Tag: frankfurt

Frankfurt in January

It was cold in Janu­ary, but this did not stop us from walk­ing through this beau­ti­ful city with so many nice places and inspir­ing per­spect­ives … depend­ing on where you go and what you (want to) see.

This time I used two digit­al cam­er­as. Num­ber one was a Ricoh GR II with its mar­velous 2.8/28mm lens. Num­ber two was my work­horse, an Olym­pus OM‑D E‑M1, this time with a M.Zuiko 2.8/7–14 mm lens, which gives a nice width and which is part of the holy trin­ity — the m.zuiko 2.8/7–14 mm pro lens, the m.zuiko 2.8/12–40 mm pro lens and the m.zuiko 2.8/40–150 mm pro lens. I still have to improve on these very wide city shots. As often, I made black & white and col­our versions.

The full series can be found here.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish.

Olympus OM-4Ti and Ricoh GR II

After hav­ing back the Olym­pus OM-4Ti from repair, I took it on a short trip to Frank­furt. Equipped with a Zuiko Auto‑T 2.8/100mm and loaded with an Agfa Vista 200, I was keen to see, if the prob­lem has been cured at the OM-Dok­t­or in Hamburg.

 

… and here the right lens.

 

We had two full days — one in Frank­furt and the oth­er in Mainz — and besides the Olym­pus OM-4Ti, an iPhone 6s and the highly respec­ted Ricoh GR II were on board. Olym­pus OM-4Ti was used in Frank­furt, the Ricoh GR II was used in Mainz.

First of all, why did I use the OM-4Ti only in Frank­furt but not in Mainz … it’s because the lens appeared to have a slightly bent aper­ture pin, which pro­hib­ited the OM-4Ti’s aper­ture sim­u­lat­or to work at the end of the first day. So sad! In the mean­time I have repaired this (thanks to a phone call with the OM-Dok­t­or), but on the second day in Mainz I’d bet­ter switched to my Ricoh GR II.

Second, my impres­sion on the OM-4Ti is twofold.

On the one side I’m massively impressed.

  • it worked flaw­less after repaired by the OM-Dok­t­or in Hamburg
  • the  tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions of the cam­era are superb
  • the size and weight are pretty stun­ning — one of the smal­lest and most light­weight (pro­fes­sion­al) SLR bodies
  • it simply rugged
  • the view­find­er is large, bright and clear
  • and so on …

On the oth­er side, I do not really get warm with this body (tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion also the OM-2sp I used dur­ing my trip to South-Tir­ol, which shares the same body and very sim­il­ar con­trol lay­out). Unfor­tu­nately I can­not name the reas­on for — it’s some­how a feel­ing only. Com­pared to a Con­tax 139 or even more a Con­tax 159, it simply does not feel like it fits in the hand.

Flaws … maybe some.
It has no on/off switch, which always makes it pos­sible to release the shut­ter acci­dent­ally when cocked. A second one, it’s meter can­not be switched off. It shuts off after some seconds auto­mat­ic­ally (15s if I remem­ber right), but when touch­ing the shut­ter but­ton (even by acci­dent), it starts again — which might drain the bat­tery. You have to switch the aper­ture to “B” or the emer­gency manu­al “1/60”, this deac­tiv­ates all elec­tron­ics, just to be sure when pla­cing it in the bag. How­ever this also makes it not a quick star­tup cam­era out of the bag.

I think I will have to use it a little bit longer, as the whole world praises the OM-line and so it must be me.

I have uploaded two albums, one is the Agfa Vista 200 col­our ver­sion and anoth­er is a b/w ver­sion.

The Ricoh GR II is a whole dif­fer­ent story.
I use it more fre­quently as my every­day cam­era and so I get used to it more and more. Besides the fact that I felt imme­di­ately famil­i­ar with it from the first day, it impresses me every time I use it. I’ll I add some pic­tures from the Ricoh GR II in my Frank­furt trip album on Flickr.
Here too, a col­our ver­sion and a b&w ver­sion exist.

This time I also tried some street shots using the snap-focus, where the AF gets  pre­fo­cused on a defined dis­tance. This avoids hav­ing to focus when hit­ting the shut­ter but­ton and you can hold the cam­era with one hand on arm length without look­ing on the mon­it­or. Totally unob­trus­ive. All pic­tures were crappy and … I have still to prac­tice that way of shooting.

In case you’d like to com­ment, it’s appre­ci­ated … and maybe, you want to vis­it my web­site or my flickr page too.

So long … and thanks for all the fish

Pentax LX with SMC Pentax‑A 2.8/28mm reused …

Last week­end I was on a short trip to Frank­furt and I wondered what cam­era to join me.

Soon it was clear that my Fuji X100s was the one to go … but I wanted to have somet­ing more analog ;)

So it finally was my Pentax LX with a SMC Pentax‑A 2.8/28mm lens who was com­ing along.

As I still had an opened roll of Agfa Vista 400 to com­plete (5 frames already shot in Ire­land), I loaded that film and fired six frames.

As this was the first time to use the LX, I was curi­ous, how this pretty baby would work — optic­ally it is look­ing brand new.

Two days later … what to say … it was a pleas­ure hand­ling that cam­era. The single point to com­plain was the on/off switch sit­ting around the shut­ter release but­ton. As this switch is rotated to lock the shut­ter but­ton, it is mov­ing quite loose, so that one can acci­den­tially move it by put­ting the cam­era in or out of the bag.

As we had two sunny days, I used mainly zone focus­sing at f/11 and Auto­mat­ic Mode and it was … easy going.

The film is cur­rently on pro­cessing and when back, I’ll post some pic­tures on my Flickr- or 500px-page.

Enjoy 😉

P.S. In case you’d like to com­ment … it’s appreciated!
P.P.S. … and maybe, you want to check out my web­site too 😉