 Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. The longer that you're in photography, the more you start to shift your focus to lenses. Pun definitely intended, mother-f***er. My Leica M6 is probably my favorite camera. It's just too good. And for the longest time, I was using the 35 mil Sumacron F2 and legitimately it's one of the best lenses I've ever owned, which hurts a little because I never wanted to believe Leica was actually better, maybe just prettier. The 35 mil focal length is great. It's my preferred lens. But in recent years, I've started experimenting with wide and ultra wide in certain situations. So as photographers do, I was doing my own research on something else and stumbled across Conica's line of M mount lenses effectively named KM, which seemed to be highly regarded by everyone, except Leica apparently. In the very small line of KM mount lenses, there was one in particular that stood out. It was an outlier, a zoom lens, kind of a dual lens, a Conica 21 to 35 millimeter, kind of a rare beast in itself. Allegedly only 800 units were made, but whatever. Theoretically, this was it, this was the one. The purple dragon I had been chasing ever since I got my M6. I could go ultra wide and then crash back into 35 millimeter in a split second without having to fumble around and swap lenses in the middle of the street. And plus the Conica 21 to 35 millimeter is like half the price of the Leica Tri Elmar. So I could spend the cash elsewhere like McDonald's. But no lens is perfect. And this one comes with a few caveats that may or may not make you realize it is or isn't the lens for you. But who cares? Is it the one for me? The one that I'm prepared to settle down with. The one that I'm prepared to spend the rest of my life with. And then pass down to my children when I die in a violent car chase. Who can then sell it for 600 grand because film gear prices went totally nuclear in the future? To find out, I set myself forth onto Atlanta where KEH, the darkroom and beers and cameras were convening to host the collab of the century. Film stock 2023, which is like wood stock, except instead of drugs and getting absolutely blitzed in the fields of mud, piss and sh**, it's film cameras and getting absolutely blitzed on gear acquisition syndrome. All right, what's up, f**kers? New lens Leica M6, what am I shooting first? Why don't we do this, Reflex Lab 800? I don't have any film in here, right? So a dual range lens like this means either 21 or 35 millimeter. Conica doesn't want you f**king around in between. When you change the focal length on the lens, the ring clicks into place, but you can actually have it hover in the middle somewhere. The catch is, of course, that it'll be completely out of focus. So it's really up to you whether it's worth it or not. 35, 21. 35, 21. Anyway, after jerking it in the hotel room, the lens, not anything else, I had to take the usual hotel room shot before it got totally trashed whilst I live out my wild rockstar lifestyle. Oh, not a bad first start, I suppose. I mean, it literally looks like a stock photo the Hyatt would use on their website, but whatever. Let's hit the street slash hotel lobby and see what this lens can cook up. These lobby shots are super hot in the artistic sense. Temperature-wise, they aren't very hot. Reflex 800T is a tungsten-balanced film, so it renders quite blue and cooled off. Several far more talented people in me were also in town for film stock like Caleb, Taylor, Hilary from Ilford slash Harmon and Trev, unfortunately. My favorite detail in this image, you ask, which you didn't, the spilled coffee cup. When mixed with this guy's body language, it certainly concocts a story. I believe I was at 21 millimeters for this shot. In fact, I was at 21 millimeters for most of these, which is kinda odd for me. You don't get this kind of stuff in LA. So first impressions of this lens, it good. It's nice and sharp. It renders space very well, though I have a hunch that that's only because I was at like F8 or F11 with high ISO film outside most of the time. There's a little bit of barrel distortion and slight vignetting at 21 millimeters, but it's really not too bad at all. Hardly noticeable. Anyway, after getting viciously street photography by Taylor, I started thinking about potential downsides of this lens. For starters, the lens is basically just an F4, which is not very fast at all. Oddly enough, when you switch to 21 millimeters, it becomes a 3.4, which is kinda strange. So if you wanna squeeze out a tiny bit more light, you can. You just have to go ultra wide. Additionally, there is some sort of flare thing going on in backlit situations. It doesn't always happen, but you can kinda see it in the center of this shot. It's easily fixable in post, to be honest, but the 21 to 35 does also come with a proprietary lens hood that may resolve this issue. However, with the lens hood attached, the lens blocks like 40% of the viewfinder, which is no bueno at all. It also looks like dragon penis. I'm dressed like Neapolitan ice cream today. So I don't know, let's get this bread or whatever. That morning, we all met down in the lobby and I finally got to meet the legend Matt Daddy Day, who's definitely the hardest mother f***er to ever walk this earth. Afterwards, we all headed to Camcork Studios for a quick tour and some studio time, which was a nice change of pace. This hallway was super cool and I even walked away from it with this shot, which I think is quite good. The 21 millimeter at wide open is a little soft on the edges. It's hard to tell if that's because the focus plane was at infinity in this case, or maybe it was something else or maybe it's just Maybelline. They're called Streams X. They're the ones that get over like two chains and young dog like a bunch of those. And we actually had a gallery for his dog. The talented, flawless victory. I'm not much of a mortal combat guy, but I can f*** you straight up in Mario Kart for sure. I'm also not much of a studio photographer either. So I took more of a street photography approach here, capturing behind the scenes and trying to grab the whole environment a bit more. When I first started this channel, I never thought in a billion years I'd ever have the opportunity to take a photo like this. It's like my own personal Renaissance painting because it's layered harder than a beefy five layer burrito, but also because it features a bunch of other content creators that I look up to. Some of them I've watched for years and were quite influential in the formation of these videos that I make. So if you hate my channel, it's their fault. It was super cool seeing B, Mike, Taylor and Sissy in their element. They do a lot of fantastic studio work and I was jealous that I'm nowhere near as talented as them. So I offered to get in on the action anyway I could and took on an assistant role or just the film loading bitch, whichever you prefer. Okay, I'm gonna slightly hold the shutter. Why are you surprised? Eventually I finished the role of reflex 800T and couldn't figure out what to shoot next. But then I realized I was in the presence of HP5 royalty. So I swapped in some Ilford HP5 that I'd be pushing two stops, AKA the Matt Day Special. Like I said before, the 21 to 35 isn't the fastest lens out there. So I was thinking higher ISO, maybe the counter solution to that. These shots are a pretty good start. I really like this one of Taylor and Brooklyn. This one isn't half bad either. Using the 21 mil focal length on interiors is definitely the move I think. And here's probably my favorite. It's Pauly B going through an existential crisis or something, I don't know. Okay, so there exists a bunch of internet lore about Leica M lenses and Conica KM lenses. Supposedly Conica's KM lenses are not 100% compatible with Leica M cameras and vice versa. There are claims online that the register or flange distance for KM mount lenses are about 0.2 millimeters off from that of Leica M lenses. I don't know if it's 0.2 millimeters forward or backward, but theoretically it would cause problems with focusing and sharpness. But it's all hearsay. It's kind of like this dude who claims he has Hella Alien Riz. There doesn't really seem to be a ton of proof that this information is in fact credible and not just a load of back country mushrooms. However, if it is true, it would likely only apply to lenses with very wide apertures and of course then longer lenses, neither of which the 21 to 35 millimeter is. So I think I'm good in that arena. Nature was calling and it was time for me to take a huge photo walk with the film community of Atlanta. But before that, a quick tour of Pond City Market was in order. I like this shot. It actually pairs well with another shot I took earlier this year. After running into John Mayer. Always shooting man. I took this shot, which I think is pretty good. But ah yeah, this kind of solves that question of edge blur. Wide open at 3.4 on 21 millimeters will give you lens coma on the edges. It's certainly noticeable in some images, but I imagine stopping down to F4 gets rid of them quite a bit. This shot is a straight up caution explosive material inside can only ship to the continental United States banger. I think it's cool to kind of mix in shots where the subject is looking directly at camera. 99% of my shots have anonymous people doing whatever, completely unaware of the camera. And I think that helps make candid shots look staged like a painting oftentimes. But the shots where someone is staring straight down the barrel of the lens feel like they're intensely breaking the fourth wall. Like they've somehow picked up on something most people don't notice and are keyed into the awareness that they're in a painting or a photograph. Let's not pretend like the stuff I do is high art. Admittedly something that does happen quite a bit with this lens is that you forget what focal length you're on and you forget to switch it over before you take a shot. I did it quite a bit when I first picked up this lens. You know, I meant to be a 21 millimeters but then after I took the shot realized I was at 35. It's not like the viewfinder has any indicator of what focal length you're at. The frame lines in the M6 at least are stuck at 35 millimeter for this lens. You do eventually get used to it and learn to start double checking over time. It's kind of like how you stop smelling and get used to a gas leak over time. So you might have noticed at some point this big ass TV looking thing on top of the M6. It's a viewfinder. The M6 frame lines don't extend to 21 millimeters. I think 28 is the widest that they'll go. So to get an accurate frame line you need an external viewfinder. I decided to be bougie as all hell so I picked up the Leica Tri-Elmar viewfinder for this system, which is definitely overkill. This viewfinder can simulate 16 millimeters all the way to 28 millimeters. Does this giant block of Leica mass do anything besides viewfinder? Nope, no light meter, no rangefinder connection, no TV signal, but it has a bubble level if you're into that sort of thing. A viewfinder is crazy. So I've held one of these Titanians once, but wow. Is that the focal length? That's the Christmas optical viewfinder I think I've ever seen. This is Zach. He was riding around on his one wheel with, I think it was the RB in a flash unit. Either way, it's an insane move. I guess they're just built different in Atlanta. Zach told us to get a photo of him shredding on the ramp, and we photographers were of course happy to oblige. Though I f**ked it up pretty badly and somehow got someone's backpack in the foreground covering his one wheel. Oh well. AI-generative Phil can have him riding a horse in a battle in no time. Anyway, here are some snaps from the remainder of the roll. As you can see by this one taken at night, it's not impossible to shoot in ultra low light with this lens. It also helps to have steady hands. I think this was at 21 millimeters and like one eighth of a second. And this is me not even showing you the other 10 shots at one eighth that absolutely didn't work. But before we hear my closing statements on this lens, I'd like to first thank today's sponsor Squarespace for their continued support. Are you looking to bring your passion to the next level? Whether it's photography, cooking, travel, or doing long distance hikes to cast out rings into the flames from which they were born, look no further than Squarespace. Squarespace is an all in one website building platform that features the ability to craft your own corner of the internet from the ground up. All in one means there's no need to download plugins, patches, software updates, et cetera. Everything you need is right there and ready to go. Looking to start selling your prints or are you dreaming even bigger? And it's time to start selling your book. With Squarespace's e-commerce building blocks at your disposal, you'll have no problem getting your photographic retail empire up and running in no time. Start with one of hundreds of professionally designed templates you can choose from and furnish your new site with Squarespace's intuitive user interface that allows you to build portfolios, blogs, and member areas. And best of all, if you run into any snags during the process, you can check out Squarespace's award-winning 24-7 customer support to get you back on track in no time. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. And if you use the code grainydays at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. So is this lens gonna stick it out for the long haul on my M6? Yeah, like I said, it's sharp. And being able to swap between two focal lengths without switching lenses is quite a time saver. Like unclogging a toilet before you clog it. It makes some sort of sense that allegedly they only made like 800 of these. It's not a lens for everyone as we clearly pointed out its list of faults of which there are quite a few. But you know what? It is the lens for me and everything that I'm doing with my photography. I've already taken some portfolio-worthy shots with it and I'm only like four or five rolls deep with it at the moment. Sometimes limitations are a good thing to push my stuck in a routine ass to think more creatively. There was certainly a learning curve with this lens, but I think things have smoothed out a bit and I now understand it better than I understand myself, which is a beautiful and highly psychotic thing to say. So ultimately, does this mean bye-bye to the 35 mil Sumacron? Nope, I mean it's time to get another M6.