Camera: Leica Monochrom
Exposure: 1/1000
Aperture: f/1.4
Focal Length: 35mm
ISO: 320
Harper Reed (@harper) and I finally got a chance to sit down together and chat at ORDcamp. Harper was the CTO for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has been a company founder and is now working at Braintree as senior director of software development. We’ve been talking for a while, buying and selling camera gear, so it was good to finally get a chance to meet in person to talk and perform some experiments with photography.
The first image of Harper above, was made with perhaps my favorite focal length, a 35mm lens on a full frame camera.
Camera: Leica SL
Exposure: 1/800
Aperture: f/4.0
Focal Length: 135mm
ISO: 800
The next two images were made with a different camera that shoots in color and set up an interesting experiment in how two different lenses render. Because of the electronic viewfinder in the Leica SL, it makes for a considerably better camera than a rangefinder design for Leica lenses longer than 50mm. This particular image was made with Harper’s Leitz/Leica Elmar M 135mm f/4.0 lens, probably made some time in the 1960s. This was a wonderful lens that renders nicely wide open, and slightly washes out the color for a remarkably vintage look. I love it and may go looking for one after this.
Camera: Leica SL
Exposure: 1/10,000
Aperture: f/1.2
Focal Length: 50mm
ISO: 800
This image was also made with the Leica SL, but this time with the Noctilux 50mm showing the difference not only in focal length, but also demonstrating what modern lens coatings do for color and contrast. I would not call it better, but it does exhibit more color saturation and certainly more sharpness/contrast.