[Leica] Wonders of digital & leica

[Mark <mark@steinberg.net>]

i think alan raises an interesting point regarding the the willingness
to invest in glass and our sudden caution when it comes to investing
in whatever we choose to do on the "post production of the neg/slide"
part of the process.

i have a few thoughts on this. consider the taking the photo as
input and viewing the photo as output.

your negative or slide is a master. it holds the actual image, and
represents the "last word". the "better" that you can make it, the
"better" your ultimate achievement will be. it makes sense to
approach the attainment of that master with a keen eye for quality.
leica glass helps attain great masters in this context. the optics
that assist us in achieving this goal are highly developed. in a sense,
leica optics represent the "last word" in development. no doubt there
are incremental improvements to be offered in the future, and
the weight of the noctilux indicates that some progress could be made
in the physical component of lens design. yet, it could be argued that
we have reached the 95th percentile point of achievable optical
performance.

all of us on this mailing list use computers. we know from experience
that the computers we purchase today are by no means "the last
word". they may be "the latest word", but we are well aware they
will make bulky doorstops in four years time. hands up the number of
us that believe our current computer technology represents even the
50th percentile point of achievable computer performance ?

printer and scanning technologies press ahead at a somewhat slower
pace, but anyone who purchased a dot-matrix printer 10 years ago
and an epson 700 recently can offer examples of the amazing progress
in this area. i have an hp laserjet, any of the 7 computers in the
house can output excellent looking b&w line art, letters, and reasonable
grayscale graphics. it prints a page in a matter of seconds. i am
very confident that within two years an equivalent investment will
offer the graphic output of the epson too.

so. given that one technology (optics) is highly developed and the 
other (computing) is still evolutional, it is hardly surprising that
we approach their respective "flush mechanisms" with different 
attitudes. one, optics, is a stable and evolved technology that
produces our masters. the other, computing, is an instable and
evolving technology that produces results from those masters. 

we can output the master again and again. we can capture it once.

something else.

using the current inkjet technology i can produce results, however
temporary, that are demonstrably superior to those that are achieved 
by our local photo lab, when observed at a distance greater than 12".

closer than 12", the results i achieve with the inkjet are nearly
blemish-free whereas the photo lab's output is sharper. there is a
trade off.

so. while it is true that i cannot achieve justice for the optics
of the leica with my inkjet, i can overcome many of the physical
realities of photography (dust & scratches) with photoshop, and,
having done so, create essentially identical reproductions of that
achievement. i can also retouch, adjust, rotate, crop, enlarge, etc.
in a certain sense, i can take the "master capture" (the slide or
negative) and transform it into a "master image", ready for output
via any of several viewable media (inkjet, dye sub, web, photocd, etc).

i guess this started out with an assertion that cibachrome is fabulous,
and surely it is. then alan mentioned the intersting difference in
approach between input and output in terms of financial outlay.

i am aware of cibachrome's strengths, yet i am not taking advantage 
of them. i have observed myself the reluctance that overcomes me 
when considering spending two "NU"s  (Noctilux Units) on computer-
based printing technology. i think i have reasons. i outline them
above.

be well, happy shooting,

mark