Quite Possibly, My Last Photo Set From Korea - Youido Cherry Blossoms Etc.

Spring Flowers at Youido - captured by Leica D-Lux (Typ 109).

The movers come Tuesday morning. It was a rather difficult task decided which cameras and lenses would accompany me on the flight home, and which would travel by sea to rendezvous with me in Texas in 60 days time. One of the cameras that will not be traveling with me is my new Leica D-Lux (Typ 109). The main reason is that I don't have room in my bag for any more cameras, but, to a lesser extent, I lost the lens cap and simply don't want to run the risk of damaging the lens during travel. 

With that in mind, I wanted to take the Leica out for one more spin before boxing her up and the Cherry Blossom Festival at Youido, Seoul, South Korea provided the perfect setting. Well, almost perfect. Grey skies were the only blemish on a wonderful day of walking, enjoying the scenery and, of course, snapping a few photos.

One couldn't help but notice the abundance of "selfie sticks". It's become the norm here, so much so that when I offered to take a photo for two friends that were struggling to get photos of themselves, they politely declined. It's as if the idea of someone else taking the photo for you was somehow as foreign as I am.

Nonetheless, I couldn't worry about how other people take their awfully composed photos, I had my own photographs to concern myself with.

Sometimes a mistake can lead to positive, unintended circumstances. Such was the case with my trip to the Cherry Blossom Festival at Youido. I read about the festival online and the page included a map and description on how to find the location. However, the Youido area is a sort of island and it's quite large. The park basically, surrounds the island on all sides, so I kind of took a guess at the exact location of the festival. The area we made our way to included an ecological forest and several ponds with bike and walking trails throughout. It was a really nice place to spend a few hours but there was clearly no festival to be found. Still, there were plenty of cherry blossom trees in bloom and lots of opportunities for nice photos. 

Statue in front of the Glad Hotel, Youido

Cherry Blossom in bloom. Youido Park, Seoul, South Korea

Two sets of couples, with matching outfits and selfie sticks. Ugh.

The azaleas were also in bloom!

My companion and I decided to walk North towards the National Assembly Building, not knowing exactly what there might be to see there, as luck would have it, there was a lot to see, including the actual Cherry Blossom Festival!

Beautiful trees and flowers line the avenue from the park to the National Assembly.

The National Assembly Building grounds are open to the public. Families gather and picnic on the lawn and enjoy the beauty of the grounds. At this time, we were still completely unaware that the festival was on the road just behind the Assembly Building. But, our wandering nature eventually led us in that direction. Soon we came upon a crowd watching a juggling street performer who was doing his show on the main road of the festival. From there we simply followed the massive crowds and enjoyed the rest of the day taking in the sights and flowers.

The Leica D-Lux (Typ 109) has really impressed me since I purchased it a couple weeks ago. The Leica Vario-Summilix f/1.7lens, although not a true classic "M" prime lens, still bears that difficult-to-describe, unique Leica look. 

Leica D-Lux (Typ 109) - By the way, that's not a typo. The word "type" in German is spelled "typ".

My Final (Film) Photographs from Korea

In just 13 short days, I'll be getting on a plane. That plane will taxi down the runway and lift off. Hopefully, I'll have a window seat, so I can look down and marvel at this beautiful country one last time. And I'll recount the memories of the last 3 years, so many good memories.

Part of my preparation for that day was taking my last 3 rolls of film to Wolpo (World Photography), the photo processing lab I've used exclusively since I started shooting film. Although I dropped off these last rolls a couple weeks ago, I only found time to stop by and pick them up the other day, and even then, I didn't have any spare time for a teary-eyed goodbye with the shop owners, who, even though we don't speak the same language, I have gotten to know on at least a friendly level.

I had a bit of anxiety during the days and weeks I waited to finally get a look at these rolls of film for a couple reasons. The first reason having to do with my Leica M3 and my relative dissatisfaction with the results of all previous rolls. All of my previous shots with my Leica M3 came out really grainy and/or noisy. Granted, I hadn't shot with too many different types of film, in fact, I have loaded my M3 with black and white Ilford HP 400 film almost exclusively. So, for my final roll, I wanted to see how something like Portra 400 would look and if it would still result in grainy or noisy photos. I was pleased to see, that it did not. I think the grain and noise can be attributed to the scans themselves. I will have to get a few of those black and whites printed and see if they are just as grainy. In any event, the images from my final roll of film with my beautiful M3 turned out quite nice.

Onto the second roll which was shot with my trusty Leica M6. I've never had any issues with scans from my M6, nothing but good stuff. For a few seconds, the other day, I suffered from a case of temporary insanity and thought briefly about selling my Leica M3, but I regained my senses and snuffed out that thought. However, the fact still remains, that I get better images, more consistently, with my Leica M6, which makes owning the M3 a mere luxury.

So what about the third roll of film? Unfortunately, while my photo lab was able to process my third roll of film, they did not have the ability to scan it for me. The third roll of film was 35mm film, loaded into my Mamiya 7, medium format camera, via a 35mm panoramic adapter, resulting in an ultra wide 24mm x 65mm negative image. From what I see in the negatives, the images look good, however, you will have to revisit my blog to see the results, since I won't be able to get them scanned until sometime after I get settled in El Paso.

With that let's get on to the photos from my Leica M3 and M6, my final film images from Korea (not including the panoramic images I just mentioned). Both sets shot with the Zeiss Planar 50mm f/2 lens.

The photos below were shot over a two day stretch, about a week apart, in various parts of Seoul.

Leica M3

Seoul Subway

Bukchon Hanok Village

Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul

Near Anguk Station

Anguk Station

Leica M6

Nowon-gu, South Korea

Guitar Cafe, Chungmuro

Where's Waldo? Cheonggyecheon Stream

Shutter Clicks with My New Sony A7RII

I had already packed my camera bag for a day of shooting in Seoul this past weekend. The contents of said bag included my Mamiya 7 medium format film camera (which I had loaded with a roll of 35mm color film so that I could try out my newly acquired panoramic adapter), the Leica M6, loaded with a roll of Porta 400 (widely considered the best quality 35mm film available today) and my new Sony RX1RII. But at the last moment, just before stepping out the door, I switched out the RX1RII for the Sony A7RII.

I want to get some trigger time behind both of my new Sony's but after thinking about it for a while, I felt like the A7RII would suit my needs better on this particular day, and while I could have easily brought both of them along, I only wanted to concentrate and focus on one at a time. Not to mention, I had a few frames to shoot with the film cameras as well. So, the A7RII won the day because I planned to slap on the wide angle Zeiss 16-35mm f/4, Zeiss 24-70mm f/4 (which is a highly versatile lens capturing both wide angle and standard focal length, plus a little zoom) and the highly touted Sony Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8 prime lens.

I captured most of my shots with the Zeiss 55mm, followed by the Zeiss 24-70mm and just a scant few with the Zeiss 16-35mm.

I was pleased to see that the battery lasted all day in the A7RII. Naturally, I had thrown a few extras in the bag but I didn't even need them. Yes, the battery life is less than most DSLR's but you'll be just fine unless you're shooting a lot of video and/or 4k video. If that's the case, just bring some extra batteries and perhaps a battery grip that holds two batteries.

I brought along a couple of shooting buddies, old Pete and young Caleb. We spent some time on the subway, did a little camera shopping and enjoyed a nice walk down the Cheonggyecheon Stream in downtown Seoul. the day presented plenty of nice photo opportunities...

I hope you enjoy my latest gallery!

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Sony A7RII with Zeiss FE 55mm