Down to the nitty-gritty now. What can my Leica X-U (aka Lili) accomplish?
The very next evening after buying Lili at Park Cameras I dined out with friends, at the Bistro Gourmand - also known as Chez Franck - in Rottingdean. It isn't cheap, but the food and wine are excellent. I won't show every shot, but as the light fell I tried my new camera out on candle flames. Bear in mind that I'd not yet decided on the best settings, and so these shots are a first effort.
I thought the rendering of the flame, the lit-up objects close by, and the way the background was thrown out of focus, were all satisfactory. Walking back to Fiona along the wet street, I took a nice photo of the distant traffic lights reflected on the wet road and pavement:
Hmm! This suggested to me that a night-time walkabout in the centre of Brighton, especially in the rain, would be highly worthwhile.
The very next evening, I drove to Lancing College, to get shots of the College Chapel in the setting sunlight. I stopped off at Botolphs along the way, and this was one of the selfies I took near the church. Nice to know that Lili can do selfies quite well, although the image shows every tiny blemish on my face!
Soon afterwards, I was pointing the lens at Lancing College Chapel, hoping for the best.
Very good detail in these brightly-lit shots - click on them to enlarge the picture and view the detail properly. Down one side of the Chapel was a cloister. I had a look at it, and took some selfies in the dimming light while in there:
Then I continued around the base of the Chapel for more exterior shots. You couldn't go in, so I had to be content with these. The Chapel is very tall, and somewhat Gothic - it would look absolutely right in Gotham City.
It was getting on towards sunset, but I decided I could fit in two more locations that evening. Close by was Old Shoreham Bridge, a well-built but narrow wooden bridge, nowadays for cyclists and pedestrians only, but - believe it or not - it took the A27 road (Sussex's main east-west road) across the River Adur until 1970. And it was a toll bridge too. What a bottleneck it must have been. The Old Bridge was replaced by the fast modern toll-free dual carriageway a little upriver. Today it's a popular place to visit on foot or on a bike. And it's pretty photogenic too, as are the views to the north and the south.
The 23mm (= 35mm 'full frame') lens on Lili was only semi wide-angle, but it was still possible to compose spacious-looking shots.
And once again, I had fantastic luck. Resting against the bridge was a penny-farthing! With its rider close by. We chatted. I didn't ask him to mount the thing, but we did discuss the apparent difficulties of getting into the high saddle, how to brake, and how to dismount. I knew a bit about it, having watched a few YouTube videos on the subject - prompted by seeing a gent in period costume ride a penny-farthing sedately through the centre of Chichester in June last year. Here's that gent, captured with the little Leica D-Lux 4, as he passed close to me:
Now I had a second chance to bag shots of a penny-farthing and its rider:
There was just enough time left to drive over to adjacent Shoreham Airport, and catch some sunset shots of the Art-Deco passenger terminal, still with a working air traffic control tower. Lili was still set up for warmish shots, and the sky wasn't quite so pink-orange as this, although still an impressive sight.
Well! I had clearly acquired a camera capable of better, more detailed, more subtle-toned pictures than I'd enjoyed since my Nikon D700 days back in 2008-2011. Some fine adjustment to settings was obviously still needed; but I was already inclined to think that I'd found a worthy successor for my venerable little Leica D-Lux 4.
