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.
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.