Sometime in the near future this forum will be a part of photo.net, and I will continue to be its moderator. Further, I have volunteered - and have been selected - to be the photo.net Leica section editor, which makes me largely responsible for the content of the Leica section (presumably mostly product reviews and this rather lively Q&A forum).

Right now, the management staff of photo.net is looking for approximately one Leica product review each month over the next six months. They are looking to me. I, in turn, am looking to anyone here who may be interested in writing reviews. We will arrange for you to recieve a loaner from Leica so that you can use it for a month, write your report, and email it to me so that I can edit it and publish it to photo.net with proper credit to you, of course. I will nag you to get the reviews to me sooner than you probably would like, so you may end up disliking me very much over the course of our relationship. At least one member here has already written a review for photo.net: Kirk Tuck on the Leica M6.

If you are interested in volunteering your time for this task, you can respond to this thread, or write to me personally at rowlett@alaska.net and we can discuss the particulars.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), May 08, 2002

Answers

Hey Tony, I'm definitely interested. As long as its M stuff, I typically burn about 8 rolls of film a weekend on my project so there's plenty of room for tests. I'm also in the process of submitting a paper to a major scientific journal and am versed in the "reverse pyramid" style of writing (newspaper style).

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), May 08, 2002.

Tony first off, thanks for your work on this forum.:0) My quetsion is about the speed of Photo.net. Photo.net seems to take for ever to load up/do searches there. Are they working on this? I have cable internet and I have tried photo.net with T3 line at work all are slow. I actually find myself coming to read posts here because of this.;0) Thanks I've been meaning to ask you this since I read that this forum would be moving. --->Scott

-- Scott Evans (scottevans@attbi.com), May 08, 2002.

Scott has a very valid point there. Photo.Net IS sloooowwwwww...

-- Frank Horn (owlhoot45@hotmail.com), May 09, 2002.

That's really odd... I've found it to be just as fast as this forum at its fastest, for the last 5 years. And it does not slow down like this one (or worse still, go offline) with the rarest exceptions.

What gives?

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), May 09, 2002.

I do not have problems w photo.net load times either. It is possibly because I access the server from europe when most americans are sleeping?

-- Niels H. S. Nielsen (nhsn@ruc.dk), May 09, 2002.

I am interested in M and even LTM reviews. I don't shoot nearly as much film as I would like and having to write a review would give me the kick in the back I need to get out and shoot.

I have written for publication, although not for a few years and would like the oppurtunity to start writing again.

Chad Hahn

-- Chad Hahn (thehahns@cornhusker.net), May 09, 2002.

tony, here are my 2 cents:

- ok, the photo.net server isn't screaming fast, but I find this server to equally slow, many times slower and with substantially higher rates of misloaded pages. i access through DSL or T3, sometimes dial up modem.

- perhaps w/ leica above all brands, it is imperative that you have a qualified and experienced reviewer. not only very knowledgable about leica products, but other products in order to compare them objectively (no need for some gung-ho leica fan do do reviews, i'm sure the comments section will be full of those ;-)) why not "invite" different reviewers that have shown competence technically and artistically before, e.g. stephen gandy, erwin puts, dante stella (w/ some Konica bias ;-))

in all, i'm looking forward to the move towards a more controlled community (no one mentioned, no one forgotten) and will also make this great community accessible to a larger # of users

cheers,

pat

-- pat (modlabs@yahoo.com), May 09, 2002.

The responses here and through email have been wild! Thank you very much! This is great news. Even though I've received 20 or so emails in addition to the few in this thread already, there will probably be work for most everyone who has responded. I will be contacting you individually.

I don't know about the performance/response time of photo.net or even the server that is home to our forum (greenspun.com) because I am not involved with its administration. There must be hundreds of variables, including the number of hops from you to the site, network traffice, etc., that would affect performance. I know both systems seem to work OK for me most of the time.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), May 09, 2002.

I also find photo.net quite slow. There's a lot of JS your browser has to process. In contrast, LUSENET is super straight forward. The photo.net logo is animated, drop down flyaway menus are all JS. Sigh. Can't have bells and whistles for free. A reason I like this place so much better. I used to hang out at photo.net a lot. But even with a T1 (?- whatever it is we have at work) or DSL at home, it's too slooow... Not that we have a lot of choice at this time...

-- Tse-Sung (tsesung@yahoo.com), May 10, 2002.

Photo.net slow? For me, just occasionally. (University LAN + dedicated line = speed.)

Tony, I'm based in Leicaland, am more or less html-versed despite my frequent typos, use an R system, know it rather well, am willing to test any R and digital gear Leica provides, and know how to work under pressure.

-- Oliver Schrinner (piraya@hispavista.com), May 10, 2002.

Hispavista.com packed in two or three days ago--I can't acess my email any more over there. Tony, in case you already notified me, would you mind to send another mail to my new account? Thank you very much! I'm sorry for the trouble.

-- Oliver Schrinner (Oliver.Schrinner@campus.lmu.de), May 13, 2002.