Here are a few more pics, taken as time has gone on. These are from a wedding album I've done, entitled

                         'An Evocation based on the Exquisite Words of the Song of Solomon'

Introduction

I was on the plane over from Frankfurt to England, when  out of sheer boredom, I casually picked up the in-flight advertising magazine.

Flipping carelessly through the pages, I spotted an ad for the LEICA V-LUX 4.

Equally casually I started to read it, and my jaw must have dropped to the floor as I read the abbreviated details.

Disbelief

I simply could not believe what I was reading.

What? A camera with an f 2.8 lens, and a zoom of 25 - 600 mm? Nah. That had got to be a mistake, misprint, or some other boo-boo. So I put the magazine back, got home, went online to find out if this was a major mistake of some kind.

It wasn't.

A divorce?

I have now owned 3 Leica cameras, and they have never let me down, and invariably produced splendid pictures of my children and family. S-o-o-o-o...

I decided to buy one, and went on ebay and Amazon.Then  I wandered through town looking for the Leica shop advertised on Google, but it had closed down and it was a wasted trip. So, online purchase then.

I looked at the ridiculous German prices (>£840), the various other sellers - the cheapest being from Hong Kong, not including the customs duty that would be payable - and finally found Spilsbury House in Burton selling the camera for £610 inc postage and VAT.

A Great Deal

I figured this was a great deal. If I had bought, say a Canon or Nikon with a standard lens, then added a 25mm wide-angle, and a long 500mm telephoto, I would be looking at a small fortune - over a thousand, I would have thought.  

And there's another thing. Years ago, I bought a Minolta CL with a Summicron f2  35mm lens, and an f4 90mm compact Elmar portrait lens, for £92 all told - which was a lot of money to me in those days.

Out of sheer curiosity I went on eBay to see if they were being sold there, and they were. The camera body and the 35mm Summicron had an asking price of £574!!!! or so. Not counting the Elmar! 

So I can't lose, I'm positive. But one never knows, and my wife took a good deal of convincing - but even she could see that it might not be all loss.

There's another thing which I might mention here.

I see many moans online about the price. Yeah, Panasonic has much the same body and lens for a lot less. I've not handled their camera with the same Elmarit f2.8  25 - 600 zoom lens, but my other son has a Panasonic with a shorter Leica zoom lens, and the handling is not to be compared.

By comparison, the shutter is noisy, and the viewfinder murky. It's the difference between a gentleman and a thug. My friend at the birthday party mentioned below, had brought his Canon EOS along, and I was admiring it - because it IS a nice looking camera. He then asked me what I was using, and on seeing it said: 'Oh, it's a Leica. Say no more' and that was the end of the conversation!

True to their word, Spilsbury House sent the camera by UPS on the very day they had nominated, and then the divorce proceedings nearly started. We'll leave out the unpleasant bit, but it is still simmering away in the background!

Not really - I hope!

The Camera

The camera really surprised me, even on first handling.

It's extremely compact, very light, and doesn't have an enormous zoom lens sticking out at the front.. In fact, I doubted whether this could really be a 600mm lens on there, but it is.

My wife (she still is!) owns a Sony digital with a zoom lens up to 200mm I think, which weighs half a ton. It's a very good camera, but is nowhere near the same league as the Leica.

Naturally I had to make a comparison - and quite simply, there is no comparison. The Sony's mechanism is noisy, not silkily near silent as the Leica, and the difference in the distances they can reach quite startled me, despite the small difference in  lens length.

I wonder what the Wizards Of Wetzlar are cooking up next? An 18 -1000mm zoom? I wouldn't put it past them.

The Leica Viewfinder Is Priceless

It's so bright and clear, it's like looking into a diamond. It's difficult to believe that a camera viewfinder can be so beautiful, and can transform simple, nearly ugly things into beautiful objects.

My first look through it was a huge surprise. It was on the 25mm setting, and I could not identify what I was looking at - for a while. It had encompassed far more out to the side of the main object I was looking at than I expected - being a novice with these things - and it took a good bit of working out to figure out what was what.

There was no shadowing or blurring at the edges of the frame, and certainly no curving of the straight line of the door edge.

I tried looking at the bucket and mop - both dirty: and they looked startlingly unlike themselves.

The focussing mechanism works very quietly, and when the shutter button is half-depressed, the object in the selector frame in the viewfinder leaps remarkably quickly into focus. I took a picture of a few cherry blossoms on the bough about 60/70 feet away, and they nearly filled the frame. (See below).

The camera just sits there on my desk, like a quiet little black cat, just wanting to be handled.. It's difficult to keep my hands off it. It's a quiet little cat - until it unfurls the mighty talon of its snarling 25 - 600mm Elmarit lens - and I could probably take a picture of South Africa from Birmingham with that thing - well, maybe not...

As a novice...

to digital cameras, I will keep writing here, and maybe it will be of use to some others, who like me are embarking on a voyage of discovery of the capacities of this remarkable camera.

Did you know, for instance that you can produce a slideshow - with music from the camera yet!!! - of the pics you have on the memory card? Hooo boy!

The Shutter on Saturday

I mentioned  above that the shutter is extremely quiet - and here's the proof:

We were at a birthday party, and my son who had never touched the camera before, wanted to take the group shots, so I gave it to him. What could go wrong, I asked myself?

Everybody got into place, he climbed on a chair and started trying to shoot pictures of the group - only to be totally dismayed, because the camera simply wouldn't fire. (Someone in the group remarked loudly that "That's a Leica!!" implying, no doubt, that it should be able to take pictures!)

Eventually he gave up in disgust, put it down - gently, I hasten to say - and took a few more shots with his mobile phone.

My Dismay

As you can imagine, I was more than a little dismayed that my spanking, brand-new Leica wouldn't work! Complaints to Leitz, interlarded with a few choice phrases here and there, thundered through my head, as I mentally  composed the sulphurous thunderbolt I would hurl up their trouser legs in Wetzlar or wherever they may be hiding, and stalked irritatedly forward to have a look at the damned camera.

It HAD taken about 6 group pictures!

I figured out what had happened.

The shutter action is so quiet - very much like a soft kiss - and so vibration-free, that he didn't know that it HAD fired. And of course, when it has taken the picture, it  appears on the screen so immediately, it looks as if the group hadn't moved, and was still un-photographed!

So he kept on pressing the shutter, and did so about 6 times - resulting in about 6 pix all told!

Good one, Leitz.


I will keep updating this blog as time goes on, and upload pictures that may be worth a second look. I'm also working my way through the instruction manual - the camera is a complex beast - surprising, delighting and gratifying me as I go along, with the amazing things my little cat can do.

Here is the picture of the cherry blossoms and a few other things near to me and my house. I hope you like them. (Now I've got to go figure out how to upload the things). Instruction manual - where are ya?

 

I included this picture of the fireplace because of the intensity and accuracy of the colours the Elmarit produced.

The apple blossom shows the beautifully delicate tonal gradations of pink the lens can produce.That and the stingingly sharp definition, plus the mighty 25 - 600mm zoom, tells me that this is a lens without too many equals - if any.