[Leica] Leica-Users List Digest V2 #146

[Mike Johnston <70007.3477@compuserve.com>]

A general comment: observing the LUG in recent days, I'm struck by a contrast
of two things: first, how everybody seems anxious to insist that everything
Leica does is perfect and best, but, second, how everybody seems to want Leica
to start making cameras that would be exactly like Contaxes. <g>

 New subject: 

Tom A. wrote: >>>let us remember, they also got somethings right and Tri-X is
one of the things. Is it only me,or is it something about Tri-X and Leica M's
that is a particularly good match?<<<

 Tom: A match made in heaven. _The_ match, IMHO. I went through a period a few
years ago during which I had to obsessively test every film and many
developers. (All b&w, of course.) During the course of this investigation, my
lens-connoisseur-disease (the visual equivalent of the audiophile's "golden
ear" syndrome--and similarly a curse! <s>) extended itself to the match between
lenses and films. My observation was simply that the qualities of certain
lenses "meshed" with the qualities of certain films to create a kind of
aesthetic synergy. For example, there are certain lenses that are "sharper"
than certain films can really show off--IOW, if a lens has that delicate,
high-res sharpness of certain Japanese standouts, it may not match with Tri-X
very well...Tri-X seems to want a certain level of contrast in a lens but not
benefit from excessive resolution (I should say, anticipating the criticisms of
the objectivists here, that these are all _entirely_, and intensely, subjective
impressions). At some level, certain films want to fight certain lenses, and
_vice-versa_. Even the coarseness or fineness of any particular lens's
out-of-focus rendering seems to "fit" the grain pattern and fineness of certain
films, and not others. For instance, the Pentax 50/1.7 is an extremely fine
lens, but it doesn't match very well with Tri-X--but put that lens with 100
Delta, and it comes into its own. 
 My opinion is that Leica M lenses generally match so well with Tri-X that
there may even, at some point, have been an unspoken assumption on the part of
Leica designers that certain technical parameters of TX were what the typical
lens should be expected to work best with. Well, okay, probably not. But just
try the Mandler 35/2-M (i.e., the 1979-1995 version of the lens) with Tri-X
developed in D-76 1+1...there is just a aesthetic synergy there between the way
that lens wants to render and the "look" of the film. It's just gorgeous. Try
that same lens with, say, Agfapan 400. It looks nondescript, not even like a
Leica lens at all--you might as well use a Nikkor for that film. 
 I won't go so far as to say this has anything to do with photography. This is
connoisseurship, pure and simple, and hence, in a certain sense, disreputable.
But I really do think that Tri-X is a match with Leica lenses, at least the
Leica lenses I'm familiar with.
 Incidentally, having now tried every other film on earth, I'm happy once again
with good ol' Tri-X. These days, it's all I will use. <s>

 --Mike