Normally at that time I would have taken my Leica M6 film camera as I was still wedded to film but friend Roger in the UK had just bought a Leica Digilux 2 camera and he sold me his Digilux 1 and I was curious to see how it performed.The Digilux 1 was a clunky device - a joint Panasonic/Leica effort and back in 2004 digital photography was still on its trainer wheels.
I took just the Digilux to Shanghai and despite all my reservations I came back with a really interesting set of photos which I had forgotten about until I found them last weekend.
The Digilux i has two attributes - it takes great infra red photos and it produces jpeg and tiff files with an interesting and unique look.You can find more details on this rather odd camera- I still have mine - on Wikipedia at DIGILUX 1
I am surprised to see that on Ebay sellers are currently asking for around $300 for Digilux 1s.
Here's my three days in China-2004 collection.I unfortunately only took jpegs on that trip because the tiff files were very big and the SD cards at that time had a very limited capacity.Please don't judge the photos on their technical merit -remember that this was an early digital camera.Comparing them with current digital photos is like comparing a Boeing 707 with a 787 Dreamliner although I am surprised by how good they are.Nowadays all the gearheads who inhabit all those tedious forums on the web who cannot get by without the latest camera packed with features would not even dream of taking a photo with a camera with a tiny sensor and only 4 megapixels but it must have been inspirational for me.Most of the city and streetscapes I took on that short trip have now gone so this is a snapshot of a vanished China.I am sure that the wedding dress hire shops in Shanghai don't wash the returned dresses and hang them on a tree beside the main road nowadays.
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