Category: Leica

April 2018.

As I’ve immersed myself more in the world of photography, I’ve developed the typical photographer’s bucket list of places to visit. The lake district in England, the peak district, the Dolomites in Italy, Iceland, Paris, Yosemite, Zion and many more – including Scotland.

This trip was part vacation and part self-examination. Could I get to one of the world’s photographic hotspots, camera(s) in hand, and not make an idiot of myself?

I flew into Edinburgh, picked up a hire car (Audi A1 S-Line – uninspiring but quite competent, even fun when pushed) and headed for the hills. It wasn’t my first time in Scotland, but it was my first time outside of Edinburgh. A friend had raved about Skye (well, about Scotland in general, really) and given its popularity as a photographic destination, I figured it OK to kill two birds with one stone – find some of the Scottish magic I’d heard so much about and take pictures of it.

Did I meet my goals?

Yes.

Scotland definitely has an element of magic to it. It reminded me a lot of Tasmania, actually. There’s a certain hardiness and creativity about the people there, and a definite connection between those people and the land they live on.

Scotland is an astoundingly beautiful place, much more than I imagined. It’s rugged and delicate at the same time – a true feast for the eyes (thanks, PJ). Everywhere I went I was surrounded by majestic mountains, many still wearing their snowcaps – a remnant left behind by The Beast From The East.

It’s hard to take a bad picture in Scotland, to be honest, so I’m not sure how to judge the images I came away with. Suffice to say, though, that I’m pretty happy. Whatever people might think about the objective quality of the photos you’ll see below, the process of taking them and putting them together was thoroughly satisfying.

Scroll to the end for techy details, if you like.

And as always, click to enlarge. Best viewed on a big screen, I think.

Glencoe

The Glencoe Valley is full of chocolate-box landscapes. It’s as if a giant oil painting is unfolding before your eyes while you drive down the highway.

I spent two fantastic days driving and walking through the place. I stayed at Glencoe Cottages, choosing their budget option. It was OK for two nights, though it might have tested my resolve if I were to stay any longer. I splashed out for my four nights at Skye.

Enough talk. Let’s look at some pictures.

My first shot in Scotland. Glencoe Cottages has a small loch along their driveway so I didn’t even have to walk far for this one.

Get used to the moody, grey skies. You’ll see a lot of them in this section.

The image below is a panorama made up of five separate images. It’s massive – around 15,000px across.

The three mountains on the right are called the three sisters. I snuck another mountain in on the left and will hitherto refer to them as the Glencoe Beatles.

I plan on printing this one in large format for my living room.

For those of you who like details, here’s a 1:1 crop from a section of the full-size image.

The mountain below is one of the three sisters on its own. To give it a sense of scale, I included the trees alongside the small S-shaped creek running across the bottom third of the frame. They might be hard to see at this size.

This shot was taken with a 10-stop ND filter (a ‘big stopper’, as they’re known), which gave me a 4-second exposure, smoothing out the water in the creek.

This is the same mountain from the previous shot, but on its own.

I love this image. It’s going “straight to the pool room”.

There are several small cottages at the foot of the mountains in Glencoe and yes, they’re occupied. What a place to live! Having the cottage in the foreground gives a real sense of scale.

Glencoe is, by definition, the glen along the River Coe. I shot this near the village of Glencoe and I found it far more haunting in black and white.

Another long-exposure…..

Glencoe presents classic image after classic image, everywhere you look. The road to Glencoe does the same, as does the road between Glencoe and Skye. If I’d stopped to take every shot, I’d never have made it back to Sweden.

So, trying to maintain some discipline, I forced myself from the beauty of Glencoe
and made my way to……

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The Isle of Skye

That I was driving past Glencoe to get to Skye was a massive bonus – Skye was the real reason for my trip.

I spent my evenings on the Isle of Skye at Hillstone Lodge and if you stay anywhere else when you visit Skye, you’re mad. Russell and Patrice have an outstanding home near Dunvegan and it was pure pleasure to stay with them for four nights (and no, I don’t know them, aside from being a paying guest at their place).

The Old Man of Storr

This is not your usual image of the Old Man. The usual image is taken side-on during a stunning sunrise with the distant lakes in the background. Like this.

I didn’t have any stunning sunrises while I was on Skye. I did my one (exhausting!) trek up to the Old Man as a recce, just in case the forecast had something promising for me. It never did, sadly. I snapped this image while I was up there just to prove I’d been.

For scale, check out the two tiny humans silhouetted on the left.

A little way north of the Old Man, there’s a popular stop that looks into this ravine. I actually climbed down into the ravine to get some waterfall shots but this shot from the top, taking in the ravine, the grazing sheep and the dramatic background, was much more pleasing to the eye.

This highland cow wasn’t near the Old Man, but I’ll put her here anyway and claim it’s a livestock connection with the sheep, above. She’s very elegant, don’t you think?

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Neist Point

I spent a lot of time at Neist Point as it was only 20 minutes from Hillstone Lodge. Its best aspect is during sunset, so it was a nice way to end a day’s shooting.

The next two images are basically the same, but taken on two different nights. I like the composition in the first one better (the separation between the lighthouse and the horizon is the key), but I prefer the dramatic sky in the second one.

These cliffs are just to the left of Neist Point lighthouse. I had to lay on the ground to get this shot because the wind was SO prolific. The walk down to the point where I took this shot was into the wind and took me around 5 minutes. The walk up the hill, with the wind at my back, took around one minute.

Note the cliffs in the photo above, specifically the cliff closest to camera.

On my third night on Skye, I walked up the back of that cliff to shoot the lighthouse from the other side. I love the way the last golden light of the day is kissing the rolling hills, as if to say goodnight. It was a beautiful moment and the 40-minute walk through the fields and back to the car was probably the highlight of my trip.

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(Not) The Fairy Pools

The Fairy Pools is one of the most popular tourist spots on Skye. It’s a lovely series of creeks and pools with a beautiful mountain backdrop.

Sadly, the mountain was completely clouded-in on the day I got there and the carpark was jam-packed with tourists. I decided to keep moving.

I’m glad I did, too. Less than two miles past I found this gorgeous little waterfall and spent an hour there trying out various compositions.

First, I shot the falls, face-on….

For this second shot, I followed a track up to the top section and rock-hopped until I was in the middle of the creek. Another long exposure…..

Below is another panorama showing a creek just a little further up the same road. I could have got most of this in a single shot with the right wide-angle lens. Shooting a group of vertical shots and creating this panorama gave me much more detail, though. Note the texture of the grassland to the left.

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Sligachan

This image is taken just over the hill from Sligachan Bridge (which you’ll see in a moment).

This view was not visible from the road. I parked my car in a random spot on the highway and went exploring on foot. I was looking for a shot that showed off this gold and brown/purple groundcover that’s all over Skye. When I found this pond, I knew I had my location.

And over the hill, the Sligachan Bridge. It’s probably the single-most photographed spot on the island. It’s not hard to see why.

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The Quiraing

The Quiraing is a beautiful walk in the north-east of Skye, just north of the Old Man of Storr. Unlike the walk to the Old Man – which you start at sea level – the road to The Quiraing lets you drive up to the height of the range and after parking your car, you walk a narrow path across the face of the range. The views are stunning.

As it was the middle of the day, the light wasn’t particularly flattering, so I converted these panoramas to black and white.

Looking across the range from the beginning of the walk….

Looking across the range from the half-way point of the walk….

Looking out from the range…..

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I don’t know what’s more surprising about this trip – the number of images I took or the number of images I didn’t take.

I certainly left a lot on the table, including a number of shots that I did take but felt unsatisfied with.

There’s more to be photographed on the Isle of Skye. Much more. And I look forward to returning there some time in the next 12-18 months to have another go at it.

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For those interested in such things, I took two camera bodies and eight lenses with me.

Bodies: Nikon D810, Leica M240

Nikon lenses: 17-35 f2.8, 24-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8 and 50mm f1.8 (not used).

Leica lenses: 21mm f3.4, 35mm f2, 90mm f2.8 and 90mm f2 APO. Neither of the 90mm lenses were used on the trip.

Most of the Leica shots were taken with the amazing 21mm f3.4 Super Elmar.

The most used Nikon lens was my 24-70mm f2.8.

I used a Lee seven5 filter kit on the Leica. I don’t have a filter kit for the Nikon (yet) so those shots were mostly bracketed.

All images were post-processed in Adobe Lightroom, with additional work in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for black and white.

It all started last Thursday, when I got an email from SAS telling me that my flight to London the following day was ready for check-in.

What flight?

I looked into it and sure enough, I’d booked a weekend in London some time ago that I’d completely forgotten about. With plans already in place for Friday night and no accommodation booked, it was a bit of a tough call. But who can resist a weekend in London, especially if you’ve got an M240 that you love shooting with?

Unexpected trips are often the best trips and so it came to be in London. I had nothing at all on my agenda – tres unusual for me – so I hastily organised a couple of dinners with friends and did nothing else except walk around like a tourist.

My first visit to London was back in 2010 and it’s fair to say I didn’t fall in love with the place. It was hard to navigate and way too easy to get lost in. Having visited a few times since, I’ve come to absolutely adore it. Spend some time in London and the city’s history and culture – its vibe – will seep through and work its way into your soul.

Resistance is futile (for me, at least).

London is so much more than you can ever capture on a camera in a weekend. But here’s a VERY quick look at some of the places, people and architecture that I saw.

Click images to enlarge.

The old and the new

London suffered a lot of bombing raids at the hands of the Luftwaffe during the second world war. These raids scarred the city, leveling buildings and killing thousands (while later spawning a million Keep Calm and Carry On souvenirs).

London’s streetscape today is an odd mix of old and new as a result.

Gates and Doors

With so many historical buildings still standing, there are many beautiful gates and doors. You could spend a week photographing all the interesting entrances to different places and pondering what’s behind them. Those pictured below are all pretty obvious, but still beautifully ornate and closed to many.

The Canada Gate is part of the Queen Victoria Memorial and stands between Buckingham Palace and Green Park.

The front doors of Buckingham Palace.

A guard outside Buckingham Palace, who presumably opens that gate to the left when Prince Philip wants to scoot by in his Jaguar Mark II and do some donuts in the courtyard.

Doors to Westminster Abbey.

The tradesman’s entrance, off to the side of the doors above. Still beautiful.

Veterans Seeking Justice

Half a mile from Buckingham Palace, a group of what I presume were army veterans had gathered. They were there to demand justice for fallen comrades killed in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Each was given a sign with the name of a fallen soldier or civilian and the script ‘Murdered’ or ‘Massacre’ in red across the middle. It was a moving scene and I thank those present for not minding a guy with a camera wandering amongst them.

Looking Up At Things

Two of the things I love about London are its old buildings and its public sculpture. I get sick of old buildings sometimes and England can be a bit contrived about making sure everything looks old. But there’s no denying the beauty of some of London’s grand architecture and public monuments.

You have to look up to see many of them, so I spent a lot of time with my camera pointed skywards.

Day 1 was quite drizzly, hence the dark mood over Winged Victory from the Victoria Memorial.

Sir Winston simply had be converted to black and white.

Westminster Abbey

Winged Victory looking much happier amidst blue skies the next day.

Another statue from the Victoria Memorial.

Out and About

The rest of these images are mostly un-themed, simply shot when I was out and about in the city.

Travelers head down into the Underground at Piccadilly station.

Their train arrives every few minutes.

This one, below, is a cheeky favourite.

This couple were smooching – quite enthusiastically, one has to say – at the base of Eros for quite a while. I was trying to shoot the statue at night and couldn’t resist positioning myself to get them in the shot.

Zoom in on the guy, and……. he’s not concentrating on the job at hand! 😀

Two of the Four Horses of Helios at Piccadilly Circus.

A note to Theresa May?

Street Art outside the National Gallery. The emphasis was on homelessness.

A new-fangled walk signal that’s sure to get someone’s knickers in a twist.

Lock and Co Hatters was founded nearly 100 years before Captain Cook discovered the land of my birth.

Inscription on the walls of Westminster Abbey.

Cinderella heading toward the castle, or something similar. My sister would die for a ride up to Buckingham Palace in something like this.

A bobby on duty at the Palace before the changing of the guard. He was hamming it up for the cameras.

An older couple braving winter’s chill at Picadilly Circus.

I recently took a rare plunge and spent far more money than my talents can justify and bought the Porsche 911 of cameras. A Leica M (Type 240) rangefinder digital.

Like the 911, it’s German. It’s Iconic. It’s been used by masters to do amazing things.
A masterpiece in both design and execution. Both the 911 and the Leica M are revered by many, though unlike the 911 (which is quite rightly, rarely criticised) the Leica can be lampooned by some – typically because they’re occasionally bought by buffoons like me.

This is not a photo of my specific camera and lens, but my setup looks exactly the same.

The lens is a Leica Summicron 35mm f2 ASPH and just like the one in the photo above, mine is finished in silver. It looks a bit strange, but I’ll live with it.

I won’t go into the specific amount that I spent but let’s just assume that it was ridiculous. Because it was r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s. Both the body and lens were second-hand and they were still ridiculous (and the body was just over half the price of a new one!).

It looks even more ridiculous when you consider the following:

• It only uses prime lenses.
• It’s completely manual focus.
• It’s basically useless for fast-action shooting, as far as I can tell. Continuous shooting mode is a joke and the buffer doesn’t allow you more than 2 or 3 shots in RAW before it needs a cup of tea and a good lie down.
• It’s pretty ordinary in low light and completely useless at night without a tripod.
• It’s minimum ISO is 200 and while it goes up to native 3200…. don’t. Just don’t. Anything above 1600 is going to have noise.
• While mine does have video capability, it’s not great. In fact, the video on my camera was so poor that they took if off subsequent releases from the same generation of cameras, and they didn’t re-introduce it in the all-new, just-released M10

The question, then, is why?

1 – Size

SLR’s are big. Nobody really felt they were big until a new generation of mirrorless cameras from manufacturers like Sony came out. All of a sudden, SLR’s started to look a bit like dinosaurs. They’re big-bodied and the lenses can be huge.

Leicas are the original mirrorless camera. And they’re so compact, even today, that they make the Sonys of the world look big.

Here’s a (rather poor) shot of my M next to my 17-35mm f2.8 Nikon lens. Just the lens, not even the massive Nikon body.

Being so small definitely has its advantages. They say the best camera is the one you have with you. Well, this one is much easier to take everywhere.

The other thing about the Leica’s small size is that it isn’t intimidating when you’re shooting on the street. People get quite conscious of photographers walking around pointing SLRs with massive lenses at them. It’s like bringing a tank to a gunfight.

The Leica is small. It’s non-threatening. You look almost grandfatherly carrying it and people don’t respond nearly the same way if you’re pointing it in their general direction. Many don’t even notice.

I’ve been here in Europe for over 2 years now I’ve hardly travelled during that time, except for work. I’ve been to the UK a few times, but that’s all. I’ve not been to France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Czech or any other desirable spots yet. I’m planning on changing that pretty soon.

The M will be the perfect travel camera, both because of its amazing results, and quite pointedly because of its compact size.

Yes, shooting just the 35mm focal length will limit some of the shots I can get but I think the benefits of being able to travel so light will overcome that. Those times when you simply can’t be bothered carrying around a big bag won’t even be a consideration (I have 5 lenses for the Nikon and three of them are bigger than the one above).

Shooting just 35mm will mean a different sort of travel photography but different doesn’t necessarily mean limited. It’s just different. In fact, I’m sure that my travel albums will feature shot after shot that I wouldn’t have taken if I had a full bag of zooms.

Will I miss zoom lenses from time to time? Sure. And I’m sure there’ll be times when I’ll take both systems with me. But the Leica allows me to cut loose and travel light when I want to. That’s a very liberating thing.

2 – Results (especially for size)

I’m not a pro photographer, by any means. I’m not even worthy to carry a pro’s bags.

The M 240 is, however, a pro level camera that’s capable of producing pro-quality images. And I like the fact that it can do that in such a small package.

I’ve only had the camera a week so I haven’t done much with it. I went on a walkabout photo tour of Copenhagen last weekend with some locals. We shot for about an hour and it’s fair to say that I’m over-the-moon giddy with some of the early results.

It sounds like a bunch of marketing mumbo-jumbo but there really is something about the way the Leica renders colour, the way it makes something look both soft and sharp at the same time.

Maybe I’ve just drunk too much of the Leica Kool Aid?

Here’s a sample shot to show you what I’m excited about. It’s a streetscape and a pretty ordinary one, at that.

What excited me about this shot is the sharpness from front to back.

Take a look at a close-up of this sign from the top left corner….

I love the way it seems to smooth out the colours yet retain perfect clarity.

Here’s the bar sign from the middle ground. Again, the colour rendition is gorgeous and the image is wonderfully sharp.

The sharpness peters off as you get to the end of the street, but it’s a nice fade that still includes the details you need.

I didn’t do any maximum aperture shooting to test the bokeh on this shoot, but it’s supposed to be wonderful. An earlier version of this lens was known as The King of Bokeh, for what that’s worth.

3 – Glass

The company that would eventually become known as ‘Leica’ started off making microscopes in the mid-1800’s and they built on their worldwide renown in that area for 60-70 years before pioneering the world’s first 35mm format cameras.

In other words, Leica knows good glass. They were making some of the world’s best lenses before they ever built a camera.

They make you pay for it, too. The basic 35mm f2 lens that I picked up for my M 240 cost more second-hand than my old Nikon D750 body cost brand new.

The reason it costs so much is the same reason so many people love to shoot with them – they’re exquisitely made – by hand – and yield amazing results. In fact, it’s fair to say that a lot of people buy Leica cameras simply so they can shoot with Leica glass.

There’s a lot of historical virtue in the Leica system, too. I’ve just bought a camera that was built some time around 2013 or so, and yet I can use almost any Leica M system lens dating back to the first M lenses in the mid-1950’s. And they’re all superb.

4 – Simplicity and versatility

At the top of this article, I listed all the ‘limitations’ of this camera.

• It only uses prime lenses.
• It’s completely manual focus.
• It’s basically useless for fast-action shooting, as far as I can tell. Continuous shooting mode is a joke and the buffer doesn’t allow you more than 2 or 3 shots in RAW mode before it needs a lie down.
• It’s pretty ordinary in low light and completely useless at night without a tripod.
• It’s minimum ISO is 200 and while it goes up to native 3200, don’t. Just don’t. Anything above 1600 is going to have noise.
• While mine does have video capability, it’s not great. In fact, the video on my camera was so poor that they took if off subsequent releases from the same generation of cameras, and they didn’t re-introduce it in the all-new, just-released M10

Many shooters will see those as limitations. A lot of Leica shooters that I’ve read and watched prefer to think of them as creative liberations.

Using another automotive analogy, think of a sports car from today vs a sports car from the 1960’s or 70’s.

Today’s version has traction control, ESC, ABS, TMPS, and all sorts of other acronyms. Today’s version is incredibly fast and allows even the most cack-handed driver to feel like he’s Lewis Hamilton in relative safety.

The car from the 1960’s provides a different type of experience. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. In many ways, it’s a more manual experience that relies on the driver interacting with the car.

The analogy doesn’t fit perfectly because there are some fancy electronics hidden away in the M, albeit nowhere near as many as what I’ve got on my Nikon D810.

But the analogy does work in that both experiences allow a thrill – they just do it in different ways. One relies on ultra-modern technology to assist the operator and the other is a more organic experience.

The M is very much a camera that’s designed to concentrate your attention on your exposure, focus and composition. Those are the key creative elements in photography and sometimes they’re easy to overlook in a world of 400-point autofocus systems.

Put it this way….. It’s not quite old-school. But it’s definitely not new school.

5 – Value

This will seem like an odd criterion to think about when spending a metric buttload on a camera and lens system, but it works.

The good news about Leica values is that after just a little bit of depreciation post-unboxing, they hold their value quite well. Some lenses actually go up in value.

I’m choosing to look at this as an investment in a hobby that I love, an investment that will allow me to be more free in pursuing some unburdened travel and one that will hopefully yield me some great photographic results.

And if I hit an emergency, I can always sell it and use my phone’s in-built camera.

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Here’s a sample of images from the Copenhagen walk-around, including a couple of happy accidents on the way home. None of them are spectacular, I know, but they make me happy.

And that’s what photography is all about.