Days before Christmas

Just days before Christmas, families came to city for the last minute gifts, taking kids to see the street decorations, and street performers and buskers come out in force for the crowd, all in the spirit of the festival. The atmosphere of Christmas is really here.

I know its way past Christmas.....but these were taken 2 days before Christmas, and I only had the time to upload now. :)

 These ladies were awsome, odd combination of instrument too.

The "Yep Its a Busker" guy, one of Melbourne's favorits, he hasn't been seen for while

Doesn't matter what religion you are, Christmas means.....Shopping Time!!!

Sunday CBD stroll

Just a casual stroll through Melbourne CBD on a lazy Sunday afternoon, everyone is busy shopping for Christmas, with a few exceptions below.

You never going to know what reaction you going to get when your subject spot you :)

Mis-focused this shot, still like his look and posture though



75mm Summarit Bokeh

"Bokeh" from 75mm Summarit, for the Bokeh-fetish :)

Back to 35mm

Jumping back to 35mm focal length after trying out 50mm Summilux and 75mm Summarit, feeling more comfortable with 35mm Summarit at the moment.

Chapel street is very busy place with alot of things happening. My girlfriend loves it, as there are heaps of small independant fashion stores and nice cafes, there are tend to be a bit more variety in sthings than say Brunswick street.

 lots of nice old architecture in Chapel street

Just proves that you don't need to be in a lycra to look good on a bike

QV and Swanston Street in Melbourne

The block from QV to Melbourne Central along swanston street has to be the most busy place in Melbourne CBD, great for cup of coffee and shopping, and of course good hunting ground for street photographers. :)

All taken with 75mm Summarit M.

American gangsters?

She is not enjoying her coffee



Why are most of my photos in portrait orientation?....hmmm.

75mm Summarit M Test Shots

Got GAS attack recently, and bought a 75mm Summarit M at Camera Exchange in Melbourne (btw great store, and great people, and they have 35mm summicron, 50mm summicron and 75mm summicron in stock!!).

Never used 75mm on a rangefinder before. Surprisingly compact lens, and not heavy either. Had a little bit of trouble focusing accurately while walking and shooting moving people at the same time, and found myself cropping too much as I m used to 50mm point of view and distance. Anyways, 2 test shots posted below. So far, found the image quality to be awesome, very sharp if focused accurately, and nice out of focus rendering.

Also tried the Voigtlander 75mm Heliar f1.8 at the store, great lens, I thought it handled better than the 75mm summarit, and from the few shots I took at the store, it beautiful looking skin tones, and good out of focus rendering. I bought the Summarit instead because Summarit had a more mordern look to the images.

Not sure if using your kid as a bumper bar on your bike is legal :P

"Faces" of Melbourne Suburbia

Owning a big house, with a sizable front and backyard in the suburbs tends to be the preferred life style for Aussies. Most Melbournian, like rest of Austrlia, likes that lifestyle. The suburbs in Melbourne, especially the once away from the CBD, are mostly large and quiet. For a street photographer, this could be a bit boring, just try and stand in a street corner and wait for someone interesting to walk past, you could be there for half a day. However, dig a little deep, and observe a bit more, you will discover the suburbs are much more charming and interesting than on the surface.

Yes, the streets are still empty, and there are hardly any people's faces in you can photograph, however, the real charm of the suburb lies within the front yard of each residence. How is that so? the front yard is like a display, or "face" of each household in the suburb, one can tell the personality of the person who live in the house from their front yard. Some front yards have meticulously mowed lawn, which means the owners are meticulous people, some front yard are paved with concrete used for driveway or storage, which means the owners are practical, and others are blocked with high fences, which means the household is very private......etc..... Once in a while, a front yard stands out from the rest, either through special choice of decoration, or through total negligence.

Maybe I am bored out of brains, but I found how these differences in the front yards of the suburbia interesting, and this will be my on-going little project, where I will collect and post shots of interesting Melbourne suburban front yards, and maybe throught the photos, one can tell what the person living in the house is like.

So to start off.....

An example of very good use of the front yard....as advertising space

Neatly mowed lawn, a good looking old trailor, very 70s.

Leica 50mm Summilux M f1.4 Pre ASPH E43 Version II Review

I have always being a fan of 50mm focal length, and it is the focal length I used the most ever since I started photography. The 50mm Summilux M has to be one of the most sort after lens for M mount, and has been a dream lens for me ever since I used M mount cameras. The current 50mm f1.4 Summilux M ASPH is $3699 USD or if you are in Australia it would cost around $4500 AUD, not only that, its a lens that is NEVER in stock. Therefore I settled for the less expensive, and more readily available Pre ASPH version from ebay.

This version of the lens is the last version with 43mm filter, and has the same optical formula as the Pre-ASPH E46 version, but with a minimum focus distance of 1m rather than 0.7m. I have been shooting with it for the 2 month, and here are the first thought of it. I will do a detailed  comparison with other 50mm lenses I owned later on.

Usability
First of all, this lens has a pretty long focus throw, and no focus tab, so it would be pretty hard to focus fast. I tend to estimate the distance before focusing in the viewfinder, which cuts down some focusing time, but requires good distance estimation. The aperture ring is silky smooth, yet each aperture click is still detented enough to distinguish the settings, however, it is easy to move the aperture setting if not careful. The focus is very smooth as well, which is easy on the fingure, since the focus throw is long. The original Leica clip on revesible hood and lens cap came is a CRAP, you can't use the lens cap and the hood with a screw-in filter on, because the scew-in filter blocks the lens hood clip, and since the cap goes on the reverse side of the hood and not the lens it self, you won't be able to use the cap as well. If you would like to use filters on your lenses, I would suggest getting a 43mm clip on lens cap, or if you like to have a lens hood and filter on your lens, just buy a 43mm screw in lens hood, both are readily available for a few bucks.

Image Quality
So for a $2500 - $3000 second hand lens, the image quality better be pretty darn good....well, you really need to define "darn good". If you are expecting super sharp image corner to corner with cream like out of focus redition, you might be in for a bit of dissapointment. At f1.4 wide open, the lens is very sharp in the center, and only very slightly softer in the corners (compare the salami in the middle and at the corners, click on the pic for full size). When stopped down to f2.8, the lens is super sharp.

The bokeh is not creamy smooth like what one would get with Canon or Nikon 50mm f1.4. Its a slightly swirly, slightly busy, and slightly dreamy type. Personally I love this type of bokeh because its like som one dabbing with a oil painting brush on canvas, some people might prefer other wise. The transition from in-focus to out of focus plane is smooth and gradual rather than adrupt. The photo below is an example of the bokeh at f1.4, I will upload a better one in future.

The colors from this lens is accurate and subtle, it has the right balance between saturated look of a morden lens and subtle look of a classic lens. It retains richness of color yet not over doing it, I tend to add a slight saturation in Light Room (about +10) and no adjustment to contrast to the files from this lens.

This lens is a pre-aspherical lens, so its not going to be as perfect as the latest aspherical lens, chromic aberations will happen here and there, at very high contrast areas, but its much better than Canon 50mm f1.4 I have used in this respect. For brightly lit objects, there are also some "glow" around the edges of object in focus at f1.4, but I have only noticed it when I over exposed or for very brightly lit objects, both of these are not going to be noticible if you don't pixel peep, and do not occure often.

One thing to watch out for is that, using a ND 0.6 filter on this lens with M9 will give you vignetting at corners at f1.4. I haven't tried using a thin ND filter on this lens yet, but hopefully that will improve it. Flare is not a problem for this lens, I only got prominant flare once, shooting into the sun, if you keep a hood on, it shouldn't be a problem.
Overall, the image quality from this lens is excellent, it renders images towards classic side, yet keeps optical aberations to a minimal. The images are sharp wide open, and even sharper stopped down, but it should not be compared to the latest ultra sharp ASPH lenses from Leica.

Construction
Very well put together, heavy, and so sexy that you want to foundle it, and admit it, all of you Leica addicts foundle your lenses :P.

Summary
So, is it worth the $2500-3000 price tag? image quality is excellent, much much better than canon or nikon 50mm f1.4 (which btw cost 1/6th price), however I really need to try out the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Sonnar to make up my mind if the image quality alone is worth the price. Build quality wise, its typical Leica. There are few quirks in usability department, mainly the focus throw and the hood, the focus throw might put some street photographers off, and the hood belongs in the bin.

Anyways, I will do a comparison of this lens with others I have used, owned in future so stay tuned. Here are few photos I took in the 2 month, I havent taken that many, since Im concentrating on using 35mm focal length at the moment.

Xitang China.

Took those while in Xitang China. Xitang is a little canal village between Shanghai and Hangzhou in Jiangsu province. There are lots of these little canal villages in that area, mainly because theres a vast canal system that was started in 722BC - 481BC (Spring Autumn period), and later became part of the grand canal system that was completed in Sui dynasty (581-618AD). Xitang village is about 1.5 hours drive from Shanghai city center, and is a worthwhile trip for a weekend. The food there is nothing unique, but plenty of variaty, stinky fried tofu being the most worthwhile to try out. The village has been "touristrised", which means plenty of souvirnirs shops and plenty of tour groups, the best way to spend time there is to stay overnight in one of the houses for rent along the canal, waking up nice and early to enjoy the quie tvillage all by yourself, vefore 10AM, when bus loads of toursits arrive. The village can be very enjoyable at night too, with a different atmosphere, you can mingle with the crowd in one of the many bars (damn western bar culture :)), or sit outside of your rented place by the river and enjoy some local moon shine.

The shots taken were mid of the day where bus loads of tourist had already invaded :), with a Leica 35mm Summarit M, and Leica M9-P.

Shipi lane, narrowest laneway in the town, fits 1 person width only, I don't think you can even ride a bike through, a nice court yard at the end of the laneway though.

One of the residence for rent, you get a little patio by the river.

Canal taxi, fun for tourists.

Gondolia

17/11/2011 First Post!

My first post on my first blog! :D
Brief introduction, I am a street photography addict, and also a photo gear nut living in Melbourne Australia, so this blog will mainly about photography and occasionally gear review (when I can afford it :) ). My goal for this blog is to share my photos, what I learnt in photography and of course learn from other photogrpaphers.

I have been trying to use 35mm focal length exclusively for street photography at the moment. I have found it a bit more difficult to compose than the 50mm focal length which I had been using the most. The main difficulty is since its wider, its harder to visiualise the composition before framing, and also I tend to get closer to the subject, and end up lose the surrounding environment.

Anyway here are few street shots taken with 35mm last weekend in Melbourne CBD area. Melbourne is not a huge metropolitan city like Hongkong or Shanghai, so theres alot less things happening, but it does have some interesting achitectures and diversity of people, which makes it an interesting place to live and document, afterall it was voted the most livable city in the world :).

Man with "courage" balloon

Smoking man with "courage" balloon

One thing about Melbournions is that they are pretty laid back, and pretty cool about having their photo taken, I haven't been punched up yet :)

Taxi Rank



More on my flickr account