Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/10/11

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Subject: Re: [Leica] The World at F1
From: LEICAMAN56@aol.com
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 01:03:02 EDT

Spurred on by all the talk on the LUG about the Noctilux and the recent
article by Erwin in PT, I dusted off my Noctilux and started using it in some
atypical and typical low light situations.  I used it to shoot my 9 year old's
night soccer game.  Using 400 color neg film I shot at f/1, 1/60.  Results
were outstanding, but the vignetting was incredible.  Reminded me of some of
the results we used to see years ago in the lab of people using a close up
attachment on their point and shoot cameras.  We used to call it the "porthole
effect."  On some other pictures shot under marginal lighting in a big tent at
the local town fair, the vignetting was not as noticeable, due to the darker
background behind the main subject.  I learned again that you must be careful
using the Nocti wide open with uniformly bright backgrounds.  Stopping down to
f/2 or so should eliminate the vignetting, but then why not use a Summicron?
Anyway, it was an interesting exercise and gave me a chance to exercise the
Nocti and see things in a slightly different way than the usual Summicron or
Summilux way.  Isn't this what makes the Leica so much fun?

Bill Rosauer