Posts

Leica R 3 Cam 35-70 F3.5 Vario Elmar Lens and Leicaflex SL2

Image
 Didn't shoot all that much for February, got sick with a cold, not the worst one but I did get stuck with a souvenir cough. That left me some free time and started doing some research on a walk around zoom for my Leicaflex and Leica R fleet and read a lot of positive comments around the 35-70 F3.5, a 3 Cam Vario Elmar made in the 1980s and Leitz got a lot of help from Minolta with the design and even supplying lens blanks. Some would sniff this wasn't a pure Leica lens but I will point out Ernst Leitz pursued an engineering partnership with Minolta for a reason, they had great zoom lenses. Minolta also provided the 80-200 F4.5 telephoto zoom (another Vario Elmar) and the 24 F2.8 (an elmarit, and be sure not to mount this on a Leicaflex, bad things can happen and it will end in tears and regret. I want a 24 F2.8 Elmarit but it will be just for the R5 and R6.  My 35-70 F3.5 Vario Elmar came from a  Facebook Marketplace purchase in late February when my cold subsided enough...

Photographing Ice in the Beaches, continued.

Image
 The end results overall with the R6 were stunning, some of it, me, some of it, the 3 Cam Leica R glass. Damn, I can see why it costs so damn much. The R6 as a camera is an interesting one, one would be really cynical and say, "Yeah a Nikon FM does the same thing at a fraction of the price." Yes, to a point but the R6 also has both a sorta matrix metering and spot metering modes, both deliver nicely. The R6 also has a built in diopter for those of us with Gen X eyesight. The one quibble is the little window in back so you can see the film. It became a trend but some reason I had some odd flare on a few frames early on in the roll, granted I had to re-load in the bright sun which is much less than idea. I taped over the window with black duct tape to reduce that variable hopefully to zero in future rolls when reloading in the wild.  When it gets super cold, and stormy which we had plenty of this past winter, Lake Ontario delivers with some epic ice build up. My brother Alex ga...