New Leica Cameras Announced

Just this month Leica announced three new cameras the S-2, M-9 and the X-1. Here is a video courtesy of B & H Photo of the New York City announcement with Seal and the CEO of Leica cameras.

Interesting Video

DW-TV of Germany put out this interesting story about Leica Camera and I thought that you might be interested in seeing it. The video shows where the company is headed and some of the upper end equipment they offer. The photographs they use and the photographers are all top notch. Sit back and enjoy.

Custom Mode

Today I was out in nature and decided to try the custom mode setting. This would allow me to use the enhanced zoom setting at a higher that the normal 3 meg limit. I would have to say that it was a success as I was able to get some pictures of wild turkeys that while using the normal setting would be to small.
I'm also adding some pictures of the settings setup I used on the camera. Of course there are a few more turkey shots to illustrate the difference between normal mode and custom with telephoto mode.

This first picture is of the mode selector nob in the Custom 1 position.


This shows the menu and the two selections I made: Number one was picture size 10m and number two Digital Zoom On. Which is found on the third menu page. Use the selector toggle to maneuver through the menus.

Turkeys taken without the use of digital zoom.

Turkeys taken with digital zoom.

Digital Zoom used to capture the top of Windy Hill 2+ miles away.

Just had to add this bird captured with the normal zoom. Good luck experimenting with your cameras!

Holiday Weekend

It is labor day weekend so I thought that I would share a few pictures taken today. The first picture highlights depth of field. You may have to click on the picture to see it in a larger mode.
What you see is that the unopened flower in the lower left corner is slightly blurred. As you move up into the picture the unopened flower in the middle right has a soft focus. Now look at the unopened flower in the upper left corner and see a perfectly sharpen image.
This picture was taken with the following settings in Aperture Mode: A:f2.8 / S:100 at focal length 5.1. If you wanted uniform sharpness you would have to raise the aperture settings to a higher number.

In this picture you see a close up of some lovely flowers that have been slightly softened in Adobe Photo Shop Elements. I used the dry bush filter and the effect is lovely and in keeping with the filtered light.

This picture is of a large tree blossom and a bee looking for a meal. Again I used Adobe Photo Shop Elements to process the image. I adjusted the contrast to highlight the subtle color changes is the leaves.
I hope that you all have a nice holiday and take a lot of pictures!