Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I disagree. And I don't think the original post was saying that Leica M composition is necessarily better - just different because of the different focussing mechanism. It is an interesting point and I don't think it deserves to be dismissed so summarily. Firstly, your focussing system may determine (in particular circumstances) what you focus on. Some systems make it more difficult to focus on particular objects - ergo, you might choose to focus on other objects at a similar distance. Sometimes it makes it easier to focus on particular objects - for example, I find it easier to focus on the specular reflection of a person's eye with my Leica, than with my Nikon FE which has a split image focussing screen. Ground glass is obviously different again. Secondly, some systems might mean you tend to focus at dead centre of the image; others enable you to focus further away from the centre. With a rangefinder, of course, you are tied to the focussing square. With an SLR you are not. My personal tendency is not to greatly change the composition once I have focussed. So with my Nikon, I'll be lining up something to use the split image on - dead centre. With my Leica, I have the focussing square to play with. What this means from a qualitative sense is difficult to comment on. My personal view is that a greater influence on composition is the fact that, with an M series, you can see outside the frame of the shot you are taking. For myself, this leads to a far greater power of selection over what is in and outside the image. This leads me to vastly different compositions with my M6 than my Nikon. And this is, to my mind, indisputably part of the Leica look. It's not a technical argument of whether SLRs have better optics than rangefinders or vice versa - it is an issue of what aspects of a camera subtly influence our composition. And how about medium format cameras, without a prism, which flip the image horizontally? Obviously an influence on composition. I always seem to fall back on Cartier Bresson, at these points. In 'Magnum: 50 years of history' a story is recounted of Cartier Bresson using a Vidom viewfinder, which he could use to view scenes flipped horizontally or vertically, imparting an abstract quality to his compositions (see page 103). Gareth >At 03:27 PM 4/15/99 -0400, you wrote: >> RF compositions, then, might feature rather more dynamic interplay >> between pictorial elements than images composed upon ground glass (as in >> SLR and most large format viewfinders), and it's precisely this graphic >> character that we characterize as a "Leica look." RF photographers >> looking at photos composed by other RF photographers tend to look for and >> find the visual cues that we use as focusing aids in our own compositions. >> >>If this is plausible, then it make sense when Leica users claim that they >>see something in Leica images that they don't see in Nikon or, say, Canon >>images, and when SLR users dismiss this as nonsense > >No, this reasoning is nonsense. Nobody can tell if a person is using >rangefinder cameras or SLRs, if those pictures were taken by a skilled >photographer who knows what they want. The Leica look has NOTHING to do >with composition. That's misses the point of what we are talking about >completely when we talk about the Leica look. > >To claim that SLR users do not make as sophisticated, or skilled >compositions is just too far out. How could anyone believe that? Optically >there is NO difference between say a 50mm lens on an M or R camera when it >comes to composition. Where focus is placed and what depth of field is >determined by focusing distance and aperture. Not which focusing mechanism >was used. This argument settles nothing. > >Eric Welch