A380 Tokyo to Singapore!

A380 Tokyo to Singapore!, originally uploaded by benny ng.

This is what a 15mm should look like in it's full glory!

Shot with the Voigtlander Super Wide-Heliar 15mm f/4.5 Aspherical on the Leica M7, so there is no 'crop' on the image as it's not a APS-C sensor.

By the way, lots of goodies from this Japan trip. Got the another Zeiss Ikon, but in black. Some vintage Canon and Nikkor M39 rangefinder lenses as well! All in all, a good trip.

Cheers

Contax TLA 200 Flash!

640_MG_0006, originally uploaded by benny ng.

Finally the black Contax TLA 200 flash arrived! Most of those around are the titanium color version to match the Contax G2. I got this off ebay from a German seller who would not ship out of Germany. Had to ask him to ship to Andreas Werth, my friend in Germany and he subsequently shipped it with the Novoflex bellows over here. Mounumental effort indeed to get this fella.

Anyway, the black one looks just nice on my R-D1. Now to figure out how well this baby works with flash!

Cheers,

Got my Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2.0!!

Marina Bay, originally uploaded by benny ng.

This is one of the first few shots from my new lens on the Epson R-D1! It's the fourth version of Leica's 35mm Summicron, or commonly known as the King of Bokeh!

Michael alerted me to this chrome version for sale on Rangefinderforum.com. Some one actually beat me to it. As usual. Luckily, buyer backed out and I ended up with the lens. Small package and feels really good in the hand. Let's hope it performs as well as it's reputation.

Cheers,

Testing my Elmar 3.5cm f/3.5 on chiif!

Chii Fei, originally uploaded by benny ng.

Got this off ebay and brought it along to show Chii Fei. Seems like I paid too much of it. As usual.

Anyway, looks like there's fog in this tiny lens so the contrast is very low. Of course nothing Adobe photoshop can't fix. I think I'll send it in for cleaning to see if it can improve. These tiny vintage lenses are just so....... pretty!

Chii Fei says "Buy less, shoot more"! Ha Ha.

Cheers,

Dream Two

Dream Two, originally uploaded by benny ng.

The buildings in Hong Kong can be really close. This is shot with the 15mm lens on my recently acquired Epson R-D1 and it can still fill the whole frame. Talk about really high density living.

Cheers,

It finally arrived!! My Epson R-D1

It's been a long two weeks and finally, the Epson R-D1 arrives! Complete with it's original packaging too! I bought it off James Rogala, whose a New York based Art Director. He has a website at www.jamesrr.com. My Voigtlander Ultra Wide-Heliar 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical I got earlier was from him too!

Oh, the bummer was that the package was detained by the customs and I had to go there to collect personally as they wanted me to pay taxes on it. Wasted a good Saturday. Oh well...

Anyway, I'm so excited with my new toy!

Cheers,

p.s. It's already updated with the R-D1s firmware so it's as good as an R-D1s. Yay!!

The world of Range finder cameras...

is so confusing.

So there's Leica and everybody says it's the one to get. Obviously there are other options too. But it seems like the predominant interchangeable lens systems are mainly confined to M mount, LTM/M39 mount, Nikon's S mount and Contax's C mount.

I think the M mount system seems to be the safest to go. Then there's the problem with cameras. You need to know what you like before you get them. Some of them have different type of viewfinders whilst others have differing 'framelines' which you need to match with your lens for framing. And then there's the fact that what you see is not what you get as you don't look through the lens. If you get lens that you don't have framelines for, you need to get viewfinders (which by the way ain't cheap!). And if you use viewfinders, you can't use flash. Everybody says you don't use flash for rangefinders. If that's is the case, then why do they make flashes for rangefinders. Strange....

Perhaps the SLR isn't that bad.......... Then again, perhaps I'll start with just a camera and one lens.

Cheers,