Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/03/31
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*** Resending note of 03/30/97 12:55
Ted Grant wrote:
>You may expose a frame exactly as the meter tells you and that frame is
>technically perfect, but the next three as you stop down deliberately
>underexposing each frame, you create something technically way under,
>but when you look at them on the light table, you find the one frame
>three stops under exposed is just the greatest thing since sliced bread.
>That does not mean the others are no good, it means this one frame,
>deliberately and badly underexposed piece of film is the diamond of the
>bunch! The truth ofyour work is on the light table! And many times the
>very best never see the printed page, no matter how good you may think
>you and your photography are.
Under exposed? I would say you decided to try lower zone placements...
While color materials don't allow the contrast control Black & White does
the zone system works just about as well... with color material it gives
you the option of deciding whether the highlights are going to blow out
or the shadows are going to loose all detail...
BTW: In his latter years Ansel Adams used the R-4 extensively and had used
Contaxes & Contarexes for many of his "people" pictures from the 30s 'till
after Zeiss went out of the camera business.
On the matter of SLR shutter delay: Back in the late 50s & early 60s when
photographers started switching to SLRs en mass, the matter of shutter
delay was studied: the difference between the (if I remember right) 5ms
delay of a Leica M and the 100ms delay of a Nikon F was not very significant.
The delay between the brain and the shutter release button was far greater
than the delay after: you have to anticipate. However, with an AF camera, if
you don't have a focus lock on your subject, you are nearly as bad off as if
you had to stop & focus first with a manual focus camera.
- John Lowther