Just a quick post; these are from the first day I had the new camera (Leica M11) and took it out in the world a little. My little walk for sanity, as I’ve come to think of it. I’ve had it a month now, and I’ve got some opinions. With one notable exception, everything is better than the M10 was. Resolution, obviously, but that’s not even that important to me; I’ve had enough pixels since the d700 gave me 12MP. The battery is bigger, such that a whole day’s shooting will likely only require one. The menus are simplified, easy to use, and the wifi connection to my phone seems more reliable, too. The optical viewfinder is the same, excellent, the just best rangefinder. Live View is more responsive, both on the back display and through the Visoflex EVF (More on that in a minute). The shutter lag is the same, or at least I can’t tell a difference; if the camera is ready, and you’re fast enough, it’ll get the shot.
That is the camera’s one flaw though, that you have to make sure it’s awake. you turn it on and have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to be ready to take a picture, and what’s worse, the shutter opens and the viewfinder lines light up but it actually needs another half second to be ready. 3 seconds is an eternity. And the wake from sleep is also slow, on the order of 2ish seconds. Leica: please, dear god, figure your shit out. Nikon, canon, sony, even my dang Ricoh GR3, all get this right, ready to go in under half a second. The nikon is ready to shoot faster than I can roll my finger from the on switch to the shutter button. I feel like this is something I could fix with a couple weeks with the source code ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
A could other minor things: the internal memory is nice to have and has already saved my bacon once. I only took one card with me to OKC for a week, and that card started acting up on day one. 64gb, as it turns out, is plenty for a week in Oklahoma. The rear screen glass is nothing special; I can say this because mine is already cracked. Edit: turns out it was a screen protector the previous owner installed, which I discovered after my screen protector also cracked. Moral of the story: screen protectors suck.
Posted on 2023-04-21T08:02:09Z GMT
This was one of those nights that it was just such a privilege to be there. Picking up the camera and using it opens strange and wonderful doors, and this was one of them. Marisa, founder of Third Wall, above and below, is a total rock star, someone I know through Odd Salon, and puts on this thing. I had little to no idea what it was, but saw on facebook they were hoping to get someone to come and take some still pictures, and someone to take some video, and I was happy to volunteer.
Marisa is a real rock star, incredible voice and energy, trained as an operatic voice if I recall correctly. It was her show, her idea, although this was the first one they’d had since 2019. The same family that hosted the last one was hosting this one, but they had since moved house.
Anyway. The idea was: back in the day a lot of music happened in ‘salons’ with live players, sometimes even the composers themselves, demoing new ideas, fragments, etc. And everybody had a whole cultural context in which the pieces were experienced; they knew the history of the players and the composers, who was sleeping with who, who studied with who else, etc etc.
So what Third Wall events are is introducing some of that context with the music played by people that also know that history. The theme for this one was “Unrequited,” about, you guessed it, unrequited love. Really, a fascinating way to spend an evening. I don’t know when the next one will be but they have an instagram.
Posted on 2023-04-06T05:32:45Z GMT
Sophie is gonna hate this one, because she hates photos of herself, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ she’s in Amsterdam and can’t get mad at me. Or she could, but she won’t be back for a week and by then this post will be pushed way down the page where she won’t see it. Shh don’t tell her.
I thought I had posted these earlier, maybe they’re in a draft post somewhere. This was a saturday after we got back; the occasion was to try out a new book of cocktail recipes they had gotten us for christmas. Vinyl and Booze, and we had a bunch of vinyl and a bunch of fancy cocktail ingredients. I tasted stuff but didn’t have full drinks, because of my gout. Still, fun, and the excuse to get together and listen to music was quite nice. The proposed ratio of one (fancy, mostly hard liquor) drink per side was a bit much for everyone that was having full glasses, but we managed.
The M11 came this week. I bought it at the end of last week and it was shipped ground (dang ebay sellers). But it was whole and as advertised, like new. less than a thousand clicks on the shutter, not a mark on it. I charged up the battery and I’ve been shooting with it since Saturday (friday I was out of commission mostly due to insomnia). So far, so good. I want to make a shutter lag testing rig, just a bit of software to see how long it takes me to react and get a picture. I can test it with cameras that feel fast and feel slow and put numbers to my feelings.
The feeling, right now, is the M11 is fast enough, but that might change at any moment. I haven’t shot any real fast action with it yet. It’s not a sports camera but getting images à la sauvette is not a slow camera game. TBD, and more as it develops.
Posted on 2023-03-27T08:11:02Z GMT
