M8 28

28mm is probably my favorite focal length. When I look at my Lightroom catalog many of my favorite photos are taken with 28mm equivalent lenses. I have a few options for shooting with a 28mm equivalent focal length including my Ricoh GR3 and the GR before that. The wide end of my Fuji 18-55 produces pretty good results and then there is the lovely little 18mm Elmarit for my Leica CL. Ever since I got my M10 last year I’ve been wanting to get a 28mm full frame lens and I think that the new Voigtlander 28mm f2 may be my birthday present to myself this year. Back in 2010 when I bought my M8 I paired it with a Zeiss 35mm Biogon and while I absolutely love that lens, it’s closer to a 50mm equivalent on the M8’s 1.33x sensor. In order to get a 28mm equialent on the M8 I ended up buying a used 21mm Voigtlander Color Skopar f4 LTM lens. The Skopar is a tiny little lens that when combined with the M8’s sensor resulted in a 28mm field of view and a very filmic look to photos. Many of my favorite photos, especially street scenes are from that combination, I brought out the M8 and Skopar combo last May to shoot the photos in this post.

In digging though my Lightroom catalog I came across the photos below from June of 2012 along Stephen Avenue Mall in Calgary. When I shot them I had the jpeg’s set to black and white but upon revisiting them this week I thought I would see what they would look like with a classic color negative style and some medium film grain. I made some new edits, applied a Classic Negative preset to the original color raw files. I think they have a pretty authentic film look and they remind me of photos shot with my little Olympus XA and Fuji Superia.