Re: [Leica] WAS: oh, Canada! NOW: FAST FOCUSING!

["Steve LeHuray" <icommag@toad.net>]

Steve LeHuray was giving some advise:
 
>> << Try walking around your
>>  house or neighborhood with no film in the camera pretending you are a FBI
>>  agent and imagine scenes poping into view then, quick focus and shoot. I
>>  have done this for many hours and still occasionally do it<<<<<<<<<<<

Then Ted Grant chimed in with:
>
> Howdy Gang,
> There is one fast way to learn how to focus quickly and it never fails,
> unless you're not physically coordinated with your hands and fingers.
>
> Use the longest lens you own, stand at the side of the highway and focus
> on the front of cars coming at you and shoot so that when the film is
> developed you can read the license plate sharply!
>
> Now you understand the reason to be physically astute with your focusing
> hand and tripper finger! When you can shoot 3 or 4 rolls of 36 exposure
> and have 90% of them sharp, then you can blow away all the street
> shooting you want, as you'll be so fast people will only say, "Who was
> that masked photographer?" :-)

> ted
> Victoria, Canada
> http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant


Ted,

Good advise. Actually I learned fast focusing on a variation of your theme
of standing by a highway and focusing on the license plates of passing cars.
Thirty years ago I was hired by a motorcycle magazine as a writer and as
they sent me off on my first writing assignment to cover a big national race
the editor said, "by the way, while you are there, take a few pictures," as
he stuck a SLR with a 200mm lens in my hand. So that is when I started to
learn quick focusing, taking pictures of racing motorcycles. I did okay, in
four years over 400 published magazine photos with several cover shots.

Steve (soon to be one of Ted's students on Cape Cod) LeHuray
Annapolis