The Leica M8 vs. the Landscape
by Tina Manley
ASMP, NPPA, EP
Pro Imaging Member Many of you know me as a people shooter, but this past summer I had the opportunity to attend a workshop in the Sierra Nevadas led by Paul Roark, and discovered a wonderful experience in landscape photography.  This panorama was made by stitching 8 photos together from the Leica M8 and M24/2.8 lens; it makes a stunning 17"x78" print.
The mountains and lakes in the Sierra Nevadas are spectacular. It would be hard to take bad photos there. The weather cooperated with beautiful, sunny days and cold, frosty nights. My husband and I hiked different trails every day from dawn till dark for a week. I prepared by going to the gym for months before the trip and my artificial knees did fine. (The lack of humidity bothered me more than the altitude. I'm used to sauna-like weather in South Carolina! )
There was a fire danger the whole time we were there because it was so dry and the day we left the roads were closed due to forest fires. I managed to make a panoramic of those photos, too, but since they were made from the car window and without a tripod, they are not nearly as sharp.  Inyo Valley Forest Fire The Golden Trout Natural History Workshop is a wonderful bargain and it was really a leap for me because I usually photograph people and have never done landscape photography. I carried my Canon 5D, 1DMII and Leica M8. I ended up leaving the big Canons in the camp most of the time and carrying my small Leica M8 up and down all of those mountains!
I was able to download the photos every night and check them so I knew the Leica was doing a great job. How could I do that in the middle of wilderness? Paul's workshop offers a historic log cabin whose mains are powered by a modern solar electric system, so there was plenty of power for laptops and charging batteries, all done while sitting next to a very warm wood stove.
I carried a Gitzo monopod that I used as a walking stick and Gitzo carbon fiber tripod. I knew that I wanted to experiment with some panoramic shots and also some HDR bracketed photos that would have to be made with a tripod.
I was also making photos specifically for two seminars that I would teach for Leica in Massachusetts in October. The seminars were on using the M8 as a travel camera and on color management. I did a lot of experimenting with exposures. I had gotten some advice from Leica before the trip since I'm used to photographing people in very low light with fast lenses wide open.
Landscape photography is about as far as you can get from what I usually do! The Leica technical rep had told me that digital cameras do better if you don't stop all the way down so many of my exposures were about f/8 - but the f/16 ones looked fine to me, too.   
At first I carried a Minolta spot meter, but the M8 meter was so accurate, I left the spot meter in the camp most of the time.
I did carry the Canon 5D sometimes but used Leica R lenses on it.  Foxtail Pine And, I even managed to include some photos of people!  South Fork Lake When I got home, I used PSCS3 to stitch the panoramas and Merge to HDR for the bracketed shots. I was very pleased with the results from both. I made quite a few 17"x24" prints using the Epson 4800, Image Print, and Museo Silver Rag paper. The panoramic print ended up being 17"x78".
The tiff files are spectacular. On the large print you can count the pine needles on the trees and every blade of grass across the lake. I also converted some of the files using Alien Skin Exposure 2 and made several 17x24 black and white prints on Epson Velvet Fine Art and on Crane Museo Max Fine Art paper. I think quite a few people who attended the Leica seminars ended up buying an M8 based on those prints! ;-) (I'm just a very satisfied customer. Leica doesn't pay me a thing :-(!)
I still prefer photographing people, but I'm not afraid of landscape photography now and I know my M8 is more than adequate for the job!
My workshop in the Sierra Nevadas turned out to be a wonderful trip and I hope to go again this summer. If anybody has any questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them.
Tina
Tina Manley
ASMP, NPPA, EP, PI
http://www.tinamanley.com |
