RE: [Leica] Prefocusing technique

["Stewart, Alistair" <AStewart@gigaweb.com>]

Mike

Absolutely right on!

Apologies to the LUGsturbators for the resale-value-reducing impact of
below-mentioned use of focusing tab.

carpe lunem, photographers
carpe member, collectors


Alistair

- -----Original Message-----
From: Mike Johnston [mailto:michaeljohnston@ameritech.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 5:26 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Prefocusing technique


>>>[Austin] Perhaps you could explain your 'technique'?<<<


Sure.

With the old style 35mm Summicron (just happened to be the lens I used),
if you push the tab all the way right, it's at infinity. If you pull it
back until it's pointing about straight down, it's set for about 5 feet.
Between those two focusing distances, you can learn to set the distance
by feel IF YOU PRACTICE. Please note that regular practice is required.

Here's how you practice. You can do this in your living room, your
office, anywhere. Shove the tab to infinity. Look at something with your
eyes. Lift the camera to your eye and focus on that thing using the
rangefinder. Now notice, by feel, how far you had to pull the tab back
from infinity to focus on the object in question. Move it back and forth
a few times--get the feel of it. Now set the focus distance for that
object by feel, and then check yourself again, using the rangefinder.
Were you off a little? Try again.

Repeat this for different objects at different distances, for ten or
twenty a minutes a day.

It's like situps. You either have the discipline to do it or you don't.

Soon enough, you'll be able to practice by looking at something and
simply moving the lens to where it should be. Check yourself using the
rangefinder. If you're off a little, don't worry--keep practicing.
You'll find you gradually get better and better at it.

After a few months of this, something quite lovely happens. Remember
when you were learning to drive, when you were told about the "feel of
the wheel"? Sooner or later, you were told, you wouldn't have to think
about anything as you operated the car, the clutch, the shifter--it
would all just happen, without requiring your conscious attention.

The same thing happens with prefocusing, eventually. At my peak with the
Leica, I could walk around looking at things, and my thumb would
constantly be shifting the lens to the proper focus for whatever I was
looking at. Look here, focus, look there, focus, all while never raising
the camera to my eye. If I want to shoot, I'm already focused. If you
feel like it, you can look through the viewfinder and touch-up or
fine-tune the focus using the rangefinder; but eventually you stop doing
that, too, because you'll be so close so regularly that it just doesn't
help that much.

It takes practice. It doesn't just happen. It happens after you butt
your head up against it for a while.

Some heavy shooters naturally get the knack without practicing, but
their work is their practice. And you can do it with a lens without a
tab, too, although I think it's harder.

I was explaining this technique to a friend at the Leica booth at the
PhotoPlus show two years ago, and I happened to notice he had his 35mm
Summicron on his M6. I asked him to hand me the camera. Without raising
the camera from my waist level, I said, "see that poster over there?"
and handed him the camera back. "Look through the finder and see how I
did."

He was incredulous--said "God damn!" about five times. I admit that
being able to nail the focus perfectly that time was a bit lucky on my
part, since I hadn't shot with an M6 for two years at that point.

I'm not trying to say I'm some sort of great Leica camera-handler. I'm
an okay shooter, not bad, not world-class. But I did have that one skill
down pat for a while.

Then I stopped shooting every day, started changing lenses too much
(always a bad idea), stopped practicing. Eventually you become like a
good musician who loses his chops--it frustrates you just to not be as
good as you used to be.

I do think it's most efficient to use the rangefinder when you focus
closer than 5 feet, or when you're using the widest apertures. But in
daylight, at middle apertures and middle focusing distances, you
virtually never gain anything by any more careful focusing.

I'm convinced that this skill is the first step to becoming really quick
with a Leica. It's FUN, too. I wish I was still shooting enough to have
kept the skill well honed.

The Leica is a great camera for when you're shooting a lot.

- --Mike