Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Many Years ago a made a point of not using flash with the Leica. Never. One day, in the early days, when I still used flash with the Leica, I was invited, to visit and go down a working gold mine. For other Australians: It was the A1 mine near Woods Point. Anyway, I took my camera gear out of the car. All exited. It was my M3 with the DR Summicron and the 35mm f 2.8 Summaron with the eyes. As we descended to about 2000 feet, the humidity increased, and the light got dimmer. It was then, that I realized I forgot my flash gun in the excitement. It was a funny feeling, the 2 cheeks of my backside started to vibrate. After all, it was the only time, that I had the opportunity to go down the mine. When we arrived at the bottom, I checked the light. The film was 160ASA Ilford B&W. I was a real Ilford fan in those days. Well, the light read something like 1/8 at F2. I decided. I wasn't coming all this way, without bringing some pictures back. And I don't want to look a complete idiot by admitting, that I forgot the flash. So I cleaned the condensation of the lens and the eye piece. I just had to make do without the flash . Most shots I did, I could use 1/8 or 1/4 of a sec, but for some I had to go down to 1 sec, when I needed more depth of field. When I got home and developed 2 reels of film and made the prints, I found about 60% to be perfectly useful. As a matter of fact, I would say, They looked a lot better, than If I had used flash. Everything looked more real. No bright spots or dark backgrounds. Most shots showed very little camera shake. I then decided, that Flash was not for me. Don't get me wrong, I can believe that there are many good reasons to use flash. Especially fill in or studio flash . But I am no expert at fill in flash and I don't have a studio or the flash equipment for it. If I have to use flash, like this morning when I had to photograph the interior of a custom made caravan to get an idea how to fit some electronic wiring in to it. Then I use my Pentax Super-A with the appropriate Pentax flash. The Pentax has the advantage, that the shutter speed automatically is set to the appropriate flash speed, when the flash unit is switched on. Whenever I have to use flash, then for me, the quality does not matter. The final prints are either for research purposes or some shots about the extended family at a party where everyone wants to be in the picture. . Regards, Horst Schmidt