Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, March 2013.
Shame on me, I had never posted a photo of the gorgeous cathedral of Strasbourg (the most beautiful of french cathedrals imho, and I’m not that biased, being born and raised in Lyons, not Strasbourg).
The hard part being, for that shot, to have a lens wide enough to frame and shoot that 142m (466 ft) one towered beast of a gothic beauty. The tallest in the world from 1647 to 1874.
In this case, I used the Super Elmar 21mm which is really one fine piece of gear. Well built, rather small and ultra sharp wide open. Even if its max aperture of 3.4 won’t allow the miracles its Summilux counterpart is capable of.
But the two 21mm wide angles of the Leica roster don’t play in the same league: the Super Elmar costs around 2300€, its bulky and super-expensive sibling costs a whopping +5000€.
Furthermore, the marvels of the MM in high iso perfectly counterbalances the rather modest aperture of 3.4. I shot @ f3.4, iso 4000 (!) with a speed of 1/12 sec and it’s rather sharp, with no grain, me thinks.
Of course, you can always go for the Voigtlander 21mm f4. It’s a great tiny lens for FILM cameras: it vignettes a lot, which is not a problem for me but bothers some, and, above all, it suffers from heavy color shifting when used on the M9. And that’s, in my book, a real issue: I don’t want to be obliged to “Corner fix” - a great plug-in able to fix those kind of problems -every shot.
But on the M Monochrom, is it a viable option? Yes, if you can live with the vignetting and a lot less sharpness. Anyway, I’ll soon kiss my sample goodbye, as I don’t use that focal length enough to keep two 21mm.
Untitled, Strasbourg, December 2012.
Untitled, Strasbourg, December 2012.
Sonia, Strasbourg 2012.
The Thing, Strasbourg December 2012.
Duck Shadow, Strasbourg, February 2013.
Christmas Tree, Strasbourg January 2013.
Night reflection, Strasbourg, January 2013.
St-Pierre de Chartreuse, December 2012.
A mini-series about St-Pierre de Chartreuse, the village were my maternal grandmother was born. She still owns there a flat where I spend one or two weeks every year. Its a little ski resort so it can be quite crowded during winter vacations but it’s very (and I mean very) tranquil the rest of the year.
The park surrounding the village is just beautiful and you can enjoy there one of the finest spirit on earth, the marvelous green chartreuse, produced by the monks who lives in the near monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, head monastery of the Carthusian order. Forget about Jagermeister and Genepi if you happen to enjoy this kind of liqueurs, an ice cold chartreuse just can’t be beat.
About this series, photographically speaking, the M Monochrom is a great camera for b&w landscape: it’s a joy to open dng with so many details in it. And it reigns supreme for night shooting, as you can crank up the iso till 4000 or 5000 and still get a shot with a manageable amount of grain in it. All in all, it’s a superb camera, one I don’t see myself selling, even if the upcoming M type 240 is mouth watering for a gearhead like me.
En direction de Patassière, St-Pierre de Chartreuse, Décembre 2012.
En direction de Perquelin, St-Pierre de Chartreuse, Decembre 2012.
Bernière, St-Pierre de Chartreuse, December 2012.
Adret et Ubac, près de la Chapelle du rosaire, St-Pierre de Chartreuse, décembre 2012.
Window, St-Pierre de Chartreuse, December 2012.
St-Pierre de Chartreuse, December 2012.
