In early February I sold most of my DSLR equipment and purchased a Leica rangefinder. Heres a review via a couple of pictures I've taken, followed by a short review of SLR vs. Rangefinder photography and the M8. All photos are post processed via Aperture 2.0, Hydra HDR, and Adobe CS4. Pictures have not been cropped - but I probably should have...

 

This is a shot to show off the incredible f1.2 bokeh of the voigtlander nokton. The only downside to using this lens is the fact that the focal plane is extremely shallow, and can be hard to focus using a rangefinder, especially when the background contains many similar patterns and shapes.

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These are the archs of the EPA right when you exit federal triangle. I took several exposures before I caught a person walking through - it gives a good comparison to how tall they really are. The streetlamps offered too much light on the branches to the front, and I had to lower contrast in Aperture, and increase black point to retain the dark outlines of the trees.

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This picture is a HDR composite of 3 different exposures. First exposure I used a yellow filter to capture the blues of the sky, second exposure was at f22 for 1/2000s for the sun, and the last exposure was at f4 1/4000s (for the chairs). Shooting directly into the sun did hurt my eyes a little bit, but the result is well worth it. Upon closer pixel peeping, the nokton holds its sharpness extremely well when slowed down to smaller apertures. 

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Ahem... well, I suppose the worst part was asking her whether or not I could take a picture of her.

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All in all, I'm very happy with my Leica. This camera reinvigorated my love for taking pictures. I think for everyone out there who's asking me why I would sell half of my gear to invest in a $5000 camera, my answer actually lies in another question: why do we take pictures? Is it megapixels, the clarity of the exposure, the subject, or perhaps it lies in the satisfaction in knowing that for a brief moment, we're able to stop time and contain a piece of the world's beauty on a memory card? In the 4 years of so I've been doing photography as a hobby, the picture taking process has never moved me as deeply as it has when I'm behind a Leica.

Beyond the solid build quality and aesthetics, the camera itself is in every way as capable as a DSLR. The white balance might be a bit lacking, but it's easily correctable in post processing. While the 35mm nokton is a bit large for a rangefinder lens, my 50mm summicron is a lot smaller to similar 50mm lenses. I do see myself splurging on a 50mm f1 noctilux somewhere down the road, but as of right now, I'm quite happy.

Now the nitty-gritty: rangefinders aren't for everyone. While the price of entry obviously serves as a barrier, ease of operation would also deter a lot of amateur photographers. I use the camera in completely manual mode - although aperature priority and auto ISO is available. One of the greatest strengths of this camera is in the simplicity of it's manual controls. Over time, I've gotten a lot better at eyeballing distance for focusing, selecting aperature for the desired effect, and adjusting shutter speed to allow for blur to depict movement. This is not a camera for the casual shooter. In fact my sony a100 does a better job of automatically determining exposure, white balance, and noise control at higher isos - at thousands less. But for those who shoot manually regularly, who desire discreetness and a camera that gives you DSLR quality photos while not intimidating the subject, this is it. I know Epson just came out with their new R-D1x digital rangefinder with a lower-tech sensor that should be cheaper.

I recommend the m8 for anyone looking for a reason to pickup a camera again. While this is a very pricey and exclusive club to join, once you're inside, the pros and cons become very obvious.

One of my greatest concerns as a Protestant is that not enough Protestants know what it means to be Protestant. Non-denominational Christians fall into this category as well. So a few hard hitting questions now hang in the air: how are we different than other denominations? Who was Martin Luther, and was he a heretic and false prophet like Joseph Smith (Mormonism), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), or Charles Taze Russel (Jehovah's Witness)? What are the five solas of the reformation, and why do we knowingly (or unknowingly) embrace this ideology? Why do people who come to Christ then fall away always seem to be protestant?

We all know (or we should know) that protestantism occurred to oppose the Roman Catholic church due to a myriad of corruption that was taking place during the early 1500s. The term "protestant" became an umbrella term used to describe a Christian who is not in the Roman Catholic church or the Eastern Orthodox churches. Martin Luther, who fathered the protestant movement, nailed a document called the 95 theses on Castle Church in Wittenburg Germany. You can read all of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/95_theses

Martin Luther was a controversial figure. One one hand he challenged the Roman Catholic church and all the corruption that was quite apparent even in 1517, and on the other he was an anti-Semite and wrote extensively on the disenfranchisement of Jews in europe - those documents were later used by the nazis. However, Martin Luther, unlike other false prophets, never claimed to have true or enlightened knowledge of God or scripture. He was, largely, a very opinionated monk that brought about a very important question: What is more important: the authority of man or the authority of God?

A product of the reformation was the five solas (scriptura, fide, gratia, christus, deo gloria). These solas stands as the foundation of any protestant doctrine. The best argument that I have for these solas (after studying them extensively), is found in Christ and the way He lived his life. Christ quoted scripture, he placed his faith in the Father, he graciously gave His life for the sins of mankind, He claimed to be God, and His life exemplified what it meant to give glory to God. At the risk of starting a huge fire, I'd like to make an assumption that if Jesus Christ had to fall into a denomination, it would be protestantism. Christ was the perfect protestant.

However, being rooted in the five solas also means that we are given a lot of freedom in coming up with our own understanding of scripture, faith, grace, Christ, and glory in God. The sociopsychological truth is that we are incapable as an individual and as a society to discern the mysteries of God. So people come up with wrong assumptions, believe in the wrong things, make the wrong friends, and do the wrong things. And soon enough, what little grasp they had of God falls away. But I have faith that God is sovereign over all things. And that while we are not capable, He will make us capable. This is one endearing aspect of being an evangelical.

So what does it mean to be protestant? A protestant is someone who goes to the source. Someone who cuts out the middleman when experiencing what God has to offer. A protestant holds tight to the promise of eternity, and not to the obsolete promises of human constructs. A protestant aspires to be like Christ. A protestant knows that while no one is perfect, we have been made perfect through Christ's sacrifice on the cross. A protestant knows that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is first and everything else is secondary. A protestant doesn't like praying to Mary, the smell of actual incense, and being told when to fast. And lastly, a protestant finds the definition of their denomination not in what has been done in the past, but by what will be done by the grace of God.

So in the end, where should the emphasis be for a Christian? Sola Scriptura. Sola fide. Sola gratia. Solus Christus. Soli Deo Gloria. Because that's what Jesus did.