In trying to get to know the 90mm Elmarit-M lens, I've had it mounted on the M9 for the past couple of weeks.  I find that to be the best way for me to get acquainted to a new lens... just shoot with it non-stop for a month or so, then you'll know all its virtues and faults.

It doesn't have the biting sharpness unless you stop it down to f/8 or so, however, it is wonderful for portraits at wider apertures.  My copy of the lens has a slight front-focus at f/2.8 and 1 meter away, but once I stop down to f/4, it is negligible.

I have not had any chance to go out to shoot at all, so I've been confined to just use my backyard the best I can, and in the house when the light is good.  What I've discovered is that this lens is amazing for taking portraits.  While I wouldn't hesitate to use it to shoot some flowers or landscape, I find it is simply amazing for portraiture photography.

Being a tele-photo lens, it is capable of producing pleasing bokeh to separate the background from the subject.  Also, it's softer rendering at wide aperture is flattering for human subjects.  I had previously loved to use my 50mm Summilux ASPH for taking portraits, and sometimes I do have to work a bit harder to get the beautiful out-of-focus background, but with the 90mm Elmarit-M, it is so easy.  Here are a few more portraits of my son, and a shot of our pine tree to show its sharpness and nice color rendering:

So I recently purchased an used 90mm Elmarit-M lens, but it was not 6-bit coded.  For a lazy person like me, the 6-bit coding means the lens name will be automatically imported into Lightroom so save me the step of using LensTagger plugin.  I've seen some sold-from-china code-able mounting flanges on eBay that some had success with, so I decided to give it a try.  I received the mounting flange about a week ago and quickly put it on and was ready to write a post about it, but it didn't work very well.  After I colored in the code using black sharpie pen, not only was the 6-bit not recognized by the camera, I also noticed a significant front-focus caused by the new flange.  Cheap lesson learned.

Since that didn't work, I searched and found that many had sent their original mounting flange to John Milich for milling the 6-bit code slots.  It turns out that he was also a member of the forum I visited often, so I got in contact with him and quickly mail it out to him.  Today, it was returned.  It worked nicely, but not without some fuss.  I thought it was because the black sharpie ink on the newly milled surface is too shiny and my pen is too thick to color in the corners, causing the camera to not recognize the code, so I filled the slots with some white-out and then color in the code again.  It worked!  With still some day light out, I quick went out for some shots.

Stormy clouds are gathering today in the Southland.  While thunderstorms are raging near the foothills, I get to stand in my backyard and admire the clouds rolling by.  Due to a recent lull in the resale value of second-hand Leica gears, I was able to acquire a minty 28mm Summicron ASPH for a little over half of its retail value.  Can't wait to take this bad boy out for some real shooting.

Meanwhile, the 50'Lux remains by my favorite lens.  It never fails to give me beautiful images.

Photography has always been something I did, since I started few years ago, purely for my own enjoyment.  Be it a chance to play with some gears and gadgets, or leisure family portraits and vacation snaps, there was never any pressure to perform or to "get the shot".  I was merely an observer in a natural surrounding while trying to extract a few precious moments out of reality.

During our last camping trip at Lake Cuyamaca, a good friend approached me to see if I was willing to do a session with him and his gorgeous family.  My first instinct was "SURE!", and why not?  They are very good friends, I love taking pictures.  But then, a bit of self-doubt crept in.  Am I up to snuff?  I've been reading many photography forums and have seen lots of excellent works of professional photographers that do this for a living.  Can I produce the same level of work?  Do I have the necessary equipments?  What about post-processing and touching up the photos?  So, I chicken'd out and offered to take some test shots first, and if they liked them, then we can plan on something more formal.  You can see the result in the photo above.

Then, last weekend, my niece wanted me to take some pictures of her artworks for college application submissions.  Taking pictures of paintings wasn't too hard, just needed to make sure there was good lighting, good focus, and correct for white balance, distortion, and crop in the post.  What she failed to mention was that she also designed and hand-made a dress out of scrap materials, which she will be modeling for me.  Luckily, I have already purchased a large diffuser/reflector that is collapsible like those sun shades one would put behind a car's front windshield.  Working with a near-midday sun in our backyard, I think the results came out alright.

Don't worry, I'm not quitting my day job just yet.  However, I was glad to be put outside of my comfort zone and was challenged with some pressure to produce good results.  It feels like I've just grew a little bit taller :)

After I've decided that I liked the 28mm focal length on the wide end, I figured that I should get a 90mm lens to round off my kit.  I wasn't sure which lens to get, so I've been looking at a lot of images in several photography forums and found that I see a lot of nice images from the 90mm Elmarit-M.

Well, just bought an used one from a forum member and it arrived about a week ago.  So, I've been shooting with it exclusively and found it to be excellent.  With its maximum aperture at f/2.8, you really need to make sure you have good lights indoor or at night, but I already knew that from shooting with the 28mm Elmarit-M ASPH.  However, during the day, this lens really is amazing.

I have not shot with anything longer than 50mm before, and I must say, 90mm could become my second favorite focal length (I still love 50mm the best).  The combined reach and the ease of separating the subject from the background, I can see why many prefer this focal length for portraits.  I found framing and composing with the 90mm frameline to be very natural and my 1.4X magnifier makes focusing a breeze.

Well, here are just some of the shots from the past week, and so far I'm really enjoying the way this lens renders.