Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/03/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Leica glass is tough. You do NOT have to baby it. Filters are fine, and mine are stored in odd locations with filters on, though Jim and Ted and Eric have so terrorized me that I no longer use them unless I am shooting chromes. The outside of the lenses get dinged and dirty and crappy. The glass will NOT wilt if you clean it with your shirt-tail, though I do not do so. (My co-author, Charlie Barringer, the President of Zeiss Historica, does the moral equivalent, having saved his chillun's diapers, his kids now being in their 20's, and uses these to clean his REALLY rare lenses, on the grounds that nothing is softer than a baby's rear end. It works: he makes more in a year from selling glass than I do in the chasing of ambulances.) Don't panic, guys. Use logic and reason. Bare glass is best to shoot with if, as I am, you wish to make images which are at the cutting edge of technical precision. But filters have a role -- I would love to hear from Jim or Ted that they shoot b&w outdoors without a yellow filter! Maybe they do, but their foliage must look, well, skimpy -- and engaging photographers know how to use them. Me? I am learning. I will be learning when the Black Camel Kneels At My Door which, if I keep irritating women the way I do, will be quite soon ... Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!