I absolutely agree with your opinion on "L'histoire de France".

>>I've always had good contacts at B&H...<< I would think Henry Posner, who always was very helpful on the old CompuServe Photoforum (and still is today, albeit in other places on the Internet) is missing from your list.

You're absolutely right about his work being unfinished. I would certainly enjoy looking at some more of his Hamtramck photos.

>>In my view, the digital M's are not an updating of the M camera concept, not an evolution of the M camera concept, and not an improvement of the M camera concept. Nor are they digital cameras with a usefully different form-factor.<< True words.

1. Rangefinder (that's why I used Leicas in the film days) 2. Fuji X-Pro2

In fact, grainier films look sharper than fine-grain films... Kodachrome 200 was a great example of that. Even pictures taken with the non-ASPH Leica Summilux-M 35/1.4 wide open looked pretty sharp on that film.

Please don't start doing videos! You'd have to buy a baseball cap and wear it reversed. Also, I wouldn't watch them.

I often find myself using only 28 mm-e and 35 mm-e lenses. On a trip to Cuba I carried the 28, 35 and 50 mm lenses, but realized afterwards that I might as well have left the 50 at home. What surprises me is that you as a bokeh expert like the Fuji 56/1.2. I ad it for a while and found the bokeh very busy wide open at short distances. Returned it and got the 56/1.2 APD instead. Some say the differences are subtle, but I find them very obvious and love the APD version.

I chose the X-Pro series simply because I love optical viewfinders. The EVF is a welcome addition for when I need to frame very precisely or when I use extreme focal lengths.

Make sure not confuse him with the fabulous Jodi Cobb of NatGeo fame.

>>the 75mm Summicron-M, and the 80mm Summicron-R<< Both are Summilux (f/1.4) lenses.

Just checked the link you provided to Amazon Germany. It is the hardcover edition ("Gebundene Ausgabe") they offer.

I could very well get by with my Fuji XF 18/2 and 35/2 lenses which I use on X-Pro2 cameras. In 35mm terms they correspond to 28mm and 50mm focal length. Lightroom tells me that more than 80% of my recent pictures are taken with these two lenses.

To my surprise, the dealer I buy from in Cologne had an M10 to play with when I visited him yesterday. The camera feels VERY different from the somewhat fat M (type 240). Very much like my M6 did way back then, only it is heavier.

>>Just like getting more nearsighted.<< People tend to get more farsighted (presbyopic) with age.

>>Would you want to do that, or would it drive you crazy?<< It's the other way around: you already have to be crazy to start an endeavor like that. Just kiddin'...

>>Not as bad, arguably, as the example of the soccer-playing boys on PetaPixel where a whole person was removed.<< In the rickshaw picture a person was removed, too.

While sharpness, as well as other attributes of lenses like color rendition and bokeh, admittedly do interest me from time to time, they have never helped in getting anything published. Nor has any picture I offered every been rejected on technical reasons. For instance the picture I show and describe here (http://cabophoto.com/blog/national-geographic-traveler-stars-and-cars-in-fort-benton/) was recently published as a double-page spread in National Geographic Traveler. I shot it with a lowly Fuji X100S, and it is certainly not about sharpness. I really like Jim Richardson's quote: "If your pictures aren't good enough, stand in front of more interesting stuff".

>>but my guess is that as sensor development proceeds, eventually 1" sensors will be enough for "serious" interchangeable-lens cameras with single sensors<< But as manufacturing sensors gets cheaper all the time, there might be no real reason to use one that small. Of course, smaller cameras and lenses are always nice, but the size of our hands poses a limit to further miniaturization.

The SL is by far the ugliest camera I have seen in recent years. I had hoped for something along the lines of the Q.

"For purists who don't cotton to that newfangled autofocus nonsense" Mike, I just tried the new 35/2 by Meyer Optik Görlitz, an old German brand that currently gets revived. Available in both Canon and Nikon mounts it has no AF and no automatic aperture, i.e. you have to stop down manually before every shot. Optically it seems very nice with smooth bokeh. A few pictures can be seen here: http://www.meyer-optik-goerlitz.de/carsten-bockermann-zeitlose-reportage-mit-den-figmentum-objektiven/ Carsten

My first cover was on the South Korean edition of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross' book On grief and grieving. There were also some of my pictures in the book. What was so great about this is that all the photographers who had pictures in that book were in an entirely different league: they were all Magnum members, among them Steve McCurry, Elliott Erwitt and Constantine Manos. A coincidence for sure, but still very nice.

From the Leica website: Even as a child, the singer, songwriter and rock star, Lenny Kravitz, was fascinated by cameras. But rather than taking photos, he played with them... Alright...the Leica as a toy. Probably OK in our times as serious photography is now done with cellphones.

The Sigma 35/1.4 is not only "a less expensive alternative". I compared it to my Nikon AF-S 35/1.4 and sold the latter. Technically it's also better than the Zeiss 35/1.4 (definitely more contrast wide open), but the Zeiss produces a certain look that I like.

If you look at six photographs per second 24/7, you will hit the 250 million mark by about 1.32 years.