[Leica] Early trauma

[leicaslacker at gmail.com (kyle cassidy on the LUG)]

You've been looking at the wrong photos! Opening Vogue or W or looking at 
the images of most any serious film shooter will show you that focus isn't 
even close to the most important thing. In fact, sometimes completely out of 
focus is just what the doctor ordered.....


On Oct 19, 2010, at 7:51 PM, <tedgrant at shaw.ca> <tedgrant at shaw.ca> 
wrote:

> Thank you Herb.
> cheers,
> ted
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org>
> To: <lug at leica-users.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 4:38 PM
> Subject: [Leica] Early trauma
> 
> 
>> Around 1943 I got traumatized. This was the thick of WWII, and cameras 
>> were hard to find. I was lucky enough to find a little non-range-finder 
>> 35mm camera called a Wirgin, if I remember correctly. I think I found it 
>> in a large camera store in Chicago, where I was living. I took it with me 
>> on vacation to New York. At the end of a roll of Kodachrome, I took some 
>> pictures of flowers in a friend's garden. The camera was pretty small and 
>> light, and my hand-held exposures were generally at 1/100.
>> On returning to Chicago, I took the camera and pictures to the lab where 
>> I was working to show off to a colleague. The bastard started examining 
>> the frames with a 20X magnifier and announced: "Your camera is no good; 
>> they're not sharp." Then, when he got to the last of the lot, he 
>> exclaimed: "This one is sharp."
>> The last picture was taken with the camera on a tripod, as the sun was 
>> going down. I was so traumatized by this experience that for the next 55 
>> years, I was reluctant to shoot hand-held at less than 1/250. Happily, 
>> some of the postings by Ted Grant have taught me to do better.
>> Herb