A community focused on Leica cameras and gear.
I'm just getting back into photography after losing my dark room to parenthood years back. The ME is my first digital body. I used to have a set of PL-mount Cookes when I worked in motion picture film, always loved them for personal projects and some music video work, so I am excited for this lens.
It's a bit difficult to focus at times, a wee big, but otherwise it's one sweet unit.
What are your thoughts on the cooke? Also how do you feel moving from film to digital?
It's well built, I'll say that. No play in it's construction, everything is smooth, aperture stops click satisfyingly.
Like I said, the focus takes a bit to get used to, but it's not too bad. The little focus ears are cute, remind me of the ones you'd find on the old Arri-mount Cooke Kinetels for 16mm. I'll probably remove them at some point.
I haven't done much with it yet, but It's sharp, with a soft bokeh, warmer tones than Zeiss or Leica glass. It looks like a Cooke :)
In terms of shooting with a digital body, it certainly is nice not sitting on a roll for a while before developing it. I'm still getting used to the Lightroom Classic workflow and it's capabilities. The freedom is a bit intimidating.
I'm used to trying to get what I want in the camera. Knowing the film stock, the processes, the lens... I like the exercise of solving the puzzle. I was never one for shooting clean and relying on post. The DNG format is pretty flexible, reminds me of working on a digital intermediate in cine.
I like quirky lenses and shallow DoF. I shoot a lot with a single coated Voigtlander 40mm Nokton and get a nice painterly feel, so I think the LLL SP2 will fit in nicely.
I'll post a sample as a new post here to get the post count going for the community.