Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/11/11
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[This is adapted from a personal communication with M. Rabiner -- he
encouraged me to forward it to the LUG as an example of real Leica use!]
Today I wandered around some box cars in the Burlingame RR station and
shot semi-abstract views of the lettering (and numbering!) on the side of
the cars using nothing but an M2 with the dreaded 90 Tele-Elmarit. I had
the camera loaded with APX25 and I put it on a tripod, of course. Stopped
down to f5.6, DOF wasn't an issue as I was taking pictures of flat things,
so I was only concerned about stopping down far enough to take care of
any field-curvature or other lens aberrations. I assumed f5.6 would take
care of any of that.
The M2 frame lines for 90mm are really good, much better than the M6
frame lines -- they look like this:
---- ----
| |
| |
| |
| |
---- ----
i.e., they box in the corners so you can really see what you are framing.
I find the other kind of frame lines which the M6 uses confuse things
just a little bit. At least, I haven't gotten used to them yet.
The idea for me was to proof some angles and then come back with the view
camera to shoot for real. I'm tempted to get a used optical finder for
my view camera, that might help me visualize stuff. I'm having trouble
seeing things without setting up the camera and peering at the glass,
but sometimes that takes too long.
I've got times and temps down for APX25 in Rodinal 1:50 and I want to
see how these railroad pictures look. I haven't really pushed APX25 hard
in the 35mm format, so I want to see what it can do.
Byron.