"In today's episode of "This Old Man" Calvin orders a F5 "E" screen and begins monsterizing yet another camera......"
Cal, truly inspired riff on "This Old House". Anxiously awaiting your next episode.
Pete,
"In today's episode of "This Old Man" Cal is not so stressed out after taking off a day from work for a Friday delivery that ended up being a Fed-EX no show. Basically the deliveryman on Friday left a door tag, but never rang the bell, and on Saturday in bitter wind chill Cal had to go to a foresaken part of the South Bronx (Port Morris) to pick up his parcel.
"This task enforced cancellation of an appointment with a CPA do do his taxes which had to be rescheduled. Cal was mighty pissed, but this is what you get when you live in a Third World part of NYC, even if it is in Madhattan.
"So Cal are you in a better mood today, or do you still feel like killing people?"
"Thanks for asking Norm. I fell mucho happy today. In fact I am very happy with my new lens. Sure is mucho big. At the NYC Meet-Up people were amazed at the size and weight. The knickname "Porker" for the lens is appropiate."
"So what do you think of the lens?"
"Well the lens works really well, but shooting and holding such a big and heavy lens requires a bit of engineering skill, I found that the farther I kept my hands apart the steadier I could hold the camera. I did some target shooting of my signature on a framed print in my living room from about 10-11 feet away. First off I found that I could get sharper shots by shooting vertically and I took note that I held more of the nose of the lens. When I did this on horizontal shooting the sharpness improved."
"So what is the good, the bad, and the ugly?"
"The good is in use I primarily use AFS, 40 focus points that overlay the image (they lay as a grid of crosses across the image), and I use the joystick to select my focus point. Boy is this faster than having to reframe like in a rangefinder.
"When the AF kicks in one gets a green rectangle when the focus locks and then the other 39 unused focus points disappear. Anyways this system of focus indication works really well and is a clever design. Anyways I will say those German engineers at Leica are mighty clever. Know that I use spot metering and the metering spot coincides with my single point focus which I find as being an asset. Again those Germans at Leica are mighty clever, but I say it this time to annoy people.
"So the bad and ugly is that inadvertantly Leica supplies a free gym membership with every "native SL" lens they sell. My 50 Lux-SL is only about a half inch shorter than the massive 24-90 SL zoom, and is only a meager 2.6 ounces lighter.
"But you gotta know that this lens really makes the SL a mighty fast shooter. The AF I found to be really accurate shooting indoors with only diffused filtered outdoor lighting, but the limitation is some hunting if your area of focus is not have edges of high contrast. Expect over smooth contours that lack edges and defined contrast for focus hunting to occur. The same would happen on my D3X BTW."
"So what have you done to annoy people lately, which seems to be your trademark?"
"Well the easiest thing to annoy people it seems is to buy this or any of the Leica "Native SL" lenses. It seems that there are Leica haters and people that have Leica envy will start calling you all kinds of names, and then they will tell you how to better spend your money. Anyways no sense in arguing with those people unless you are me, a person that annoys people. LOL.
'So at the Sunday Meet-Up I mount the E-Norm-mus hood reversed on the lens, as the Leica engineers designed it, and it kinda turned Pro-Mone's stomach, who complained that he hates when people mount hoods that reverse in reverse. "Don't do that ever again," Pro-Mone said. Wow, was I startled by the response. I accually was not trying to be annoying. LOL.
"So if you want to read about how I annoy people, my trademark, read the 50 Lux-SL thread and some of the SL threads for "entertainment value." The threads are really amusing. LOL. If you are bored and you want to waste some time read through some of the SL threads for mucho name calling and arguing. Much better than bad TV. LOL.
"One more annoying thing is that the gigantic hood can be used for image stabilization because it adds added length and allows spreading one's hands further apart. I imagine using the hood on this big lens will upset mucho people. LOL. And you know that seems to be my trademark and what I'm famous for. LOL."
"So on a closing note, I heard that at the meet-up there was a lot of people mentioning how they used the term "mucho" in the same ghetto venacular that you seem to get away with, but for others the response received was kinda odd.
"So stay tuned for the next episode of "This Old Man" coming soon."
Norm
