Re: [Leica] Leica-Users List Digest V2 #146

[Steve Hickel <smhickel@x2.alliance.net>]

Mike,

Just curious what you think of TCN400?

Steve

At 08:17 AM 2/5/98 -0500, you wrote:
>A general comment: observing the LUG in recent days, I'm struck by a contrast
>of two things: first, how everybody seems anxious to insist that everything
>Leica does is perfect and best, but, second, how everybody seems to want
Leica
>to start making cameras that would be exactly like Contaxes. <g>
>
> New subject: 
>
>Tom A. wrote: >>>let us remember, they also got somethings right and Tri-X is
>one of the things. Is it only me,or is it something about Tri-X and Leica M's
>that is a particularly good match?<<<
>
> Tom: A match made in heaven. _The_ match, IMHO. I went through a period a
few
>years ago during which I had to obsessively test every film and many
>developers. (All b&w, of course.) During the course of this investigation, my
>lens-connoisseur-disease (the visual equivalent of the audiophile's "golden
>ear" syndrome--and similarly a curse! <s>) extended itself to the match
between
>lenses and films. My observation was simply that the qualities of certain
>lenses "meshed" with the qualities of certain films to create a kind of
>aesthetic synergy. For example, there are certain lenses that are "sharper"
>than certain films can really show off--IOW, if a lens has that delicate,
>high-res sharpness of certain Japanese standouts, it may not match with Tri-X
>very well...Tri-X seems to want a certain level of contrast in a lens but not
>benefit from excessive resolution (I should say, anticipating the
criticisms of
>the objectivists here, that these are all _entirely_, and intensely,
subjective
>impressions). At some level, certain films want to fight certain lenses, and
>_vice-versa_. Even the coarseness or fineness of any particular lens's
>out-of-focus rendering seems to "fit" the grain pattern and fineness of
certain
>films, and not others. For instance, the Pentax 50/1.7 is an extremely fine
>lens, but it doesn't match very well with Tri-X--but put that lens with 100
>Delta, and it comes into its own. 
> My opinion is that Leica M lenses generally match so well with Tri-X that
>there may even, at some point, have been an unspoken assumption on the
part of
>Leica designers that certain technical parameters of TX were what the typical
>lens should be expected to work best with. Well, okay, probably not. But just
>try the Mandler 35/2-M (i.e., the 1979-1995 version of the lens) with Tri-X
>developed in D-76 1+1...there is just a aesthetic synergy there between
the way
>that lens wants to render and the "look" of the film. It's just gorgeous. Try
>that same lens with, say, Agfapan 400. It looks nondescript, not even like a
>Leica lens at all--you might as well use a Nikkor for that film. 
> I won't go so far as to say this has anything to do with photography.
This is
>connoisseurship, pure and simple, and hence, in a certain sense,
disreputable.
>But I really do think that Tri-X is a match with Leica lenses, at least the
>Leica lenses I'm familiar with.
> Incidentally, having now tried every other film on earth, I'm happy once
again
>with good ol' Tri-X. These days, it's all I will use. <s>
>
> --Mike
>
>