One year ago from yesterday, was the day that my M9 arrived at my front door and thus my journey begun.  This incredible ride has met all of my expectation and more, in addition, the M9 and all the lenses I have accumulated along the way have never disappointed.

The famous Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) has said: "You first 10,000 photographs are your worst".  I just checked the shutter counts and it seems that I have shot over 6,100 images in the past year.  I definitely feel that here are still much to learn and explore.  My framing and composition are still amateur at best, and my post-processing skill still leaves a lot to be desired and lacks my own style and signature.  With that said, though, I have gotten lucky a few times, and that has been enough to fuel my passion and keeps me going.  Discontent is a sign of ambition and a necessity of progress, let's see what the next year will bring!

Sometimes, good light is all you need.  After my son came home from school today, as I watched him playing on the floor, I saw the late afternoon light and took a few snaps.

The high contrast images looked almost perfect straight out of the camera.  All I did was to recover some highlights and slightly lower the clarity slider.

I really like the BW treatment one, too, with a slight platinum tone.

Spring is here... my wife and son are back from their long vacation... and I just got a new lens... stars are aligned for a bike ride around the block :)

While using the 90mm Macro-Elmar-M (MEM, for short), I find it a bit fiddly to make sure the hood is on, aperture set right, and the lens properly extended and lock in place.  However, once that's done, it's all smooth sailing.  Comparing to the 90mm Elmarit-M, I find the color rendering a little different, more accurate, I think.  The 90mm Elmarit-M seems to have its own signature and is more prone to flare.  The 90MEM, on the other hand, shows things as they are and it's easier to carry around.  Comparing to the photo from the 90mm Elmarit-M [HERE], I think you'll see some subtle differences in the images.

The girls from next door joined us at the end, giving me more excuses to shoot some more.

I tried to use the 90MEM last night, but it just wasn't fast enough... so I fell back to the trusty 50'Lux.

I've been experimenting with my black & white processing lately, trying to reach some understanding in what works for me.  If there's a BW look that I prefer, I don't know it... or I don't know the exact attributes so I can consistently produce it.  Mostly, I just keep playing around with different settings and sliders until I'm content.

I recently watched "Manhattan" by Woody Allen again, and this time I was paying more attentions to the BW scenes than to the plot.  In many of the night scenes around New York, I find stronger contrast to be attractive.  There exist both deep black and white highlights that are close to being blown.

Trying my theories out... I have these 3 images to show.  First one, on the left, is shot from the family room with the afternoon sun casting shadows on the sliding door and floor.  The scene was already high contrast because of the strong sun light in a dark room, but instead of bring back the details in the shadow, I just left it alone to give me the deep black that I wanted.

The next two is captured at LAX.  I noticed this well defined light and dark separation and took a few shots.  In processing, I actually darkened the scene a little bit more to make it more contrasty between the left and right.  I think it came out quite well, making the image unmistakably split right down the middle.  The second shot is of the overhead monitors in the waiting area, and I just wanted to accentuate its curves.

A new toy :)

Well, so I've been shooting with the 90mm Elmarit-M for a while now, and I really like this focal length.  The copy I have has a slight front-focus which can cause some troubles wide-open and at minimum focus distance (MFD).  That's why I usually shoot with f/4 with it, in which case the front-focus problem goes away.  In doing so, I've found that f/4 is quite enough for a 90mm lens to get the bokehs I wanted, with speed being the only compromise.

So... I've been looking around other options and was attracted to this 90mm Macro-Elmar-M.  It's been touted as being a worthy competitor to the 90mm APO Summicron in terms of image quality. But I think the most desired feature of this lens is that it is collapsible, which means the lens can retract into a smaller size when not being used.  Lens performance and compacted size comes with a premium in the Leica world, I think, and when collapsed, it feels smaller than the 50'Lux, making it easy to carry around and saves space in the bag.  The hood can be attached up-side-down to get out of the way and protect the lens body.  I feel a lot of thoughts have gone into the design of this lens and will make it a great travel companion.

Here are some more shots in the afternoon, without the macro adapter goggle.  It is nice and sharp, with perfect color rendition.