Month: April 2024 (Page 3 of 3)

–Went biking with Tom Elken around some of the newer housing developments in El Dorado Hills.

–Went to Costco for muffins, gas ($5.16/gallon), toilet paper. Also got grapes and apples.

–Found a Leica M10-P Reporter on eBay. Put the photos into Lightroom and could not find a single flaw. Almost put a best offer on it, but went riding. Later, while researching it (seeing how much I paid for the first one, etc.), I noticed that the seller had deducted 10% ($1,285) from the refund on the first one. It took me a while to realize what had happened–I’ve never seen this before and didn’t know it was even possible for a seller to refund less than full price. Turns out the asshole claimed I put additional fingerprints on the tape on the inner box, which “greatly devalued” the camera. eBay, almost as if they knew this was bogus, had a large “Open a Case” rectangle nearby. So I opened a case. Seems to me like a no-brainer, but I’ve been outfoxed before on eBay. Oh—it turns out there are two Reporters listed now on eBay, neither by digree. One is at $13k (above), the other at $22k. When I finally compared photos of the cheaper one to the one I bought, I discovered they’re the same camera. Ditto for the $22k one. I repeat: serious manipulation in Lightroom showed zero marks of any kind on the camera. I do believe these pics were taken before someone put that faint rub mark on the top. Dodged a bullet there, and MAY get a full refund.

–Picked up coffee at Black Sails.

–Went shopping at Target for eggs, milk, cream cheese, Zone Perfect bars, deodorant.

–Slow day. Windy, cool. Plants are looking good.

–Took the second “plant picture” with the Hodinkee. Lightroom blowups showed horrible jaggies. Took two more pics, with Hodinkee and M11. Both were much better (bad focus first time?), with the M11 having an edge even though it set ISO at 2000 (Hodinkee was the usual 800). Will likely move to the M11. Forced max ISO to 800, which seems to work on other Ms. Will test with another street photo tonight. [edit] Well, so much for that idea. M11’s first two pics had shutter speeds of 1 and .5 seconds. I ran the max auto ISO back up to 2000 and under-exposed by one full stop. The shutter speed was .25s, but the pic was totally over-exposed: the globe lights blew out everything, and could not be “highlighted” down. It almost HAS to be something I’m doing wrong, but I sure can’t figure out what. I suppose I could go full manual and set shutter speed, but what a pain. [edit 2] Tried again, all manual, same settings as the M10 successful night pic. It was better, but (a) not great, and (b) for some reason, the camera only wrote the jpg correctly–the DNG file was corrupt and showed nothing. I guess I give up on the M11. [edit 17] Tried the Hodinkee again on auto, got a totally good pic. [edit 129] GOT IT! Read up on M11 overexposure at Leica forum. It’s a known issue. Solutions are several, two of which I tried with good success: (1) There’s an exposure setting called Highlight Weighted Metering, which does what its name implies. (2) Use Spot metering and Live View. Aim at the brightest light, half-press the shutter, recompose, and (if LV looks okay) take the picture. Not as automatic as M10, but I really should be using Live View (and/or the EVF) more anyway. No guessing.

–Played with cameras again (duh). Trying to see if I can live with the M-P 240 Safari, since it’s new and green.

–Took Grace to Smiles on Sunrise, then Koreana Plaza. Had lunch there; not bad.

–Pizza for dinner.

–Dark and rainy today.

–2mm ball end hex driver came in from Amazon–two, in fact. (?)

–Bought a Leica M10-P silver (used) at M&K Camera Hong Kong. Good price, hope it’s nice and can replace the Hodinkee. Compared Hodinkee with mt M11 tonight, on the light across the street. Hod took a nice photo. M11 looked like it was horribly over-exposed–I couldn’t even begin to recover the globe light. Turns out Hod was 1/30 ISO 800; M11 was 1/30 ISO 3200. I think I’ve seen that before on the M11. It’s like Leica said “The camera takes great shots at high ISO, so we’ll max out ISO when we can and show Sony a thing or two.” I know the odds are good I’m misusing the M11 (people take great shots with it, after all), but I tried hard to set the cameras up identically. Total bummer, as the M11 feels so good in hand.

–Returned the crappy Leica TL from eBay.

–Tried hard again to like the M-P 240 Safari. Couldn’t. With everything set up identically, the 240 over-exposed the bright leaves in several patio pics; the Hodinkee did not. Minimum Leica: M10. [edit] Took another great night shot with the Hodinkee. Still in a quandary regarding keeping or selling it. Found a shop in Hong Kong with FOUR M10-Ps between $5,100 and $5,400 (U.S. stores/eBay are mostly $7,000+, plus taxes). (The M10-P is the only M10 worth considering, as it’s the only one with a screw cover for vertical alignment). BUT all M10-Ps available today are second hand, may have marks, have unknown shutter count, etc. I guess I just enjoy the Hodinkee and consider a mint Safari if one comes up.

–Was working on the Hodinkee cover screw in the garage. Dropped it. It hit the bench, then went to the floor and COMPLETELY disappeared. Exactly like the Fellow Ode spring a couple days ago. This is simply beyond belief.

–Picked up Nitecore charger for dead Hodinkee original battery. It showed some numbers, later said “Full,” but it was still dead as a doornail. Tried a few more cycles in the Leica and Nitecore chargers, no change. This was supposed to be the “improved” version of the Nitecore, but it’s not worth crap if it flashes some numbers and then calls a dead battery full.

–Leica TL (allegedly Top Mint) finally got here. Also a piece of crap, with scratches dings and chips all over. Started a return at eBay.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Took Grace shopping at Smart & Final.

–Played with cameras. Decided to keep just an M9 for now, so did a showdown of  four of them. No marked differences; will keep the nice anthacite M-E: low shutter count, nice images, very nice body. Re-re-re-learned that one shouldn’t attend to jpg’s from M9s, as they are known to be weird. (I have noticed this myself: in all of my other cameras, jpg’s and DNG’s are identical in XnView. They are starkly different  coming out of M9s, which likely accounts for (a) all the hoopla in forums about M9 colors, and (b) how over-saturated the greens seemed in my early M9 patio pics.) [edit] Okay, hold everything. Tried a night pic of the house across the street with the M-E, as done many times before. With the Voiglander lens at 1.2, the street light just blew everything away, beyond all recovery in Lightroom. Grrrr…..] [edit 2] Dug out the Hodinkee for the 8th time and took two more pics–with Summilux and Voigtlander. Summilux was a little better (less glow around the globe light), but both ere perfectly exposed. Try as I might, I can’t seem to get rid of the Hodinkee. It’s likely any M10 would be as good, but: do I want to make the Black Paint a daily user? Buy a $6k lens for it? Get a new M10 and a $6k lens? Arrggghhhh…]

–P.S. As of yesterday, my back is all of a sudden 90% good. It’s beyond my comprehension: comes in an instant, lasts for a week, two weeks, six weeks, then goes away almost overnight.