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Saturday, September 30, 2023

UNDERWATER HOUSING FOR LEICA M CAMERAS




By Heinz Richter

With  the Leica X-U Leica offered a camera that can be used even under water with a rated depth of 15m (50 ft) for 60 minutes.  But what if you need more and what if you want to use a Leica M instead?

Leica used to make an underwater housing for the Leica M4 years ago.  But virtually no examples are available any longer, with only a few on display in Leica collections and one in the Leica museum in Wetzlar.

    
The M4 Underwater Housing at the Wetzlar Leica Museum

But there is help.  The Austrian company of Subal from Vienna is making an underwater housing for the Leica M cameras.  It is an intriguing design that goes far beyond conventional underwater housings.  While most of them are usually quite bulky, the Subal design has the unmistakable shape of a Leica M camera. 
Subal believes that you should not have to give up any of the camera functions just because it is in an underwater housing.   Their housing offers a larger than average number of operations. This means the technical and creative possibilities of the Leica M cameras are fully accessible.  Wherever possible, the operating controls are optimized to be close to hand or in the camera position that you are used to.  Subal’s high-tech production is based on their second Skin principle which results in the smallest possible dimension and weight.

big rushmore 

big rushmore 

SUBAL housings are milled from a solid block of aluminum. This prevents unwanted air pockets and ensures absolute tightness. All housing parts and accessories are made of this same alloy, which is characterized by a high degree of seawater resistance. Additional heat treatment increases strength and hardness by about 30 percent and reduces the inevitable underwater deformations due to depth.  Shafts, screws, and many other parts are made of high-alloy nickel-chromium coated steel.  Only high-quality engineering plastics are used for the best durability and longevity.

Front ports especially depend on hardness and dimensional stability. Therefore most SUBAL ports are made of polyacetal resin. With the larger dome ports a seawater-resistant light metal alloy is used and are then subject to the hard-coating process. The quality of underwater photos depends on the material of the “windscreen”, which is why all SUBAL flat and dome lenses, unlike with many other underwater housings, are made of perfect optical quality glass, which is also coated internally for optimum light transmission and better contrast performance.

SUBAL Frontports 
SUBAL Frontports 

The Subal port bayonet allows the use of flat ports for lenses with a narrower angle like macro lenses, for instance.  For wider angles dome ports are available.  In addition Subal offers an adapter to allow the use of Nikonos lenses directly on the housing without any additional ports.

For flash operation the Leica M housing uses the Nikonos 5 plug.  By request it can also be delivered with a fiber optic connection.  This allows the use of virtually all underwater flash systems.

The Subal Leica M housing is rated for a depth of 80 meters (260 feet) or with the Tec Version up to 120 meters (395 feet)

Width             16.5 cm - 6.5 inch
Height            12.5 cm - 5.0 inch
Depth               8.0 cm - 3.2 inch
Weight           1 kg – 2.2 lbs
Price               Appr. $6,000 

Subal also offers underwater housings for other Leica cameras at www.subal.com.


For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right

To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.

All ads present items of interest to Leica owners.

_______________________________________________________________________

EDDYCAM - the first and only ergonomic elk-skin camera strap     
 www.eddycam.com        

      


Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography

Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography

Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography


Thursday, September 28, 2023

BODYSCAPES




By Heinz Richter

Throughout art history the human form has fascinated artists probably more than any other subject and as soon as photography became a viable art form, that interest transcended to photography as well.

Unfortunately photography to this day is struggling to be accepted as a form of art when it comes to photography of the nude; to many it is automatically equated with pornography, a label totally undeserved.

In view of that it is understandable that many photographers shy away from this art form.  Facebook is a very good example of how this is mindlessly stifled.  As a general rule Facebook does not accept any nudity at all.  They even found it necessary to block the famous photograph by Nick Ut, commonly referred to as Napalm Girl, and by doing so totally ignoring the historic importance of this photograph.


An accepted means to show the human form without any repercussions is to concentrate on the shape of the human body without being objectionable.  Bodyscapes are such an approach and it has been quite successful for me.

I have photographed the female nude for many years and it has always been a disappointment to me that I cannot show this work in many venues.  However, bodyscapes are an accepted “compromise”.



I have mentioned cropping on several occasions and the fact that the performance of Leica lenses is such that they allow cropping of an existing negative or digital file to quite an extend without any greatly noticeable loss of quality.   

I have used that approach with many of my existing negatives and digital files which often has resulted in new photographs that are even better than the original.

Here are some examples that I hope speak for themselves.  






 





For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right

To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.


All ads present items of interest to Leica owners.

_______________________________________________________________________

EDDYCAM - the first and only ergonomic elk-skin camera strap     
 www.eddycam.com        

      


Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography

Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography

Click on image to enlarge
Please make payment via PayPal to GMP Photography