I thought since it has been a while and then some, since I have written anything about photography, I should be back. There have been elections back home and people dying just south of the border. With any such event or conflict come the reporters. Some call them the vultures of war. But it is true that in many cases they do a job that is difficult, under the most extreme conditions. And many of them never make it back. So, what about the tools they use?
Lets start off with the age old Leica rangefinder series. This has been the darling of serious (read well funded) news agencies in the early postwar years. Built like a phookin' tank, the M series brought a revolution to the 35 mm wurlde. The M pedigree continues in the sleek M8.2. Ragefinders are different from SLRs in that there is no mirror. Focussing is achieved by optimizing path length through a beam splitter. In practice, you turn a knob until two images coincide. There are fewer moving parts and hence rangefinders are quiter and more compact than SLRs. But SLRs are more versatille. Here, read this comparison.
Leica also had an SLR lineup, (which they developed with Minolta, the company that gave the wurlde the first SLR with an integrated autofocus and lens drive) the R series. But being Leica, they decided that they were too awesome for autofocus, which everyone and his grandmother has had for about 25 years. Then, they went in for a collaboration of sorts with Olympus, Panasonic and Sigma in the Four-thirds system. Except, they built one DSLR and essentially went to sleep. Oh, and they did promise a 14-150 mm ultrazoom which is not very easy to find.
Now, it seems, after much soul searching, Leica has come up with a new SLR series, the flagship being the S2. This promises to be close to medium format quality. Which will give the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III (yeah, a mouthful) quite a headache, and maybe Mamiya heartburn for its ZD medium format cameras. Medium format means larger film size, or larger sensors and is only for you if you have lots of cash to drop, maybe work for a fashion magazine or a high end porn studio and are as serious about resolution as an erection problem.
Now a leetil aside on Leica being all icky with the Four-thirds gang. Come on, Olympus is the only plucky guy putting out great cameras out there with this standard. I use an E-500 myself, which is simply lovely. They have a pro grade E3, a semipro E-30 and many, many prosumer models. Much better bang for the buck than any APS model SLR. And they have such wonderful lenses!
But lets step aside from this discussion of camera bodies and talk about a couple of lenses which have caught my attenshun. I have mentioned the Leica ultrazoom already. You would use the ultrazoom for daily "street" photography. This would be a walkabout lens with a zoom range of 10-12x. Nikons 18-200 mm antivibration lens is a runaway success. Ken Rockwell loves it. You probably will as well. This is awesome for news photography. Canon had no equivalent for a long time. But that is about to change. With this lens and an EOS 50D, I imagine you could goo up against a D300 and win, especially in static frames. But the ultrazoom lens market will have changed forever with the introduction of Tamron's 18-270 mm. This is available in EOS and Nikon mounts (typical!) and goes for less than 590$ on Amazon (not a plug). In your face Nikon/Canon! Bear in mind that point and shoots these days have 22x zoom and sell for half that of an SLR body. A good photographer with a decent P&S can get better results than a newbie with a pricey DSLR.
But more on lenses. The brightest Canon EOS lens is the 50 mm f1.2. Pricey and awesome. Nikon's brightest is a f1.4. Still awesome. Leica has an f 0.95 Noctilux lens for its M series. Yeah, breathe in and out slowly while your heart rate comes back to something decent. You can probably shoot handheld in candlelight with that piece of glass. Which means, its time to wrap up with the story of one of the fastest lenses ever made used by Stanley Kubrick.
Lets start off with the age old Leica rangefinder series. This has been the darling of serious (read well funded) news agencies in the early postwar years. Built like a phookin' tank, the M series brought a revolution to the 35 mm wurlde. The M pedigree continues in the sleek M8.2. Ragefinders are different from SLRs in that there is no mirror. Focussing is achieved by optimizing path length through a beam splitter. In practice, you turn a knob until two images coincide. There are fewer moving parts and hence rangefinders are quiter and more compact than SLRs. But SLRs are more versatille. Here, read this comparison.
Leica also had an SLR lineup, (which they developed with Minolta, the company that gave the wurlde the first SLR with an integrated autofocus and lens drive) the R series. But being Leica, they decided that they were too awesome for autofocus, which everyone and his grandmother has had for about 25 years. Then, they went in for a collaboration of sorts with Olympus, Panasonic and Sigma in the Four-thirds system. Except, they built one DSLR and essentially went to sleep. Oh, and they did promise a 14-150 mm ultrazoom which is not very easy to find.
Now, it seems, after much soul searching, Leica has come up with a new SLR series, the flagship being the S2. This promises to be close to medium format quality. Which will give the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III (yeah, a mouthful) quite a headache, and maybe Mamiya heartburn for its ZD medium format cameras. Medium format means larger film size, or larger sensors and is only for you if you have lots of cash to drop, maybe work for a fashion magazine or a high end porn studio and are as serious about resolution as an erection problem.
Now a leetil aside on Leica being all icky with the Four-thirds gang. Come on, Olympus is the only plucky guy putting out great cameras out there with this standard. I use an E-500 myself, which is simply lovely. They have a pro grade E3, a semipro E-30 and many, many prosumer models. Much better bang for the buck than any APS model SLR. And they have such wonderful lenses!
But lets step aside from this discussion of camera bodies and talk about a couple of lenses which have caught my attenshun. I have mentioned the Leica ultrazoom already. You would use the ultrazoom for daily "street" photography. This would be a walkabout lens with a zoom range of 10-12x. Nikons 18-200 mm antivibration lens is a runaway success. Ken Rockwell loves it. You probably will as well. This is awesome for news photography. Canon had no equivalent for a long time. But that is about to change. With this lens and an EOS 50D, I imagine you could goo up against a D300 and win, especially in static frames. But the ultrazoom lens market will have changed forever with the introduction of Tamron's 18-270 mm. This is available in EOS and Nikon mounts (typical!) and goes for less than 590$ on Amazon (not a plug). In your face Nikon/Canon! Bear in mind that point and shoots these days have 22x zoom and sell for half that of an SLR body. A good photographer with a decent P&S can get better results than a newbie with a pricey DSLR.
But more on lenses. The brightest Canon EOS lens is the 50 mm f1.2. Pricey and awesome. Nikon's brightest is a f1.4. Still awesome. Leica has an f 0.95 Noctilux lens for its M series. Yeah, breathe in and out slowly while your heart rate comes back to something decent. You can probably shoot handheld in candlelight with that piece of glass. Which means, its time to wrap up with the story of one of the fastest lenses ever made used by Stanley Kubrick.
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