[Leica] Soft focus confusion, was: IMG: Miyazaki weekend walk

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

My sense when I said the focus was soft was that the pictures had a look of
the iconic photos of the 1940s and 1950s to them, and I thought it was
intentional. I was not impugning the photos, which I liked.

I have glasses, and have needed new ones for a long while but at $600
I'd rather have an old M3 frankly.... so with my Nikon D40 I have a helluva
time getting in focus and this with a little signal in the viewfinder that's
supposed to help (I use a lot of manual focus lenses and shoot in absurdly
low light where even my AF lenses go batty...) so I often bracket a tiny bit
-- but when you're shooting with film this is not so much an option.

if you have the same problem with the M3 and the M6 across all the lenses
then it's something other than the calibration I would think. I think
Richard's idea is very good. It will reveal if it's you or the cameras.

Also, who's processing your film? What kind of film is it? All these might
be factors.

Vince


On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Peter Cheyne
<geordiepete211 at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:

> Thank you for noticing, Vince, that my photographs are consistently soft in
> focus.  It is not a deliberate choice, and I don't know what to do about 
> it.
> I use an M3, M6 and M8 (which is at Solms for repair right now).  The
> Miyazaki photos you viewed were taken with the M6 and a CV Nokton 35.
>  Perhaps my M6 needs calibrating.
>
> I use these 3 cameras and five lenses.  Of those lenses, the Nokton 35 and
> the Summicron 50 are the ones I usually use.  However, in any given month
> I'll
> use the other 3 lenses too.
>
> I would like to be confident that my lenses focus well with my cameras.
>  This is where I get confused.  Should I send my 3 cameras and 5 lenses at
> once to a repair
> person?  I sometimes think perhaps I should, because only then would the
> set be calibrated as a whole.  If I sent a couple of lenses and one camera
> to be calibrated, then everything else in my cabinet might be more out of
> focus for me than before.
>
> In a nutshell, I haven't addressed the issue because I don't know what to
> do.  Advice appreciated!
>
> Peter Cheyne
>
>
>
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