Knuckledragger

I heard that in Precious Roy's voice.

I will say that in skilled hands, the Noctilux can produce some amazing images. Of course, that's true for almost any lens. Flickr user Tommy Oshima has done wonderful things with it. Tommy has one of the older F/1.0 non-aspheric Nocts, which are optically inferior to the newer ASPH model. Like many great photographers, he uses the lens's faults to his own artistic advantage. This is a quick example: The old non-asph Noct has funky nisen bokeh, huge light falloff and substantial coma. In the picture above, the effects of those those faults look pretty fricken cool.

Nice M6 with 50mm F/2 Summicron for your, Reks: Leica M6 Gold Thailand

You're in luck, as Lecia makes a whole range of 50mm lenses. The 50mm F/2 Summicron is light, sharp, and "bargain" at around 2 grand. That plus an M9 on grayscale mode will let you pretend to be Henri Cartier-Bresson all day. I'd rather have a 35mm F/2 Summicron, but that's just me.

In a word, no. The Noctilux is insanely expensive, excessively heavy (which sucks on a rangefinder) and of very limited use. The whole point of superfast lenses (besides general purpose prick waving) is for getting the most light in on handheld shots. For subjects that are holding still, shutter speed is a limitation of how steady the user's hands are, and the focal length of the lens. Longer focal lengths are harder to hold stably. Canon and Nikon both make a whole pile of image stabilized lenses and other manufacturers offer in-body image stabilization. Newer Canon IS lenses add up to 4 stops of stability. That is, one should be able to use a shutter speed sixteen times as long with a 4-stop IS lens than a lens of the same focal length without IS. Your mileage will vary hugely on this. Fast lenses also help with freezing action on fast moving subjects, by allowing for a faster shutter speed. There are few if any action photographers who use rangefinders. They use Canon 1-series digital SLRs with their 45 AF points. There are some pro shooters who use the Nikon D3[x/s] as well. There is one notable exception here, with astrophotography. Without the use of very expensive and fussy camera rotating equipment, astrophotographers are limited to shutter speeds of 20 seconds or less. Anything longer results in star trails (which are pretty, but not usually the desired effect). There are probably a few well-heeled astrophotographers who use the Noctilux, but I'll wager there aren't many. $10,000 buys a lot of astrophoto gear a lot more useful than a single 50mm lens. Lecia makes quite a few lenses wider than 50mm, and many come in a "Summilux" (Leicaspeak for F/1.4) model. My favorite is the LEICA SUMMILUX-M 21mm f/1.4 ASPH. It is also eyewateringly expensive, but at least it has a purpose. 21mm is less than half the focal length of 50mm, so one should be able to handhold it at shutter speeds at least twice that of the Noctilux. That means the two lenses are effectively equal in the same lighting conditions. The 21mm also has the advantage of having a much greater depth of field, by being a stop slower and much wider. If I had the cash, I'd love to play with a Leica M7 (film body) and a 21mm F/1.4 and a few rolls of Velvia 50. If 21mm is too wide for you (and it is wide), Leica makes an equally glorious (and expensive) SUMMILUX-M 24mm f/1.4 ASPH. Of course, if one is using a tripod, all of this becomes moot. Large format photographers cheerfully shoot at F/64 to get the uniform sharpness and DoF they require. TL;DR: The Notcilux serves no purpose other than acting as a penis extension, for both Leica and those who buy the damn thing.

Also, re: 32 bit DACs for your shiny new MBP: AK4397

I use this: rsync -av -E --delete [source] [target] There are some ...quirks when one uses rsync with the -E (include forked resources) argument. In spite of that, rsync is the sole tool I use to make redundant copies of my photos and FLACs.

Today in local facepalm news: That's Amherst College.

I have nothing to contribute to this thread other than to agree with Posty about the Quad 99 CDP-2. For some reason it mates really well with these powered speakers I have...

A Brief Eve History (Zhek Kromtor - Multiboxing)

After an intense session of moving furniture and appliances yesterday, and a similar one this morning, I appear to have given myself a not-so-minor case of heat stroke? 0_o