Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/12/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Luggers, Ray Tai and Chris Topher and I met at the China Tee Club today and mated my L > M4/3rds adapter with Chris's black G1. We used my 15 Heliar, the 24 Elmarit, the 35 Summilux Asph, The Tri-Elmar, the 50mm Summilux Asph, the 90 Summicron APO, my old 135 Elmar (from 1964) and Chris's 50mm Zeiss f1.5. Pictures taken with some of these lenses can be found at: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Howard+Cummer/M+Lenses+to+Micro+4-3rds/ http://tinyurl.com/9bh9zx The EVF is better than I remember it at Photokina. Under fluorescent lights there is strobing in the viewfinder but with daylight or other lighting the EVF works quite well. A Leica rangefinder viewfinder it isn't but still it is usable. You have to set the G1 to fire the shutter without a lens on the camera and that takes some digging through the instruction book to find the menus within menus. What is very appealing is that in manual focus you touch the left arrow of the control wheel on the back and that brings up a 10X magnification box. You can move the box over the area you want to enlarge and then push the set button in the center of the control wheel to enlarge that section. You have to be quite fast to fix focus because the magnification shuts off in about 3 seconds. It is easiest to use with wide angle lenses because the magnified camera shake is not so great. For telephotos like the 90 Cron and the 135 Elmar - the shaking of the hand held camera is so magnified that it is hard to fix focus before the magnification turns off. Chris believes a firmware upgrade has already been announced to allow the user to extend the timing of the magnification. I didn't get to take the camera out for any street shooting so I can't comment on its use there and I didn't have time (nor inclination) to work through all the camera's features and menus. Still, as you can see from the pictures it performs pretty well - although we did notice that white balance when set to auto fluctuated quite a bit from shot to shot. A feature which appeals to me for street shooting is the moveable view screen on the back but I will have to test it another day. Bottom line: Would I buy one? Could be, but I wasn't so blown away that I ran next door to get one today. Still, I might when the new prices fall a bit more. Comments and questions welcome. Cheers Howard