challenge, as it is very difficult to not end up with a cluttered shot, or just a generic tree shot.  

One thing I did learn was that holding filters in front on cameras with gloves on is tricky; and filters also do not appreciate being dropped in the snow.