Going through my pre-pandemic trips and rekindled my travels through London with the Leica SL. There is nothing better than remembering the good old days and how life was prior to COVID. We are getting there, sooner than later we will be back to travelling and experiencing what life around the world has to offer for us. For now walking down memory lane is what we have. I do not have the Leica SL anymore but in reality, today, it is still a very good camera even with its age. Today’s cameras are moving towards the high megapixel technology but in all honesty 24 megapixels for me is still the sweet spot. Large enough to print great quality photos and small enough that it wont break the bank with all the hard disk space and processing power you will need. Who wants Lightroom to hang up trying to process those high resolution files? At 24 MP, the original Leica SL is still a fantastic camera, and for the price and those wanting to get into the Leica SL ecosystem its a great choice! This post is more so to share images from my trip to London with the Leica SL.

Germany, Cologne… and here we were with Photokina 2018 kicking off. The past few weeks have been dominated by announcements from Canon and Nikon with the EOS R and Z systems respectively. I have been keeping an eye on Leica Rumors as a few intriguing rumors have been swirling around…. Leica Q2, Leica SL2, maybe a mini M (CM) or maybe Leica would finally release the 35mm or 50mm Summicron which at this point long overdue. I had some excitement looking forward to the press release from Leica, and here I am with my thoughts on the news that came out of Photokina. Somewhat disappointed but lets go over some of the key notes.

Those of you who follow my blog or my posts know that I shoot with Leica cameras or primarily the Leica SL at the moment, but today I will be going over my experience with the Fuji X100f. With my move to a Leica SL from a Leica Q, the one aspect that I lost in between that decision was portability for times when I am on the go or need to travel light. With this my decision came to try and give the Fuji X100f a shot as a companion camera to my main set. For the days when I need a semi pocketable camera that I can take along to places like amusement parks, family get together's and so on. This gives me a camera that's way better than just a smartphone for times when I do not want to bring the Leica SL. What I will go over in this post is how well the Fuji X100f complements my Leica SL from functional and technical perspective.

Love it or hate it, that's the term or review I have found the most about this lens, but one statement I have also heard is how this lens has a special character to it. If your looking for that classic or Hollywood glam look of the 1950s, this lens design is your lens. That is really what drew me to this particular lens, my style is looking for those timeless photographs that feel like a lost memory. So I took the plunge and made the effort to make this my primary lens for over one year and decide whether I love it or hate it. With that, I look to share an extensive review of the Sonnar f1.5 to provide a personal field test and view of the lens. When I first started looking at this lens, there really was not any reviews or articles on it, probably due to the fact that there are not many fans of this lens. I've often heard comments about it's softness or so but I will go through how to overcome this and hopefully through this post I can add public information about this lens for anyone interested.

Recently an opportunity came across my lap and got me excited, my brother in law was looking into getting into the Leica system and was jumping straight into it with purchasing a Leica Noctilux. He has asked me to purchase it in advance and my only response was heck yeah as this would give me a week to try out the legendary Noctilux. Its very rare that you get to hold and shoot with a $10,000 lens so this was an opportunity that I was excited for and had me waiting for the UPS truck to arrive. 

Recently an opportunity came across my lap and got me excited, my brother in law was looking into getting into the Leica system and was jumping straight into it with purchasing a Leica Noctilux. He has asked me to purchase it in advance and my only response was heck yeah as this would give me a week to try out the legendary Noctilux. Its very rare that you get to hold and shoot with a $10,000 lens so this was an opportunity that I was excited for and had me waiting for the UPS truck to arrive. 

Recently an opportunity came across my lap and got me excited, my brother in law was looking into getting into the Leica system and was jumping straight into it with purchasing a Leica Noctilux. He has asked me to purchase it in advance and my only response was heck yeah as this would give me a week to try out the legendary Noctilux. Its very rare that you get to hold and shoot with a $10,000 lens so this was an opportunity that I was excited for and had me waiting for the UPS truck to arrive. 

For the purist at heart and those who just love to go out there and shoot photos, things can start to get really complicated as you add layers and layers onto your photography workflow process. Today I tackle on describing what I go through from a Lightroom processing workflow perspective as I pop the card out of my camera and into my digital PC.

In today's world social media is such a huge tool in everything you do as a person, business or entity. It's unavoidable and a really good community to get your digital self marketed. As a photographer, sharing your experiences or some of your day to day work builds a brand and following that leads to other opportunities. Along with all the benefits of starting and growing your social network presence come along the challenges and the pitfalls.

You have been there, you hit those lulls and lazy days where you just think to yourself, nah I don't need that camera sitting there. It could be a normal day, getting to errands, out for a jog, or just the normal day to the office. Seeing the same thing you see and walk by everyday. We all get in this cycle of repetitiveness that it happens, we get uninspired and the camera just sits there. Sometimes its tough to get those creative juices going again, you just think to yourself why bother. I am not going to see anything of interest today, its just another run to the coffee shop. So, how do I get out of this rut or prevent it?

As we ride the social photography boom of today with smartphones, social networks and mobile apps, there is a growing dependence on filters and post processing applications to give your photographs that extra oomph. It's a question I always get when posting photos on socials media, "What filter did you use?". Answer is, when the shot is a great shot, "None" and even minimal post processing. 

When photographing a landscape, colors and details can make a normal landscape a glorious photo. There's so many things to consider when looking for that perfect emotion you are looking to portray in an image. Often times it requires you the photographer to return to a location multiple times in a year, waiting... waiting and waiting for the right time.

As I look at my favorite photos in my collection of photographs, I start to notice a pattern of how these photos came about. As all photographers or anyone travelling do, we all plan, map and scope out the itinerary of where we are going and what we expect to see. Deciding on the best time of day to visit a location and to try and capture that special moment. But even with the best of plans, we can never foresee circumstances of each and every day and what nature will provide to us.