It’s a Beautiful Thing…

What exactly am I talking about here – “It’s a beautiful thing” could be about just about anything. It could be an act of kindness, an interaction between two or more people, a new car, a house, a picturesque landscape, a camera… and on and on. Well in this case it is kind of about a camera, or really the ease of use once you figure things out.

I have been shooting recently with a new to me Leica (typ 240, circa 2015) 24 megapixel, digital rangefinder camera – the M-P variant of that camera, the one without the red circle Leica logo emblazoned on the center front. I really wanted that model as it had some significant improvements over the standard typ 240. I’m not going any further into all of that, although I could (and have) easily fall into that rabbit hole.

Last weekend my hastily conceived plan was to drive to Burnet, Texas for the annual Bluebonnet Festival to to to the car show and grab some pics of the cars on display there (another beautiful thing, or in this case, hundreds of beautiful things). The car show was to end at 1 PM and when I finally left home it was already 11:40 – and Burnet is about 30 minutes west). I was only going to have PTOs (Picture Taking Opportunities) for 45 minutes. As it turned out the car show didn’t end and I had time to walk the display area on the banks of Hamilton Creek for a couple of hours.

I had purchased the Multifunction handgrip for the Leica camera and was anxious to try out the GPS function provided by the grip. This is supposed to tag all the photos with the GPS location where the picture was taken. Then when imported into your image editor, the photo will include location information. In a nutshell, it worked and worked fabulously – details to follow.

Anyhow, here are some of my pictures from the car show. All captured in aperture priority mode with the Leica M-P, in both high res DNG and JPG (in monochrome). My gosh, it was a beautiful thing to experience…

Later, I will add a screen shot of the map from Lightroom that shows exactly where each picture was taken – all that GPS data translated into actual placement on a map. Someone who has the coordinates then can go to the actual spot in Burnet, Texas where I was standing (give or take a few meters) when I took the picture. It’s a Beautiful Thing…