Re: [Leica] "cold" lens rendition

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

Eric Welch wrote:
> 
> >Or is it marketing: a group of suppliers caters for the lovers of blue
> >renditions and another group for the lovers of yellow renditions, all of
> >them (except one) carefully avoiding 'neutrality'  ?
> 
> As a matter of fact, film is developed with biases as well. Fuji, Kodak and
> Agfa have biases in their films that are perceptually discerned. It's a
> well-known fact.

I know that films are developped in that way. We were talking about
lenses. 

> And why set up straw men to knock down? Who said anything about pre-press?
> I never said I saw a color variation in prepress that shows differences
> between the lenses. I'm talking about looking at raw chrome film. There are
> rare occasions, when the best reproduction might make it easy to spot some
> Leica characteristics (not color in this case) in a photographer's take.
> Such as Robert Magubane's work in South Africa in National Geographic. I
> didn't know him from a hole in the wall when I saw his stuff and said to
> myself - that's Leica.

I do not set up straw men. We have had this precise discussion before
and your statements were more radical then than they are today. I quote
you from one of those threads: "I have identified Leica users in
National Geographic without any reason other than the pictures in the
magazine to know what they use. Not just once." This statement and its
context suggested that 'not once' could mean 'regularly' or 'often' and
served to illustrate your argument that Leica quality was possible to
spot for a trained eye, even in printed media. This added to discussions
related to the fact that you considered that the web publication of low
res JPEG files was a proper way to show off the imaging specificities of
Leica lenses (the 'Cool Leica Pictures" thread of a few months ago).

I notice that this time you restrain the discussion to the observation
of raw chrome film. And I fully agree with you that this is the only way
to deal with such considerations. But, unless we do this observation
together on the same light table, such a procedure forbids us from
proving our point to each other. That is why it is not insane to resort
to third party tests, and to refer to them.

I also take notice that you now consider that it is only in "rare
occasions" that one might "spot some Leica characteristics in a
photographer's take". Which is a statement I will not try to contradict.
Quite a progress ;-)

BTW, again, I was not answering to you, not quoting you and not
mentionning your name in that specific post....

Alan