The Drive Out

These are a few images of a trip out to run errands last Saturday, I first had to get Tucker Situated with some water in the backyard so he could chill out and enjoy the day.

Then I went out towards Smithfield. This house I always pass on the way out, and never get any pictures of (until today). I like the look of the building. It looks kinda run down, but it used to be a lot worse. I think they are restoring it!

 This is some of the farmland that I pass on the drive out. Not much going on cropwise, but I think it still looks pretty.

Of course I love old buildings tucked away amongst the new, so here is another one!

I think this is a debris pile from some residential construction. Well one man's trash is another man's treasure, but this is the only way I want to take these home with me! I hope you enjoyed my morning drive! see you next time!

Smithfield Courthouse area

These were the rest of the images I made while in Smithfield. Since the courthouse was closed I think I only saw 3 or 4 people walking around, but I made sure to photograph about all of them!

Super Wide Heliar in Smithfield

This is one of my favorite lenses, a Viogtlander 15mm Super-Wide Heliar! it is as wide as you really want to hear about, although on the M8, it is the equivalent of about a 20mm, which is still  really wide. There is not a lot of distortion either as long as you keep it level and parallel to the image you are shooting (if that makes sense). Well  better to show you anyway:

50 Summicron in Smithfield

I next switched to the 50mm Summicron, a short telephoto lens on the M8 that is my go to portrait lens as well when using this camera. It's actually a normal lens, so no distortion or compression, and it is generally contrasty and sharp. This particular lens has some miles on it, and some light scratches n the coating, so I generally use it with a hood or watch me relationship to the sun, but it always gives me great images. I hope you agree!

90 Elmar in Smithfield

What to do? take it on a road test (which is what I did)! I drove out to Smithfield (the county seat) with the intention of running some errands, and I took my Leica M8 along to see how the different lenses performed. I started with the one that I had the most concerns with, the 90 Elmar, and shot in Black and White, but also saved the Raw file in case I saw something that I could not ignore in color. I also prefer to convert to Black and White from Adobe Camera Raw anyway, but that's another story. The funny thing is , that even though my intention was to shoot all black and white, the pervasiveness of color is such that some color images snuck in anyways.  Anyways, these are the 90 Elmar, a short telephoto lens made by Leica: