[Leica] Barns, I know barns, barns is a friend of mine......

["BIRKEY, DUANE" <dbirkey@hcjb.org.ec>]

Eric wrote:

>When I came back the next day, he looked up at me and said, "Now I know 
why
>you use Leica. Your stuff looks great, and mine is unusable."

>Note, he didn't say he could see the difference. His stuff was no good 
in
>comparison! My stuff looked gorgeous. The kind of light I was shooting 
in
>is what Leica speed lenses eat up. His Canon lenses let him down. Now he
>could have used flash and saved the pictures, but flash isn't an option 
in
>many situations.

I'm sort of on both sides of the fence.  Having grown up on a farm, I'd 
like to remind you that barns tend to have dust, which when lit from 
front or back causes a visible glow that looks a lot like veiling flare.  
 I too wonder whether Eric was a better photographer that day and 
happened to get the right subjects at the right time.  Or whether the 
stop or two stops of light made the difference, or whether it was flare 
and contrast.  My guess was it was all 8.

But........ owning and working with EOS L zooms, I have to concur that 
they aren't really as suited for that barn situation as Leica M or even 
fast Canon or Nikon lenses.  While one will not see much difference 
between the two in frontlit full sunlight situations, backlighting almost 
always shows the true abilities of a lens. 

I've done some side by side shooting with my Canon FD or EOS and M 
equipment in practical and non-practical backlight situations.  I've shot 
a number of subjects in rooms where the only source of light was from 
windows.  As a non-practical but repeatable test, I photographed one of 
my studio lights (modeling light only) pointing at the camera.  I placed 
the light source at various points throughout the frame.

The Canon equipment is much more likely to have veiling flare or ghost 
images than the M. 

But, you can visibly see when it's going to happen with the Canon so you 
do have a chance to change angles or take another approach.  You can get 
veiling flare and ghost images with the M and you need to pray it's not 
going to show up at the wrong time.
 
I've found that I can usually "correct" the veiling flare caused by 
windows from my B&W negs in the darkroom, but that obviously requires 
time and skill and does no good if you are shooting slides or color 
prints.   But sometimes a bit of veiling flare isn't all bad.

Duane Birkey

HCJB World Radio
Quito Ecuador

http:/members.tripod.com/~Duane_Birkey/index.html