New York NYC August Meet-Up

Just wanted to let Cal know that his 28mm f/2.8 AiS was getting used still.
I shot this photo during the wee dark hours this morning out on White Lakes road, about 40 miles southeast of Santa Fe and 60 miles east-northeast of Albuquerque.
Bethanne and I returned to the site where I took the previously linked meteor photo to stay there all night this time and catch the full show. We got back to the house about 5:30am.
Here's the shot I made with the 28mm AiS on a D300s (My D3 is still dead.)
http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/415218-2/DSC0412_01_E.jpg
Yeah, that's the Andromeda Galaxy right above the meteor, shot with only a 28mm lens.
I don't have an equatorial mount yet but I'm going to build one over the next few days. Then I can stop my lenses down a bit for added sharpness, low ISOs and no star drag.

Someone should stick an M240, M9 or M8 on an equatorial mount with a good lens to see what you can get. The added IR sensitivity from the M8 should be a benefit shooting nebulae and structures that emit large amounts of Ha.
Crap, now I'm going to want an M8 to stick on a telescope... So much better than the IR D70 I'm using. Horrible noise!

You can see my thread I posted about the Perseids here:
http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=150577

Phil Forrest
 
Phil,

I am very happy that the 28/2.8 AIS is serving you well.

I recently replaced the 28 with a 28/1.4. Seems like the 28/1.4 and Noct-Nikkor are two great lenses for astrophotography.

I miss New Mexico, and I feel that my years in New York are numbered, as I'm getting squeezed out. The world is not so big. Don't be surprised if you see me soon in my wanderings.

I found it kinda odd using the milage to describe the distances. When I lived in New Mexico we used time to define the distance. In La Cueva where I lived (a community with 80 mail boxes that was so remote we got no TV reception) we said, "About an hour to ABQ, and about an hour to Santa Fe."

I miss the "Land of Enchantment."

Cal
 
I'd love to visit NM... sounds really cool.

John,

The natural beauty is breathtaking. With only about 2 million people it is kinda feral in an open kinda way. For a New Yorker the peacefulness is disturbing. Pretty much there is no pollution, except for a smog inversion layer around ABQ, or unless you stumble into a nuclear test site.

Basically you would be called an anglo. It is a bit segragated in that Spanish, Native Americans, and Anglos are kinda separate, and all three cultures kinda co-exist.

It is a really great place to go to find yourself in a spiritual manner. Seems like a place to go if you are searching. There is a kinda openness, almost like everyone is kinda stoned and relaxed.

The weather can be 4 seasons in a day. I remember one December where it began cold, warmed into spring like weather, and by lunchtime I took off my shirt and was sunbathing. They say, "If you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes."

Life is kinda simple and not complicated. Pretty much the opposite of NYC.

Cal
 
Sounds like a place I'd rather visit than live. I like noise. I've experienced wacky weather in Arizona... 40 in the morning and night and 90 at midday.
 
New Mexico sounds very busy.... LOL
I spent all my summers as a kid visiting and helping my grandparents farm their land in Northern Spain.. My mothers town has about 30 people, my fathers is huge, about 125..
 
New Mexico is a place where you can both loose yourself and find yourself. It can be very interesting being alone by yourself surrounded by rugged beauty. Kinda easy to get lost if you know what I mean.

Cal
 
Sounds like a place I'd rather visit than live. I like noise. I've experienced wacky weather in Arizona... 40 in the morning and night and 90 at midday.

John,

After a while the noise just makes you hard of hearing and eventually deaf.

For me a year or two in New Mexico would be a way to decompress. I could really enjoy the open space. My 650 square foot apartment now feels like a cage.

The light in New Mexico is also kinda glowy (altitude? lack of pollution?)

Also don't go rock crawling in a Jeep by yourself like I did exploring wilderness in sparsely populated areas. A really dumb thing to do, especially without food or water.

Also don't do sustained high speed driving in an unstable vehicle (Jeep) just to see how fast you can drain a tank of gas (23 gallons in about an hour), or see how fast a Jeep can go (80 mph on the speedometer, but add a 20% speedometer error due to oversized tires). Jeeps at 100 mph feel like hovercraft and the tires don't stay on the road. Every expansion crack make it like you are kinda hopping down the road, and any dip means catching air.

New Mexico is a different kinda crazy than NYC.

Cal
 
I plan on coming next weekend. Will be meeting up with Jean Marc before.
Most likely I will bring my film M's (see sig.) for sale ... they are shelf queens right now at that is not what a Leica should be. Bring you check books;)
 
Maybe I'll bring my Voightlander 25mm F4 with the finder, I've been trying
to sell it on this site but no takers yet. Oh yea and I'll tell you guy's my new
lens story.
 
WOW.

A Leica garage sale. I counted my cameras: I only have 15: 5 135 rangefinders; 5 135 SLR's; and 5 medium format. All get used. No shelf queens in my herd.

PRINT SAGA RANT: I send two 13x19 print to my friend Dirk in China. Well the CSI is that for about $21.00 they arrived at Dirk's mailbox intact, but then the postman decided the brutally fold the cardboard package so that it would fit into a mail slot. WTF???

Brutal I say...

Cal
 
WOW.
A Leica garage sale. I counted my cameras: I only have 15: 5 135 rangefinders; 5 135 SLR's; and 5 medium format. All get used. No shelf queens in my herd.

That's not bad Cal... I would have guessed more.

PRINT SAGA RANT: I send two 13x19 print to my friend Dirk in China. Well the CSI is that for about $21.00 they arrived at Dirk's mailbox intact, but then the postman decided the brutally fold the cardboard package so that it would fit into a mail slot. WTF???

Brutal I say...

Cal

Wow, just wow. :bang:

Well, Df #2 arrived... :)
 
That's not bad Cal... I would have guessed more.



Wow, just wow. :bang:

Well, Df #2 arrived... :)

John,

Today I'm shooting my IIIG with 43/1.9 Pentax-L. Was playing around with the IIIG last night. What a fun camera, and with that black version of the 28/3.5 Canon mucho small and light. I walked the East River Promanade this morning and was extra late for work. Fug-em. Now I have a short timer's attitude.

Maggie has a possible $10K gig lining up where she would be styling and consulting. All these gigs seem to be last moment, that's the culture. Might have to fly to Toronto Thursday. Another thing is that the payout from these gigs can take up to 3 months to get paid. We know one fashion photographer who is owed about $50K that might get written off as free work or working for free.

All I know is that I'm glad I don't live in China. I find what happened to my prints beyond words except: Oh-well. Anyways those prints can be easily replaced...

Cal
 
John,
Today I'm shooting my IIIG with 43/1.9 Pentax-L. Was playing around with the IIIG last night. What a fun camera, and with that black version of the 28/3.5 Canon mucho small and light.

Did you use it with or without the VF with the 43mm?
 

Phil,

I always wanted to visit that field/grid of lightning rods that I believe is in New Mexico. It is suppose to be a very primal experience.

Cal
 
Did you use it with or without the VF with the 43mm?

John,

I used the Pentax-L VF'er. I could use the entire frame, but I find I like the all at once view verses the LTM peephole.

I emptied the camera and set it up last night as my smallest rig with the black Canon 28/3.5 and a chrome Canon 28mm VF'er that somehow got returned during that M3-DS loan sharking deal with that art dealer. I really like the IIIG as a piece of jewelry.

I think the Canon has an advantage over my modern 28 Cron: Because it is a slow lens I can stop down to F8.0 for more DOF and not get difraction. Generally I only stop down to F5.6 on the Cron unless I have to to avoid diffraction.

At F8.0 the IIIG makes a great point and shoot with the focus set at 5 feet. Gotta love that the distance scale is only marked in feet for lazy Americans like me.

Cal
 
Because of printing I am low on funds for cameras, but I am still actively building out my kit. I presently have a Fuji 100/3.5 AE that I bought for no money. I sent it off to Frank Marshman for repair. It would be really exciting to have AE function on an old "Texas Leica," But Frank has already determined that the CdS cell is dead. He is still trying to secure a replacement. If repairable this would be ideal since my lens is like a time capsule from 1974. Kinda looks "like new."

Plan "B" is to buy a non AE lens as a donor and have the EBC (multicoated glass) transplanted into a manual lens body. Then I will have both a single coated and multicoated version of this lens, and since I have a GL690 and a GM670 I can share these lenses between 6x9 and 6x7 bodies.

Somehow I bartered for a Fuji 150/5.6. I already own one but my old lens has very slow shutter speeds and the front element is missing about a third of the single coating. I suspect that at the factory the lens was not properly cleaned before it went into the vacuum deposition chamber. Like the 100/3.5 AE mentioned above the new 150/5.6 is like a time capsule and is like a new lens. For some reason the shutter does not latch the cocking mechanism and dry firing only is making the action stiffer. I'll be sending this lens to Frank tomorrow. The 150/5.6 is a Sonnar formula, and the 100/3.5 is a Tessar that I love so much that I call it "The King Of The Tessars."

It seems that I am dealing with rescuing the dregs that seem to have had defects early on that caused these lenses to go unused. To me both are rare lenses and especially rare to find in like new condition. I also own a functioning 65/8.0 (28mm FOV in 6x9) so basically I own three lenses that offer 6 FOV's depending on which body I use.

Moral of the story is when you don't have money buy big cameras.

Cal
 
Back
Top Bottom