6 Bit your old lens!

I had some time over the Thanksgiving break to play with something new or rather old!!

I’m sure there is a lot of you that have non 6 Bit Leica Lenses you would like to use it with the Digital M body (M8, M8.2, M9, and M9-p). There is a handful of solution from DIY to 6 bit coding kits that you can buy. I know for the die hard Leica Fanatics, only shipping it to Leica would work for you. I done some research on the prices and I seen anywhere from $100 ~ $300 to get it professionally coded either by Leica or renown CLA shops. For that price, I could live without the 6 Bit (Since it’s selectable in my M9).
Then I saw a post in one of the forum with someone talking about these code-able ebay rear flange. I have yet to see anyone do a write up or tutorial. I thought I share my experience.

This is where I got mine. Yes it’s shipped from China and it does take a few weeks to get it to the states.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/140597071401?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

The first impression I got the flange was fairly well made. Further inspection with comparison to my original flange show why the German made was superior to the Chinese version. The biggest gripe I had was the edges were very sharp. It felt like the flange just came out of the CNC machine without any finishing. Minor sanding on the edges does smooth it out. Regardless, this was under $13 shipped per mount.

Here is a comparison picture of the eBay flange on the left coded with the original 24mm flange on the right.

6 Bit Flange

The next test was to see if the coding cutouts were matched as well as how well the bracket sits on the camera. Things I look for was of course, is there any lens play.

Quick Google search brought me to this excellent site with all the Leica M Lens codes and sample pictures. This provides a great reference on which lens you want to code.
Leica M Lens Codes

The lens I was going to code was my Leica 24mm f/2.8 Elmarit-M ASPH. I enlisted my wife’s help on painting the 6 bit code. Her dexterity is much better than mine, not to mention she’s use to paint small things on her nail with nail polish. She started coding the 28/90 frame line bracket with the code 011001 (1 being black and 0 being white). It didn’t work. Since the M9 does not have a frameline of 24mm, I figure 28mm would be the closes. I thought it was a problem with the nail polish. So we wipe it clean and started over again with acrylic paint instead. We ran into the same issue. The camera could not read the code. After couple of days of trial and error, I found out that the 6 bit code is link to the frames.

TIP #1: Make sure you use the correct frame line for the bracket. Both the Leica M8 and M9 does take into account the Frame line as well as the code. i.e. Using a 28/90 frame line bracket with the 24mm will not work. Instead, you will need the 35/135 frame line with the 24mm. The above website does list the Frames required.

After switching over to the 35/135 and painted the correct code, it worked flawlessly on my M9. I also tried it with my friends M8.2. It even picked up the 24mm frame line that the M8.2 has!! Best of all, no lens play. It fit just as snug as the original flange.

So quick summary and tutorial for those that knows how to use a screw driver and remove 6 screws.

Disclaimer: I will not be hold responsible if you damage your lens or camera in the process of using this tutorial. This tutorial is provided as a guide. Remember if you still have warranty on your lens, this might void it. Though, I assume most of you that’s doing this to lenses that’s already out of warranty. Regardless, proceed at your own risk!!

Tools needed:
-Small Eye glasses Screw Driver
-Nail Polish or acrylic paint
-Fine paint brush
-Tooth pick
-Q-tip
-Nail Polish remover or Thinner

Tools

1. Go to this site to see what frame line flange you need.

2. Order the flange (ebay link)

3. Paint the codes per the site listed above. Do the black first. The white is purely cosmetic.

TIP #2: Here is a tip from my wife on how she clean around the edges. She uses this to do her nails. Pull off a tiny chunk of cotton from the end of the Q-tip and wrap it around the blunt end of a tooth pick. Dip that end with nail polish remover. The hard surface of the wood tooth pick with the nail polish remover cotton will give you more control to clean the edges of the coding groove.

4. Let it dry for a few hours.

5. Remove the 6 screws from your lens. Make sure you don’t move the focusing ring after you remove the 6 screws. I actually counted how many turns it took to take the screw out so you can put it back the same way.

6. Take the original bracket off.

7. Match up the holes with the new bracket. (The ones I got matches up perfectly)

8. Put all the screws back in but don’t thread it tight yet.

9. With the screw mostly in, I now turn the focusing ring one full turn both ways. This will help with the alignment as well as provide equal pressure on the rings so that focus will stay smooth.

10. Now tighten the screws in a star shape (similar to tightening the lug nut on the wheel of the car.) I started with 2 screws across from each other then rotate the focusing ring to make sure it’s still smooth. Then tighten 2 more screws. Rotate the focusing ring again. Tighten the last 2 screws. Rotate the focusing ring. Give it a final tightening on all the screws in a star shape. **Make sure you do not over tighten the screws and stripe the thread.!!** Finger tight is good enough.

11. Check the focusing ring to make sure it’s still operating smoothly.

12. Put the lens on the camera and enjoy your new 6 Bit coded lens!!

24mm Elmarit Coded

M9 6 Bitted!!

Hopefully this tutorial was useful and takes away a lot of fears about operating on your Leica lens. It’s fairly simple and straight forward. Just use a little common sense and you will now have a 6 bit coded lens!

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Noctilux Débutante!! ChinaTown Edition

Here ares some more Noctilux goodness. These were taken on Sunday in San Francisco ChinaTown. ChinaTow anywhere is always a great place for street photography. Plenty of interesting things and people to shoot. Not to mention the one in San Francisco is always filled with tourist with cameras. With proliferation of DSLR, it seems like almost everyone has one around their neck. This makes using a Leica a lot easier since it just doesn’t stick out! Well, maybe not in this case. A silver M9 with a Noctilux isn’t exactly small nor light. But it was the perfect lens for that day. It was overcast which allowed me to shoot mostly wide open at f/0.95. The only draw back was the rain. It was drizzling so most of the time, I had the camera tucked in my jacket until the decisive moment to whip it out, focus, and click. I also made the mistake of carrying a full size umbrella with me. This made moving around quite difficult. I found a way to secure the umbrella on my belt, but everytime I bend down to get a lower perspective, the damn thing gets caught on the street and falls over. Thus not too many shots were taken.

First on deck. This is call dedication or propaganda depending which “camp” you’re from. This was taken at that park right across from the Hilton. These are Falangong activist doing chi gong. What I found interesting was the rain gears!! and of course… Cue the Music!

Title: YMCA

This is probably my favorite of the set. This truly shows the amazing quality of the Noctilux. It’s ability to bring a 2 dimensional photography and gives it a surrealistic 3D look. It just pop! The composition key I used in this photo was contrast as well as using the white sign post and the white crosswalk stripes to frame the 2 main subject.

Title: 3D

With the recent Occupied Everywhere protest, there’s bound to be over abundant of trash everywhere.

Title: Occupied

Here is a shot of Henry standing in front of a red door with red brick wall. The red colors always shows great contrast in black and white photography. I snap this shot mianly for the directional sign juxtaposing Henry’s walking path.

Title: Confused

Here is another common theme that you will always see in ChinaTown. It’s not the news paper reading store owner or the abundance of Chinese herbal medicine. I thought Chinese herbal medicine has a cure or preventive for almost every ailments? I guess he must have skip a few bitter drinks?

Title: Rogaine

Noctilux Débutante!!

Last week was an exciting week.
On Wednesday, I started to see rumors circulating about the new Leica price increase. This was something I had heard a few month back, but nothing substantiating. Then I saw a tweet from Leica Rumor about a fairly confirmed price list increase that will start on January 1st.
Click here for the Leica Rumor post about the new price list

Knowing that I still have one more lens on my wish list that I wanted to add to my permanent collection, the rush is on to source that lens before the $500 price hike. Ok, maybe $500 hike isn’t that significant considering that the lens cost $10,495, but a hike is still a hike. Not to mention, buying a new copy of the lens is still as illusive as capturing the unicorn.

I already place a pre-orders a few month back at all the common places like Adorama as well as numerous others. All I ever get is a monthly backorder email. I knew to hunt the lens down will require more drastic measure. I decided to hit up Unique Photo in New Jersey. They’re the only online shop I found that lists Leica lenses ship in 1 – 3 weeks. Not to mention I lucked out with them last time when I ordered my silver 50mm Summilux. They were able to find and ship me one the next day!! So I placed the order knowing that they have a policy of charging the full amount first and you wait. With January 1st just a little over a month away, I figure this might lock me in to a lens in case they do get one.

Next morning. I got woken up by a phone call from the East coast. Last time with the 50mm Summilux, Unique Photo called me to confirm that I indeed placed an order for the 50mm Summilux because it was a high ticketed item. So I thought it might have been them again. I was still half awake. Instead, it was a call from ePhotoCraft. At first, I was quickly racking my brain on wtf is ePhotoCraft. Is this another one of those telemarketers? Instead, Eldar from ePhotoCraft said they got 2 Noctilux in, one is already sold, and see if I wanted the other one. Without any hesitation I said yes! As I jumped out of bed, my mind was racing. Trying to figure out WTH ePhotoCraft was. I quickly jumped on my computer and looked up ePhotoCraft. Everything was coming back. I remember googling Noctilux looking for the obscure photography store that I might be able to place a pre-order. This store came up in the 3rd or 4th page of search. The place seems like a legit brick and mortar Photography store in DC. They still listed the Noctilux for $9995!! And there was a specific link for pre-order!! So So I filled out their online form and seal my name on yet another waiting list. Not expecting that my number will ever be called.

So this morning call indeed turn out to be legit! As I discussed with Eldar on the phone on shipping method, I decided to fork over the dough for overnight. Two thoughts crossed my mind. If I had it overnight, it wouldn’t spend that much time bouncing around in the truck across the country and If the deal was indeed legit, I would find out the next day. With payment sent right away, the rest of the day was most restless. Waiting for the tracking number.
The tracking number finally show up in the system near the end of the day as I was leaving work. Looks like my lens should arrive any time the next day. Now it becomes a waiting game for the big brown truck!

Friday was painful. We had a special offsite at work that didn’t require me to get in until noon so I sat around all morning waiting for that truck. Knowing how irresponsible my local UPS delivery person is, I wanted to make sure I don’t miss this delivery. They UPS guy been known to leave package in random places around the driveway or not even walking up the stairs to ring the door bell. It doesn’t help that it was raining as well. Last thing I wanted to see is my crown jewel being soaked by the rain. As the clock tick on, no truck. By 11am, I had to leave for work. I forced my wife to stay home and stare out on the driveway to make sure big brown don’t miss us. I think I probably called and message my wife almost every hour while I was at work to see if it showed up. “Nothing” was the word of the day…
I knew my wife would have to go pick up the kid in the afternoon so as soon as I was able to leave the work offsite, I headed straight home to make sure someone was home. I continuously check the front door to make sure Mr. Brown didn’t do his usual thing. “Nothing”.

Shortly around 6pm, the wife called while on the way back from picking up the kid. There was a Big Brown truck next street over making a delivery. I asked her to follow it and don’t loose sight of him. With more common sense, she decline my idiotic request.

About 15 minutes later, I saw the big brown truck pulled up near my driveway. I literally ran out to greet him. YES~!! It’s here!!

This is not the first time I handled the Noctilux. I played with a few of them from the last f/1 to a couple f/0.95. But this time was different. This is MINE!!

Here is just couple shot of the unboxing.

Noctilux-Close

Noctilux-Open

Here are a few shots around the house. Since I got the lens right around dinner time, might as well make dinner my subject.

Title: Green Guts

Title: Fly Fish

Title: 2 Dollars

The next day, I had a chance to hit up a good Belgium eatery in the city for a late night snack. Frjtz.. If you’re a big fan of fries and crepe, this place is great!! Price is reasonable and food was excellent. Make sure you order the Mussels!! the ambiance was dark. Perfect to test out the Noct’s capability!!

Title: Good Eats

Title: Morning Fix

Title: Cut Off

On Sunday, I was able to take the beast out for some walk around shots. It was raining so I want to make sure I didn’t want to get it wet. The good thing was it was cloudy so shooting wide open wasn’t an issue!!

I gather a couple friends to go shooting with me. We ended up in San Francisco China Town. Here is a Tryptych of Arvin shooting the shooter with his Leica M8.2 and Voitlander 50mm f/1.2

Title: Leica Tryptych

Since this post is getting long, I will do a separate post in a few days with the China Town pics!!

Stay Tune!

Leica Movie Look Reloaded!

OK, I got a lot of great feedback on the last Movie Look post. One challenge I got on GetDpi was to see if I change the colors around, would it give it a different feel to the pictures? Like I mention in the original post, I knew the color treatment that I wanted to do to depict the scene. Therefore, it was kinda challenging for me to change the complete feel of the pictures. Instead, I decided to pick the greenish Matrix hue again and apply it to all 4 pictures. This time, going for the darkish feeling that Matrix reloaded gives. I made the pictures a little bit more edgy to stress the high contrast movie look. I’m still not sure if I like this set better, but it does give quite the contrast to the original set.

Title: Matrix Reloaded

Title: NekoJin Reloaded

Title: Cold Stone Killer Reloaded

Title: Scream Reloaded

Leica Akademie North America 2012 Schedule

Leica Akademie just posted their 2012 schedule for 2012. Looks likes it’s going to be a very exciting year. I’m going to start blocking off my calendar so I can attend a few of these. Maybe in different cities.

Here is a snap shot from their website

Leica Travel Photography with Lonely Planet

Date:	Venue:	More Information:
January 21, 2012	Los Angeles, CA	Click for more information

Leica M9 Owners

Date:	Venue:	More Information:
January 20, 2012	Los Angeles, CA	Click for more information
March 9, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
May 10, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information

Leica M9 Shooting Experience

Date:	Venue:	More information:
November 4, 2011	Washington, DC	Click for more information
February 17, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information
March 3, 2012	Miami, FL	Click for more information
March 14, 2012	Washington, D.C	Click for more information
March 17, 2012	Houston, TX	Click for more information
April 18, 2012	Austin, TX	Click for more information
April 26, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
May 5, 2012	Montreal	Click for more information

Leica Compact Camera Photography

Date:	Venue:	More information:
March 9, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information
March 15, 2012	Washington, D.C	Click for more information
March 25, 2012	Los Angeles, CA	Click for more information
April 27, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information

Leica Street Photography

Date:	Venue:	More information:
November 5, 2011	Washington, D.C.	Click for more information
May 18-19, 2012	Washington, D.C.	Click for more information
June 22-23, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
July 20-21, 2012	Vancouver, BC, Canada	Click for more information
August 3-4, 2012	Chicago, IL	Click for more information
August 24-24, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information

Leica Digital Black & White Photography

Date:	Venue:	More information
March 24, 2012	Los Angeles, CA	Click for more information
May 17, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
June 13, 2012	Washington, D.C.	Click for more information
July 14, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information
July 18, 2012	Seattle, WA	Click for more information
August 10, 2012	Boston, MA	Click for more information

Leica Weekends

Date:	Venue:	More information:
December 6-8, 2011	Miami, FL	Click for more information
December 9-11, 2011	Miami, FL	Sold Out
February 24-26, 2012	Las Vegas, NV	Click for more information
March 30 – April 01, 2012	Palms Springs, CA	Click for more information
April 20-22, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
May 11-13, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
June 15-17, 2012	Toronto, Canada	Click for more information
July 20-22, 2012	Los Angeles, CA	Click for more information
August 17-19, 2012	Denver, CO	Click for more information

Leica Destination

Date:	Venue:	More Information:
April 23-26, 2012	Big Sur & Monterey, CA	Click for more information

Leica Available Light Photography

Date:	Venue:	More Information:
March 02, 2012	Miami, FL	Click for more information
May 16, 2012	New York, NY	Click for more information
May 17, 2012	Washington, D.C.	Click for more information
June 22, 2012	San Francisco, CA	Click for more information

Contact: Leica Akademie

Email: akademie@leicacamerausa.com
Phone: 201-995-0051

Here is the link to their website for more up to date information.

http://us.leica-camera.com/service/leica_academy/

Abstract Park

So here is the last set I had of the fun day at the park. This is more of interesting thing my camera told me to take. The Central Park in San Mateo had a nice Japanese Garden. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go back soon to do a full set like I did with Kelley Park in San Jose.

I’ll start the set with something HARD. This tree was just begging to get taken out of context. Childish, perhaps but definitely no ED over here.

Here is a sign that’s very low to the ground. I think it was a sign to tell the kids not to feed the fish. Yes, I know. This would probably be an award winning picture if there was actually a kid in the picture. I didn’t have a kid handy at the time, but I love the geometric shape and the wood texture with the burnt carving enough to get on the ground to snap the shot.

This was a little sitting area in the Japanese garden. Once again, the juxtaposing of the circular paper screen with the vertical wood planks and the branch breaking the harmony of the scene.

Rocks! I love the rock formations in Japanese Garden. It always gives me a sense of serenity when I look at it. Especially how the collective tiny pebbles contrast with the large stone steps.

That’s it for this set.

I actually got a challenge from GetDPI.com on my post about Movie Look. I will be writing about that shortly. Stay tune!!

Abstract Fleet Week

So here are couple abstract shots I took during Fleet Week. I know I’m jumping chronologically on my post but I didn’t want to start posting these abstract shots in comparison to my people shots.

Anyways, this first one is of a vendor stand. It was a hot day and I thought this would be a great opportunity to put some of my product shots experience into this to make it look like a soda ad. I will be doing more write up and pictures of some of my product shots in later blog posts.

This 2nd shot is part of my attraction to doors. If you been following my flickr or blog, you probably seen me shoot a bunch of doors. For some reason, I feel that different types of doors just create different type of opportunities and it’s always a mystery on what’s behind the door. It is hard to tell a story just by looking at the door, but a worn out door tells a story as well as a brand new door in vibrant colors. Hopefully I will collect enough doors to make it a set on my flickr one of these days. In the mean time, check out this door.

My next set of pictures will be abstract as well as landscapes. Stay tune!

Day at the Park

Once again, using any excuse to go out and shoot!! Day at the park with the kids turned into a great photo opportunity. Kids always makes good subjects for photography. I remember I mention during the Leica Akademie that I rarely shoot my kids. I shot everything from Formula One Racing to Studio Portraits to Weddings and everything in between. But rarely do I actually take picture of my kids. Taking picture of kids area all about capturing that decisive moment. Kids have expressions that are so natural. No wonder Henri Cartier-Bresson uses them as his subject all the time. I figure today would be a good day to start taking pictures of kids. I’ll eventually get around to take more pictures of MY OWN kids!!

Here are 5 shots that I thought was interesting.

Here is a mom that’s trying out the new full 8 megapixel iPhone 4s camera. Ok, the reason I know that was the brand spanking new iPhone 4s? I stay up till 3am to pre-order it for her so she gets it on launch day. I wonder how that picture turned out. I should have reminded her to take off the back plastic that was covering up the camera on the phone.

Here are two girls that I saw trying to get a drink at the fountain. They were really playful and just looks like a great photo opportunity to capture the moment.

I really like this picture. I’m always on the look out for the composition. Foreground, midground, background. Ok, this picture was not originally intended to be a violent picture. I had my son jump around by the bridge and I was trying to capture the two girls on the left side looking at him. This shot I got him right when he was jumping and spinning around. It just look like he was about to do a soccer kick on that little kids ass. In reality, he was no where near him!!

This one is probably my favorite of the set. I notice these two looking over the bridge. They look like siblings. The lighting was great and I found a gap between the trees that perfectly frames up the two.

Here is a fun shot of the playground. I thought it was interesting to see someone play with the tic tac toe.

It was a fun day. I had fun taking pictures. I will be posting up another set that have more abstract scenarios without kids. Stay tune!

Fleet Week

Here are some more street shots from Fleet Week 2011 in San Francisco. These are just things I found interesting while walking around in the crowd.

I found his gesture as well as all the typography on his shirt and store front very fitting. It was a decisive moment!!

“Yesterday won’t slow me down because I’ve been blessed with Today, a New American!! Doh!!”

Here is another from the BART. I’m sure we see this a lot. But I just love the concentrated look on this women. Must have been a good book!

Not to talk Politics or if the title of this picture is PC or not. I must admit, I saw the shirt first. It was just ironic that a Black lady was wearing a black t-Shirt that depicted a “White” Obama. Then, considering how the economy is right now, I find this Obama ’08 slogan quite contradictory. I only wish she was standing next to a sign of Uncle Sam pointing fingers with “I WANT YOUR” “CHANGE”…

What drew me to this picture was something Will Palank told me during one of the Leica Academie Photo shoot. Always look for contrast. Whether it’s the basics like color, shape, etc. or more abstract like people. One of the example he gave was he would shoot a couple that has someone that’s tall standing next to someone that’s short.
Well, the first thing I saw when these couple was walking by was how straight up she was standing next to the gentleman with the walker. Of course, the age contrast, the race constrast. One thing I found interesting was how they both wore similar color pants and cloth.

I have couple abstract picture I shot that I’ll post up soon. Like I mention in the last blog post. I guess I’m taking Fleet Week as an opportunity to shoot people and not planes!!

Leica Movie Look

I never knew riding BART was so dramatic.

This was Fleet Week in San Francisco. I promised the kids and wife to take them to see planes. Knowing traffic and parking was gonna be a pain, we decided to take an adventure on BART. I will be posting more Fleet Week pictures later on, but I figure this would be a good set to start with. Don’t be expecting your normal plane across the Golden Gate Bridge or Bay Bridge picture. I know my limits. Armed with the M9, I doubt I’ll be able to catch anything that’s flying faster than 5 miles an hour, let alone a fighter jet cruising at 700mph.
I knew I need to capture some interesting pictures within the limitation. Also, knowing that I will be walking around pushing a stroller, I’m even more limited on how and when I can shoot. So, what’s better than to see what interesting characters and scenes I can find on BART while the kids are strap to the stroller?

Starting with this pic. What feeling does this picture invoke for you when you see it?

I notice this mom and kid sitting across from me. Talk about “Decisive Moment”. As the door open, I notice they both turned their head. *Click* caught it. Since this is a set about Movie Look, I should digress a little bit here regarding my color treatment here. Ever since I started playing with Color while editing video in Final Cut Pro, I started to study more and more of movies and how color play a role in creating the drama. You can read about my video venture in my autobiography part 3.

Since street photography is about capturing a moment, about capturing a picture that tells a story. What’s better to augment the picture with color to build drama. Of course, the picture will need to have some substance in it, but by tweaking the color for that Movie Look, it will help develop the story even more.

Back to the question before you saw the picture. What feeling does this picture invoke for you when you see it? Now, are you curious on what’s going to walk through that door next? Does it invoke fear and anticipation? Could this be a scene in a horror film?

Here is the next picture. Once again, What feeling does this picture invoke in you when you see it?

I notice this gentleman walking in and resting by the door right in front of me. I knew I had to take a picture. Focus, *Click* Got it right when my kid turn to look at me. I’m sure this is a very nice man just waiting for his stop, but the contrast between the look on the kids face and the veins popping out of the fist of the man make me want to create a sense of fear and sinister in this scene. I gave it a cold blue tone. This is actually not too far fetch from the cold fluorescent lights that typically white balance on subways in New York. The cold tone also complements the man’s blue jacket and blue push cart.

Looking at people on BART used to be one of my favorite pass time. I used to commute on BART 5 days a week, at least 1 hour each way. Typically crowded during commute time. What do you do for 2 hours day? Look at people of course. I used to pick an interesting subject per trip and start to study them. Start with their look, their outfit, their gender, their age, their body language, their facial expression, what they’re doing at the moment, etc. Trying to figure out what they do. What’s the story behind them. And hopefully before they get off on their exit, figure out a story for that person. Of course, I never approach anyone to confirm what my observation told me. All in all, it was an easy way to kill an hour.

Here is another one. What feeling does this picture invoke in you?

I first notice her ear. NekoJin!! I love Cosplay!! ok, that and in many other ways! But this was interesting. She sat parallel to me on the other aisle. I had to do some pre-focusing and shoot with the camera rested on my leg.

This picture could easily be a sci fi anime movie remake into live actress scene where she’s feverishly checking her iphone. Perhaps to see where her next destination is? Or to make sure she doesn’t loose contact as she goes through the tunnel. Yet another picture with the color quality that creates drama. Creates anticipation. Once again, telling the story.

Here is the last shot of this set. What feeling does this picture give you?

The title of this picture gave away what I tried to accomplish. The greenish Matrix Movie Look of course. I notice this Asian guy standing between the crowd. His hair, his leather jacket, his demeanor. I had to take the pic. I actually already packed up the camera since it was crowded and I’m sandwich between my kids stroller and bunch other people. But I knew I need this picture. I already had the Matrix words scrolling down my eyes. Put the camera to the eye, focus and *Click*. Then quickly put the camera away again.

As you notice in this picture. I tried to capture the scene with foreground, Guy with ear phone one to show high tech, our main “talent”, leather clad Asian NEO, and the back ground, questionable guy Agent Smith checking out NEO. The green shade just put this picture into the whole Matrix context.

Once again, another picture that’s able to tell a whole story.

Overall, I must admit, this is probably one of the most interesting set I done so far. I’m sure a lot of Leica purist frown upon doing too much “Photoshopping” to the picture. In fact, Everything I done was in Lightroom. Everything you see here is just a matter of playing with white balance, contrast, and crushing the black to give that Movie Look. If I do get a lot of interest, I might write up more of a tutorial on how I achieve these looks as well as provide my presets. But do note, you will still need to tweak your own picture since lighting is all different.

Is the Movie Look still true to the heart of Street Photography? I think so. Street Photography is about capturing that “Decisive Moment”. It’s about making a picture tell a story. It’s about invoking a feeling when you see the picture. The Movie Look enhances all of these criteria without adding/Photochopping to what’s already store in your Camera RAW file.

Feel free to leave comments if you agree or think otherwise!!