Monday, January 30, 2012

Old Glass, New Body

Toward the end of 2011, I found myself in Cape Town, SA for the third time this year. When you fly that far to get somewhere, it generally makes sense to stay over a weekend for sanity as well as for airline ticket savings. This last November was no different. On my free Saturday, I wanted to head up Table Mountain and get some pictures. Wanting to pack light, I brought my trusty old Canon G10 compact. I love this camera both for it's ease of use as well as the quality of the photos I get with it. As I was packing to go, I filled up my insulated water bottle, closed it, and placed it on the bed... propped up against my camera case... bad idea.


After fiddling around with some other things, I started to pack things in my rucksack to go, and I noticed that the bedspread was damp. REALLY damp. I picked up the likely culprit, and indeed, the water bottle was leaking. It turns out that I had cross threaded the cap. THEN I discovered, much to my horror, that it had been leaking into my camera case!!! Poor old G10 never had a chance.


Fast forward a few weeks. This year, my Christmas present became a new camera to replace the venerable G10. After much vacillation, I settled on buying a discounted Panasonic GF3 with a kit 14-45mm zoom lens. One of my co-workers has one and I have been fairly impressed with the results he has been getting. But... one of the MAIN reasons I chose this new fangled Micro 4/3 format was to once again have a camera that I can mount Leica lenses on. Great theory.


I received the camera just in time to take it to Paris for the last trip of the year. The results were acceptable, though not spectacular.










As I said. Not spectacular, but acceptable.

What I am REALLY looking forward to is playing with the m4/3 to LTM adapter I got the other day. I tried it with a Russian Jupiter 11 135mm f/4. Can't focus too terribly close, but I can see some potential with Black and White.

Now that I have a new toy to mess with, look for more frequent updates to the blog.