At yesterday’s COBA meeting, we had a discussion about the latest announcements from camera manufacturers in anticipation of this month’s Photokina conference in Germany. A day later, a whole slew of announcements made my presentation obsolete, including the Canon PowerShot G7 and the Leica Digital M8!
I’ve been waiting for a camera like the M8 for a long time, and it’s good to see technology has finally made this possible. Of course, Leica has made the price of the camera equally high at over $5,000. Technology will get you what you want at a price!
The second presentation at COBA was on travel photography. For our trip to France/Spain, I decided to leave the super camera at home and bring a small digicam, the Canon PowerShot A610. It worked quite well during the trip, lightening my load considerably. No, I wasn’t able to use it in the Catacombs of Paris like I did my 1D Mark II two years ago. For what it is, however, the A610 took some quality photos. If I were to do it all over again, I probably would take an even smaller digital camera along with a Digital Rebel XTi (released while we were on the trip) or a 5D. With the M8, however, maybe I’ll rethink this decision in a couple of years!
I took the following photo in Barcelona while visiting the City History Museum. This guy was using a Leica M2, the same film camera that I have. There were plenty of digital SLRs (Nikon D50’s and Digital Rebels), a boatload of digicams, and quite a few film cameras still in use by tourists. Next time I see that guy, maybe he’ll be using a silver M8!