You can get one, but it goes on the side - bit like a Visoflex pumped on steroids 
Apparently I was wrong - I had no luck in finding any Voigtlander auto-focus lenses.
What is a “Megadap AF adapter”? What does it do?
Only the visoflex 2 has the same resolution like the Sigma EVF11. The visoflex 1 comes only at 2.4 MP, a dwarf against modern 5-6 or even 9 MP.
Which goes on the side, meaning my nose is not accidentally activating the LCD to move the AF-point pretty quick. 
It was a surprise how quickly I got accustomed to it. Nothing for you @mikemyers just keep on DSLRing or Rangefinding.
Interesting that you see PL as a toolbox to “fix problems”. I see it as a collection of artist’s tools, with which, I will enhance and perfect an image.
Which leads me to ask why you haven’t composed and framed the image in the camera?
But, if you didn’t know the back story, there is nothing to say that it wasn’t taken in one shot. Frank Hurley wanted to portray an emotion, so he created an image that achieved that.
I have been called upon to create a panoramic photograph of a group of elderly residents in a care home - there was no way I could get them all looking at the camera at the same time. So I took multiple shots, aiming to get everyone looking at me at some point in the session - then I simply replaced the faces on one “master” photo with those from other shots when they were looking at the camera. Absolutely nobody at the care home knows I did that and they were totally pleased with the result. If I had used any one single shot, it would have portrayed some residents in a very bad way - something the relatives would not have been happy with.
Just as I didn’t photograph anything that wasn’t there, Frank Hurley didn’t photograph anything that wasn’t there. It was a true representation of everything he saw, but he only had a plate camera and not a cine camera that would have made a film with several hours of nothing happening between moments of action.
Yes. There was nothing that “hung together” as a good composition, just a bunch of stuff that just happened to be in the vicinity. On first glance, all the guy was doing was pruning leaves off a tree that just happened to have coconuts on it - there is nothing to tell me that he was removing the coconuts as well.
On the image of the ship:
- there is no who
- the what is the main subject, the ship
- the when is certainly not obvious and is totally irrelevant
- likewise the where is not obvious unless you happen to know where the photo was taken and, therefore, for the vast majority of viewers, is also totally irrelevant
- as for why, because the subject was there?
Those questions might apply to a journalistic context but, here, what most people want is a print that is striking and evokes an emotion of the grandeur of the ship.
Possibly mainly if you are thinking as a photo-journalist, but, as a work of art?
Then why did you fill the majority of the frame with the ship and include a few bits of anonymous skyscrapers and a distracting red building? There is nothing in that image that tells me, as a non-Miami resident, where in the world the ship was and, frankly, it wouldn’t make any difference if I did know.
Agreed, if all you want is a snapshot of a moment in time. But if you want a decent photo to hang on a wall as a decorative piece, then you need to think a lot more about what makes a good image apart from “well it was there so I shot it and then fixed it up later”.
Amen to that.
We used to have a wonderfully annoying woman in our UK LF group. She would produce 5" x 4" transparencies on the light table - perfectly framed - in camera. And, of course, with no post processing. Bless you Jenny, you inspire me to do better.
Yes, but that video was about how to set it up for the first time, some of which was irrelevant to your use case. once it is setup, you usually never need to go through all that palaver again.
And, after you have setup the basics in the menus of your D780, you are left with no more complication than your Leica - ISO, shutter speed, aperture, focus and a shutter release.
The D780 even has a rangefinder in the viewfinder to tell you when you are perfectly in focus, without having to revert to using the back screen.
Simple. Don’t bother taking it because, unless you only want it for sending to a friend at postcard size, it certainly isn’t going to make it onto the wall.
Very apposite 
Which makes them a better choice for macro work, due to the inherent deeper DoF, but not necessarily
for replacing a longer focal length for “bringing things closer”.
Let me take you back to the challenge a couple of us gave you to completely abandon your journalistic hat and try to make that artistic photo that somebody would offer you money for to hang on their wall.
Perhaps, if I had your ability, and your perspective on photography, and if I had never worked as a photojournalist, I would agree with you. The best I can offer is I want to be able to do both - create “art”, and create "photojournalistic images following their rules.
I don’t disagree with you, but there are now two or more types of photography which I have been involved in - if we include “product photography”. I should probably include “medical photography”.
PhotoLab - to me, it allows me to do in my computer the things I used to do in my darkroom, and a whole lot more. It includes tools that can do many things, both what you mentioned, and to fix/correct what I call “problems” as they interfere with the image I want to create.
In India, we are supposed to include the five “W’s” with any photo we submit, so the. people in “desk top publishing” can create a caption. I ought to be doing that here, as well.
Why don’t I frame the image in the camera? Because I leave room for me, or someone else, to adjust it later. Any photo I want to take, but find it difficult, becomes a challenge, to do the best I can. I agree with you, photojournalistic image should tell a story, but not art. The ship photo - other people in the forum found it excellent. As “art”, it’s not what you consider “art”, but it is exactly what I wanted to capture in the photo. Camera options - maybe I’m being silly, but I want to know what every option in my camera is or does, in case I do need it later.
I agree completely.
Making it onto a wall is only one of the possible uses for photos. I very well may not have the talent to make wall-photos on a regular basis.
Challenge accepted!
Well, it’s obvious you have spent years do the journalistic stuff. Surely, now you are retired, why not take the time and effort to learn the artistic side of things without being constantly distracted but “stuff you just see”?
Maybe not on a regular basis but you could make it your aim for at least once.
Until 5 years ago, I had never done formal portraiture. I studied it, tried it and now do portraits regularly.
OK. You say you’ve done product shots, how about a still life?
Let’s all do this. I will try to take a photo that matches your criteria.
Meanwhile, you will capture an news image for a publication, complete with the 5 “W’s”.
The Megadap MTZ11 is an adapter designed for mounting manual focus M mount lenses to Nikon Z bodies giving them autofocus capabilities.
Mark
And here is some explanation of how it works.
George
Self titled…
75th Anniversary of the landing at Saint-Michel-en-Grève August 2019
Summer evening market at Plestin-les-Grèves July 2018
Sounds to me, that the most difficult part of this is to find something worth taking a photo of. I will keep looking, harder now than before.
That is often the case, which is why I suggested still life. Here’s our improvised studio…
From what you’ve said of the light in your apartment, you may not need lighting, just a white reflector opposing the natural light.
Result…
1 Like
In Michigan, in a larger condo, I had the light box, the lights, the light stands, and everything else. I also had a similar setup at work when I moved to Miami Beach. I have access to the box and lights and backdrops and everything else in India.
However, I got totally bored with this, having no real interest. It was one of the things I did for work. I have no desire to start doing it again - I have much more of a desire to start shooting film again, and while I haven’t thought much about it, I’d love to capture some beautiful “art” images, with composition, lighting, and everything else. Need to go on a “safari” and see what I can find.
Thanks to our other discussions, I have put my 28-70 away. For now, I just mounted my f/1.8 Nikon lens on my Df, for when I use that camera, and again, for now, I’ll use the 24-120 on my D780. For rangefinder use, perhaps for “street photography”, my 28mm will likely find its way onto my M10. The Fuji X100F has been put away, along with my Canon. If I need to travel light, they are ready.
As I see it, the 28-300 gets me 300, once I can afford to buy it, and my existing 24-120 gets me 24mm. This means I can choose between 24 and 300. Maybe I’m just getting too old, as the 24-120 feels very heavy to me.
It doesn’t work that way, I’m constantly “searching” for interesting photos. I guess when I go out, I just need to remind myself that I’m “searching” for artistic scenes. For several reasons, I agree that the D780 would be best for this. I need to let my imagination run loose, and see what it comes up with. Today is a waste - cold, and rainy, and foggy, and getting much worse by tonight.
Mark, this might be a wonderful tool for people who don’t want to focus manually. It’s not for me. On a camera designed for it, I enjoy focusing manually. At times, I agree with what people write about manual focusing being better than auto-focus. But it’s also true that I need to be using a camera designed around manual focus, such as my rangefinder cameras. I’ve still got Nikon SLR’s with the ground glass focusing screen, but I have no desire to do so.
Mike,
I feel exactly the same as you. The only reason I brought it up was because you mentioned you thought there were some Voigtlanders with autofocus. With one of these devices attached, a Voigtlander can be used with autofocus. I would never buy one myself, but it is an interesting gadget and apparently works fairly well.
Mark
As i was posting my camera is laying around mostly. Somehow the time and “motivation” to photograph something is a bit jammed between the slidingdoors as we say here.
Style is a kind of signatuur, a red line/thread which shows when you watch a 50 or so images made in a longer period of time. Say 5 years
A Theme is more a short pre thought idea of a cluster of images.
I am more a spinning and running around kind of guy.
On day’s out and holiday’s i am walking slightly meandering around my family’s route and shot mostly in A-mode auto iso. Interesting things, details which catches my eye’s, plane view of the day. When i read something about a certain technique or type of shooting and i have time i play around to see if i am able to get something interesting.
So i think my Style is no style. Just theme’s. 
Personally i think using a limited method as Style could become narrows the learning.
For selling images is a style as signatuur a key factor doh but for us amateurs more a accidental surfacing feature. 
After thinking about this, my goal became creating some photos, which if I displayed them at a “street art show” might be purchased.
First decision, take my “average camera”, the Df, and attach a plain, ordinary, 50mm lens that comes with the camera as a kit. Nothing fancy.
I was going to go to Biscayne Bay, but I’ve already posted a lot of photos from there, so I walked down Lincoln Road, in the heart of Miami Beach, searching for scenes that might work at an art show. I took 30 photos, deleted most, then one by one went through them, only keeping those that might sell. Some of them are of things made by other people - I figured my photo becomes “my” art, even it something in the photo was made by someone else. I’m not sure how that fits into the current copyright laws. Next time, I’ll find “new” and “natural” things to photograph.
In editing, I went for bright colorful images that would stand out at the art show.
I’ll post the final jpg images here; if anyone wants, I’ll post the original images.
There’s no WWWWW here - no photojournalist hat in sight!
This was just for a warm-up. Next time I’ll take my D750 with the good lens, and try to find subjects that nobody “made”.
Hey, we had a deal 
Reportage is not my “thing”, but I played along.
Still life doesn’t have to be a formal product shot - the idea is to create a work of art - a painting made with light. Think Caravaggio’s painting of a basket of fruit or, one of my favourite still life photographers - Christopher Broadbent, who is, in part the inspiration for this image I made…
The idea of the challenge I posed you was to create an image, composed and framed in the camera, instead of taking a photo of something that might attract your attention; and then composing and framing after the event.
I suggested still life because you can be so much more in control. You can start to setup a subject, leave it to one side, think about it, return to it, rearrange it, maybe several times before pressing the shutter. You can take a shot, contemplate it on the large screen, rework the composition - it might take you a couple of days. To reiterate, the point is to produce one image that is just as you saw it in the viewfinder.
Stop procrastinating and prevaricating with changing camera or medium. That just serves to distract you from the task in hand, which is to produce an art image using your D780 and taking full advantage of the quality it will give you.
To be blunt, the last thing you want to do is “go on safari”. Set up a table in front of a wall, cover it with a drape and start putting “stuff” on it and playing with composition. Forget all the formal stuff - just play and see what comes out. With the only limitation that you are not allowed to frame the image by cropping in post-production unless you want to change aspect ratio. I am fortunate in that the D850 can take in 5:4 with the viewfinder masked but I don’t think the D780 offers that, so you can crop, but only the longer side, not the shorter one.
For this exercise, that seems like a good idea. My example still life was taken at 50mm.
We have discussed this before. You really don’t need two zooms, one of which virtually duplicates about half of the other. The 28-300mm is the only zoom you are ever going to need - sell the 24-120 to help pay for it. You’ve already got one of the best 20mm prime lenses out there, which is more than enough to cover those time when you need anything shorter than 28mm - all you have to do is to approach the subject a little bit more if it looks too wide.
And there’s your problem. You are looking for “scenes” instead of subjects. You need to look for the smaller things and you really need to stop trying to include the whole world around them.
Why? You’ve instantly limited yourself to one perspective and having to crop from an already small (16Mpx) image. I thought you were going to stick with the D780 until you mastered it?
< tin hat on >
Well, I’m sorry to say that I wouldn’t be buying them. In my opinion, they are totally lacking in composition and are cropped in all sorts of places in such a way that makes the subjects “incomplete” and yet, you still have a ton of background clutter that distracts.Great snapshots for the memory scrapbook but still a long way from art
< /tin hat off >
Helen and I went to the port at Roscoff the other day. The sky was amazing and just needed a foreground to base it on, so Helen “framed” it with this boat…
Notice how the lines of the quayside and the mast lead into the image and “support” the sky.
Then she saw a knotted rope that had been dropped on the quayside…
Note that she reworked this to eliminate background distractions by darkening around the knot; and she cropped and reframed it to 5x4 to improve the composition.
The first shot was taken at 28mm and the second at 50mm, so the 28-300 zoom was all she needed.
Composition, composition, composition
Oops, yes, we did - I was to take “artistic” photos rather than “photojournalist” photos, and you would do the reverse. I never agreed to take still life photo, and I explained why. I don’t have the tools I used to use, and my tiny condo has no place to set up a table for that kind of photos.
I thought you would be pleased - five photos, not a single one looking like something a photojournalist might capture. I explained they were “practice shots”, and all I wanted to accomplish was to bottle up the photojournalist in my mind.
Me? I have no interest in “still life” photos any more.
Yes, to that, but to be honest, it will be what I saw in my brain, not simply what was in the viewfinder. I “see” with the viewfinder, but I also “see” with my brain/imagination what I want.
Yes, to the words I highlighted. To me, “art” means something I can frame and sell.
There is no room in my tiny condo to set up another table. As things are now, everything is very crowded. No room for another table, no room for lights that I no longer own, and barely room for a tripod. Also, there is no empty wall space. Even if there was, I’m no longer interested in that kind of photography. There are many famous photographers who I would gladly attempt to “copy”. I’m certainly interested in that.
Yes, we’ve discussed it, but it’s unlikely to happen. Actually, I have both my 300 zoom, and my old 80-200 Nikon Zoom that I used to use for racing photos. I rarely sell things. I rarely use a long telephoto, but (especially in India) I very often use one of my two 24mm lenses. My 28-300 and my 24-120 are both already too big and heavy, and usually get left at home. I know what Ken Rockwell wrote, and I know what you wrote, and I won’t argue with either of you, but maybe I’m just getting old.
Isn’t what I’m doing similar to what the famous photographers we’ve read about did? HCB, and Ansel - that is my “goal”, not that I’ll ever get that good.
I’m not sure if “mastered” is the appropriate word, but I now feel right at home with the D780 and the M10. I am certainly NOT at home with the Df. Everything is different and strange, just like my Fuji.
I think the “background clutter” is part of the image, but regardless, there is no way for me to remove the background clutter without ruining the image. …OK, for my next images, I will exclude “background clutter”. …but when I look at the boat photo Helen just posted, the background adds to the photo. Lovely photo, by the way. I don’t know how parts of the image support the sky, but I love how she included the bird!
This is all too confusabobbled. Let’s simplify it.
@Joanna, just suggest what kind of photo you want to see me take, a photo I can take, not a “still life”, and I’ll use my D780 and whichever lens is most appropriate. Best if it is outdoors.
If it’s a “challenge”, it needs to be something I can accomplish, here in Miami Beach or India. If it is something like the boat photograph Helen just posted, great! I understand, no cropping, and composition is most important. Of course it will be edited in PhotoLab 6, and it will be as “perfect” as I know how to do.
You’re likely as frustrated as I am. Let’s do a “reset”.
What I am getting at here is that it should be an image that you framed in the viewfinder to match your “vision”. No cropping allowed in post-processing unless it is to change aspect ratio and then only in one dimension.
Agreed. But the images you proposed don’t fall into the art category - they were simply record shots of incomplete subjects.
Do you mean to say you haven’t got a flat surface that gets sunlit at sometime during the day?
Two examples from my friend Anne…
No tools, just sunlight 
So now you are saying you have even more duplications of zoom ranges that could all be folded down into one lens plus the 20mm. The 28-300mm also has a close focus distance of only 1.5m, which makes it a pretty darn good macro…
Perhaps the key to good “art” photos is often well-controlled DoF especially if you are stuck with a complicated or distracting background. Experimenting with focal length and aperture can “lose” a lot of the complexity, which distracts from the principal subject
Not really. Henri Cartier-Bresson was famous mainly for his street photography of people and Ansel Adams was famous mainly for expansive landscapes. Although they both crossed into other genres, those are their most well known. At the moment, in my opinion, what is holding you back is that you try to include far too much, far too sharp, in your images and they lose any direction, leaving the viewer totally lost as to the real subject.
Take your cruise liner shot, which you tried to convince me needed all the background clutter to make it “complete”. Maybe for a photojournalistic record shot of the liner leaving the port but, as an “art” shot, it had no “Wow!”. Framing it as I did, with the liner “looming” out of the image and being truly the principal subject starts to change it from “record” to “art”. Then there was the question of the red building on the left, which attracted the eye out of the image - changing to B&W instantly stops that attraction of the eye and the image relies on tonality and contrast to separate the liner even more from the background. Techniques like this are what transform a dull record shot with no impact into a much more artistic image. As is so often the case in impactful images, less is more.
It is very difficult to teach “the eye” to see great images. I am grateful to my friend Anne for showing me how to take more detail shots, instead of my far too general, landscape type, shots.
Maybe an idea would be to practise controlling DoF to separate a small subject from a busy background, like my last lamp shot?