[Leica] All cats are grey at f8

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

Right, it was quite striking: a gnarly looking two-headed seedpod of a
flower with this amazing field of lovely floral blur around it. Can't
remember who took it. As I said about polenta: great things CAN be done with
it but nobody ever drove home faster hearing there was gonna be polenta at
supper.

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Steve Barbour <steve.barbour at 
gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Mar 27, 2010, at 8:50 PM, Vince Passaro wrote:
>
> > There are two arguments going on here: Rabs is saying that shooting wide
> > open all the time is a fad of sorts and inapplicable much of the time to
> > what a professional and, in his view, what an artist needs to accomplish
> in
> > his/her photographs. Ok, matter of opinion, I happen to agree with him in
> so
> > far as I tend to find bokeh about as interesting as grits. Or as we
> Italians
> > say, polenta. There are things you can do with it and sometimes it's
> > magnificent but most of the time I'm more interested in what the
> photograph
> > reveals than what it (most artfully perhaps) obscures.
>
> remember than it reveals far, far better,  by artfully obscuring,
>
> it can turn a snapshot into a work of art...
>
> it's anterior/posterior cropping, no more-- no less,
>
> and you even were impressed and commented on the bokeh of one particular
> image, as I recall...
>
>
> and I fully agree,
>
>
>
>
> Steve
>
> >
> > But there is a more important, not-mere-opinion argument here too, which
> is
> > the assertion back up by citation of actual tests that, from f4 of 5.6 to
> > f16, there is so little difference in prime lenses there's no reason to
> buy
> > a Leica.
> >
> > So I have to put in my 50-lire coin, which you used to have to have to
> use
> > the elevator in most apartment buildings in Rome.
> >
> > Many folks on the LUG are contradictory souls who like to say "why the
> only
> > solution is to get off your ass and go hang out the bottom of a
> helicopter
> > and shoot shoot shoot and then you'll know what's what blah blah blah,"
> at
> > the same time they're spouting pure doctrine unsupported by the vast
> > majority of actual experience but religiously appealing  -- for instance,
> in
> > a recent colloquy, that the old rules of photography plus the laws of
> > physics make it invariably  that you need to stop down considerably on a
> > Panasonic G camera (a light high quality digital camera)  to accomodate a
> > 45mm lens' tendency to shake.... except despite the obvious laws of
> physics
> > and book larnin' that make this appear to be true I know empirically from
> > shooting that it just ain't. Not that camera at that lens size, no way.)
> > 90mm lens, yes. 45mm lens, no.
> >
> > So I don't care what the labs say about all lenses at 5.6 looking alike:
> I
> > know empirically that they don't.  Remember this part: Not To Me.  None
> of
> > us sees the same way as any other one of us.  The mood or contrast or
> > sharpness or color of a photgraph: we see all of them with sufficient
> > differences to keep bar tabs oepn and llines ppumpintrBefore I went to
> > digital I shot basically three cameras in film: a Nikon FE2, a Minolta
> XD-11
> > (ahhhh), and a Leica CL (which was lost so it was followed by a  Bessa
> R2).
> > Nikon Nikkor manual focus lenses, Minolta MD and MC manual focus lenses,
> and
> > a Leica 40mm Summicron-C (1973), a 50 mm Summicron (rigid chrome, late
> > 1950s) and a 90mm f/4 Elmar-C. Later I added a CV 21/4.
> >
> > Now leaving aside Leica and rangefinders in general,the first interesting
> > thing to me, having heard of Nikon's reputation in glass and the
> superiority
> > of its cameras (the latter contention seems generally true: of Minoltas,
> > ONLY the XD-11 struck me as a great camera; all the others offered
> trouble
> > of one kind or another) was the discovery that the Minolta lenses in the
> > same sizes were frequently better than the Nikons,to my eye. More
> contrast,
> > deeper and sharper. This was particulary true at 24, 35, 50 and 135 and
> > 200mm -- although at 50/2 and 200/4 it was a Very Close race. ) And the
> > Leicas were in those regards (contrast, sharpness) in another league all
> > together.  This was true at all the apertures I shot at which generally
> were
> > between f./4 and f/8 or if it was particularly sunny out, f 11.  The
> Nikons
> > were better in color than in B & W, in which Minolta and Leica both
> kicked
> > Nikon's butt.
> >
> > Those lenses looked different and handled the light differently and
> that's
> > all there was to it. but of course you could compare them becaue you had
> the
> > same film most of the time.  Once you go to different sensors all bets
> are
> > off.
> >
> > But I mean a 35mm Summicron ASPH is the same as a Pentax 35mm at f/8?
> > C'mon. Or as we say in NYC: Cummmaaa, forget about it.
> >
> > Vince
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >>> "Yeah-but"   when you don't have a client, f2 is more fun.
> >>> --
> >>> Regards,
> >>>
> >>> Sonny
> >>
> >>
> >> "Yeah-but"
> >> Getting a strong effective photographic is more fun them embodying a
> >> rhetorical exercise. F wide open and be there.
> >> - sometimes you can go with the extreme selective focus approach in
> other
> >> words wide open. But more often not as you are looking at just what you
> >> need
> >> in focus in an image and just what you don't. And you use the f stop to
> get
> >> that. And it can  be any f stop on the scale.
> >>
> >> [Rabs]
> >> Mark William Rabiner
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Leica Users Group.
> >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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