[Leica] Godfrey's Heliar pic; some of mine; and some actual Leica pictures.

[Jeff Moore <jbm@oven.com>]

I, too, like Godfrey's picture.  It has a pleasing sense of openness,
and nothing's too stretched in that "look at me, I'm using an
ultrawide!" way.  Nice light.

[I'd like to commend Godfrey for including that larger version of the
 picture, as well.  The smaller picture embedded in the HTML page was,
 I fear, lower-res than I can enjoy looking at -- or, perhaps more
 precisely, it's so low-res that one can only look at it, not into it.
 The larger one was just about big enough for viewing.]

Figuring out how to use a lens this wide in a way in which the pictures
are strengthened by its characteristics, but aren't gimmicky, is the
task I've identified for myself after the first few rolls of just
wallowing in fun over-the-top ultrawide stretchiness.

But, just for fun, here are some unabashedly gimmicky pictures from my
first couple of rolls with the Super-Wide-Heliar on the Bessa-L:

    http://krusty.oven.com/temp-displays/jpeg-nonmac-gamma/b3991011b-11%5bjan%5d0705.jpeg

    http://krusty.oven.com/temp-displays/jpeg-nonmac-gamma/c3991013-16%5bescal%5d0705.jpeg

And... just so nobody can yell at me too much, apropos of nothing
really, here's some on-topic content: some pictures taken with
Actual Leica Glass -- in this case, the wonderous 75mm Summilux,
eye-candy-producer supreme.  These two were on Fuji NHG II, exposed at
EI 1600 and pushed 1 stop.

    http://krusty.oven.com/temp-displays/jpeg-nonmac-gamma/c3990802-09%5balex%5d0705.jpeg

    http://krusty.oven.com/temp-displays/jpeg-nonmac-gamma/c3990802-06%5birina+j+h%5d0705.jpeg

BTW, in case it isn't obvious: take the "non" out of "nonmac" in all
the URLs above, and you should get pictures which look more okay
displayed in the bleachingly-pale Mac environment.

[For the extreme technogeeks out there, the negatives were scanned
 on a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi at the full 2820DPI resolution, saved
 before and after dust-spotting with the Gimp in lossless PNG format, and
 divided down to the equivalent of 705DPI scans using pnmscale, maybe
 pnmgamma, and cjpeg.]

 -Jeff