Archives for August 2012

The Arca-Swiss Monoball P0 Tripod Head, retail­ing for $299 USD, fea­tures a kno­b­less tri­pod head with a three-ele­ment geared lock­ing sys­tem. To tilt, rotate the knurled band counter-clock­wise, as seen from above, about a quar­ter turn: the more you loosen it, the less resis­tance the gears pro­vide, allow­ing a tilt range of about 30° from horizontal […]

After all that research, I decided that, besides buy­ing bet­ter lenses for the M3, I was will­ing to fork over some seri­ous shekels for an M9 — or bet­ter yet, an M9-P, as I didn’t trust myself not to scratch the view-screen. […]

I spent the next cou­ple of months obses­sively research­ing Leica cam­eras and lenses. I began by down­load­ing the owner’s man­ual for the M3 rangefinder. Then I prac­ticed com­pos­ing and focus­ing with no film in the camera. […]

I quickly real­ized that the lens that Joe had given me was imprac­ti­cal: the frame lines were too restrictive