Day 1: Unpacking

The unpacking was a real joy. Under every piece of carton was something hidden. Eventually all the usual things;

• Camera
• Battery
• Battery charger
• Neck strap
• USB cable
• Manual (multilingual)

There was also some additional stuff. Something you won't get with other camera's;

• Adobe Lightroom v3 license voucher.
  Accessible online after registering the camera with Leica.
• A free 6-months subscription to LFI
• a car charger

The unpacking of the lenses was fairly normal. A box with some foam and the lenses in plastic. I must say that these lenses are absolutely gorgeous. Small, and an extremely good building quality. Even better than my 20mm Voigtländer lens (Nikon mount).

After the unpacking came: the charging of the batteries…. Should have done that the minute I got home…. Now it's off to bed.

Day 4-6: First Days in the Field

After experimenting with the Leica at home we went away for a weekend. A nice opportunity to practice a bit more with the M9. Looks like I have a problem focussing with the M9. Every single time I turn the focus ring in the wrong direction. Some investigation showed that the focus is flipped compared to the Nikon lenses. The CZ lenses turn clockwise to go from nearby to infinite, while the Nikon lenses do this going counter-clockwise. Downside to this focussing issue is that my focussing is relatively slow. Not a problem with relative static scenes, but with "moving targets" it's kinda annoying / challenging.

Difference in focus direction

Another thing I need to get used to is the light-metering of the M9. There's only one way the camera meters the light. No matrix-metering or any of that fancy stuff. Metering is done in the area around the focus area as seen through the viewfinder (center-weighted). The exposure can be locked (if you need to reframe the image) by half-pressing the shutter (similar to a (d)SLR).

After walking around for several hours you(r neck) really start to appreciate the weight of the M9. It's really light (compared to a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8).

Day 8: Focus-Shift

No matter how extensive your research is, there's always something (bad??) you miss. In this case it's focus-shift with fast lenses. Focus-shift means that the actual focuspoint is not exactly where you might think (also known as front- or backfocus). In the case of the Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm it occurs generally @f/1.5 or @f/2.8. My Zeiss 50mm has this 'problem' @ f/1.5, which means that the lens is calibrated for film. Problem is a big word, since it seems to be inherent to the C-Sonnar design. It's also something that occurs a lot with a rangefinder system.

To solve this, I need to focus on the ears instead on the eyes when I shoot a portrait, or just compensate bij moving a bit forward after focussing. I could have Zeiss recalibrate the lens for free (while still in warrenty), but that means shifting the problem to another aperture.

If it turns out to be a real problem, I could always go for a Leica M Summicron 2/50mm (which I have still on backorder along with the Leica M Summicron 2/35).

Day 11: Another Day in the Field

After the scare of the focus-shift had settled, I 'mastered' the compensation technique for this 'problem'. Turns out that moving myself about 2 inched towards the object AFTER I focussed on it, the object would be in focus (results may vary depending of the distance to the object). The further you're away, the smaller the compensation needs to be.

Both images were shot @ f/1.5 (Carl-Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM T*) with a focus distance of 2 to 3 metres with little to no compensation for the focus shift. In the first image there's a bee just left of the flower/weed.

Chromatic-Aberrations ...

is something even the Carl Zeiss lenses seem to suffer from.

CA With Zeiss C-Sonar T* 1.5/50 ZMGood thing that CA doesn't show up after you convert the image to black and white.

Same image, but in black and white

More photos can be found on my SmugMug page.

Carl Zeiss and Leica 50mm Lens Comparisson

When I got the Leica M9, the Leica Summilux 50mm was nowhere to found. So, at the time, I 'settled' for the Carl Zeiss (CZ) C Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM lens instead, and entered the world of the Leica waiting-list.

A couple of weeks back I got the call that the latest version of the Summilux was available, and so I bought it. Up till now, I have both the Leica and the CZ 50mm version. The CZ version hasn't been used since (and has been put up for sale this weekend).

Two weeks ago, I decided to put the CZ and Leica lens next to each other in a small (non scientific) comparison. The settings were the following:

• ISO 160
• Auto white balance
• Aperture priority
• All photos taken with a cable release

The following samples first show the entire (smaller) image. You can click the image to see the full size JPEG (clean export from Adobe Lightroom with default settings). After that, there's a 100% (left-top-ccorner) crop and a 100% center crop.

Samples are given for the following apertures: 1.4/1.5, 2, 2.8, and 4 (the ZIP files at the end contain all the files till f/16). The Carl Zeiss lens first, followed by the Leica lens, and so on.....

Click to read more ...