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Monday, 13 August 2018

What's in and what's out. Changes to my gear.






































The above picture shows what's in. A Leica M10, which I bought as a smaller, lighter camera in contrast to the big heavy stuff I've been carrying around lately. There's a 7Artisans 35mm f/2 fitted to it which is also new. Nice lens for less than £200.

Two complete systems have gone. All my Sigma SD stuff. Now this is a great system and the SD Quattro and Quattro H were great cameras with great image quality. However, things have moved on and there are now C-MOS sensor cameras that can equal the Foveon sensor quality and, of course, have much better results at high(er) ISO's. It was sitting on a shelf unused most of the time.

You might be surprised that all my Leica TL (APS-C) gear has gone. The TL2 camera and all the lenses. Now I loved the Leica T, but it did have drawbacks with regard to video and using manual lenses. Now I assumed that the TL2 would be better. But despite having 4K video the results were very disappointing. And until the last firmware update focus peaking didn't work. It does now but for non-system lenses and adapters, the magnification has now disappeared!! Very disappointing. The 24MP sensor is very good, but I was hoping for more. Again this was sitting unused, so I decided to sell the system to help pay for the M10. I've also sold my Leica Q.

The Lumix TZ-100 has gone, since the GX9 + 14-140mm is not much heavier and a lot better quality. The GH5 also went, as the G9 is a much better camera for me. I also sold my native Lumix lenses, apart from the aforementioned zoom since I'm using my Canon lenses via my Metabones 0.64x speed booster adapter all the time on my G9. They are 'faster' lenses and suit what I do a lot more.

Two things that went on ebay and I then removed were the Leica SL (Typ 601) and Canon 5DS R. My idea was to get a weight and size gain by replacing the SL, Q and TL2 with the M10, so I put the SL and 24-90mm lens up for sale. I then withdrew the body and left the lens + battery grip. I then withdrew them from ebay as well since, despite it's ridiculous weight, the idea of selling the best camera / lens combination I've ever used started to seem like a mistake. After all I could well still get some work where it would fit perfectly. I'm probably going to be walking around stock shooting with the M10, but I realised I would probably regret selling the SL outfit, so decided to keep it.

The Canon 5DS R was something different. Now I don't know if the market is declining for S/H DSLR's on ebay, but a camera I thought would fly out of the door, didn't. And I was getting some silly offers for a near mint camera. In the light of the fact that I would probably get a much reduced price than I anticipated I decided to keep it. How often I will use it, who knows, but again the possibility of some commercial work means it's probably worth keeping.

So, a bit more room in my camera cupboard now. The film cameras now outnumber the film cameras, but as I've indicated before, I'm collecting them. Though I haven't shot any film since the M10 arrived (because at it's heart it's a film camera with a digital output!!) I will be back doing that before too long.

I have to say though that I absolutely love the M10. My new favourite ever camera. I've had a few M's (M7, M8 and M9) and it fits in that lineage perfectly. I was a bit underwhelmed by the M (Typ 240) and I'm not sure that Leica M cameras and video is a good fit. I certainly have no issue that the M10 is stills only.

You'll probably realise that a lot of the above sales are to pay for said M10, since it is seriously expensive, but I'm happy to do it. It's much more my kind of camera. And though I still like DSLR's and mirrorless, the classic simplicity of the M10 paired with the Visoflex EVF (which incidentally works much better than it did on the TL2) gives me a lot of options. This is the first significant selling I've done for a long while, but I'm a lot happier now that I'm not overwhelmed with cameras I liked but hardly used. But then that Nikon Mirrorless is on the horizon and I probably won't be able to resist. If not then I'll probably sell something to pay for it, assuming the promise lives up to expectations. Like many photographers I was impressed by the Sony FE system in terms of image quality, but hated pretty much everything else. If nothing else the Nikon might make Sony sit up and take notice of the criticisms. But then again....................


Stock photography by david martyn hughes at Alamy

© David Taylor-Hughes / Soundimageplus Blog

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