Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/06/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Dear Dave: >I am distressed about a few things and would appreciate any help >I can get. > >1) I did not get versions of this digest 84-85 and have no idea why. Can't help you on that one! >2) I am having some difficulty getting good shots with my Leica >M3. The shots that come out good are really good, but the others are >a huge disappointment. Here are the details: I use an M3, with a 35/3.5 Summaron and a 50/2.0 Summicron. I also use a SLR (well, for years, I only used SLRs). My first attempts were not very successful, but, with perseverence, now I get very good results. My first main problem was focusing. Focusing with a rangefinder is (for me) VERY different from focusing with a SLR. In the first tries, I sometimes *forgot* to focus, because everything *was* in focus! So, I got some totally blurred pictures, some soft pictures and some sharp pictures. >- I'm a novice photographer and have been educating myself with books >(eg., the Leica Manual '61) on the subject. Early shots I took with >this camera were done with slow f-stops ... hence grainy. I think I >understand better the optimization between depth of feild vs. resolving >power a bit better now. I plan on keeping a journal of all shots I take >in the near future. Any suggestions on other good books would be >appreciated as well. "Grainy" pictures may be only out-of-focus pictures: slightly defocused pictures will show (for me) more "subjective" grain than sharp pictures. I think that is a nice trick played by our brains: when there is a crisp "large-scale" pattern, the brain ignores the "finer-scale" patterns. This effect is very acute on computer screens and televisions: the image seems sharp, although ultimate resolution is crap. Anyone has comments on this? >- Some shots just don't seem to get enough light. I don't know if this >is because my light meter (MC) is too old or if I'm just not using it >properly. It might also be the film I've been using (Kodak Gold and most >recently some freebe 3m garbage). It also might be that I haven't found >a good developer yet, but I think I've found one now here in NJ about 1/2hr >from my place. A good mail-in lab address / phone # would be really great. No, I suspect the problem is not the film, nor the lab (well, they can be really bad, I know!), but my Leicameter MC was (notice the past tense, _was_, because I don't use it anymore) not very reliable, specialy in low light situations: some of my first films had the same average density as a roll of Scoth tape! :-) Moreover, the Leicameter sometimes shows an irritating feature: if you measure a a scene with lots of light and then a scene in low light, the second measurement may be influenced by the first and will register a higher value than reality! It shows some kind of memory! I think that both problems, low sensivity and memory, are caused by the kind of cell used (corrections welcome). Anyway, I just dumped the Leicameter and bought a small handheld meter. It works just fine, with some added bonuses: 1) whenever I can, I now use a lot of incident reading, so my negatives are becoming more and more consistent; 3) the handheld meter is consederably lighter than the Leicameter; 3) my M3 looks at least 30 years younger without it, what a facelift! ;-). >- My shutter curtain seems to leave a small line on the image every 10th [snip] Sorry, no help on that one, too! >Thanks ... email responses would really be preferred (due to problem #1 above). I posted it in leica-users with a copy to you! Hope this helps. >DT >-- >Dave Topper (me) >Student of: Life, Computer Music and Art. >(email responses always preferred) >http://www.panix.com/~topper Joao --------------------------------- Joao Vasco Ranito Medidata, SA Portugal e-mail: medidata1@ip.pt my e-mail: jvr@inescn.pt Murphy's law of combat: "If your enemy is within firing range, so are you."