Re: [Leica] A Humbling Experience

["A.H.SCHMIDT" <horst.schmidt@actek.com.au>]

Glen M. Robinson wrote:

>      I just received a humbling experience.  My wife purchased a photo album at
> a garage sale yesterday that contained family portraits from Renaas Studio in
> Decorah, Iowa.  No one at the sale had a clue who these people are and the date
> when these pictures were taken, but based on the clothes they are wearing we
> guess that the photographs are at least a century old if not older.
>
>      I have been an amateur photographer for forty or so years and have done my
> own darkroom work during much of this time.  I use Leicas, Rolleis, and Canons
> and enlarge my Ilford 100 Delta and Kodak Tri-X negatives processed with XTOL
> and D-76 with Schneider apo lenses.
>
>      I am terribly humbled by these antique pictures; I cannot produce this type
> quality with my high tech gear.  The sharpness, gradation, and other visual
> characteristics of these prints are breathtaking.  I realize that these pictures
> are contact prints, but are the wonderful films and lenses that we use today in
> reality lower in quality in the essential operating parameters than those of
> that time?
>
>      Glen Robinson

Glen,

The Lenses, films and papers we use today are not of lesser quality then in the
olden days. They are of a different quality.
The modern lenses are not just sharp, they are brutally sharp Manufacturers  managed
to make the contrast extremely high and increase sharpness to highs, never envisaged
before at the same time. No mean feat.
The films and papers are black and white , in the proper sense of the word.
The motif is different now, then it was then. For a hard hitting subject, be it
human interest, or some technical subject, hard sharp and contrast images are
required. Nothing else will sell.
In grandfathers times, the main subjects where the family portrait and for the
record some nature study. The exposure times alone dictated this.
The old prints where made with tonally different papers witch did not seem to
saturate as much as they do now. They where sharp all right, but not brutally sharp.
they had a fulness surrounding the sharpness which made them softer and more
pleasant looking.
The Lenses they used, where, I don't think, the super sharp Tessar types (4
element),
but the earlier 3 element and other portrait lenses.

It is surely possible today, to create similar images as then, but I believe a lot
of patience would be needed . The question arises: "Do we want to see  this type of
images today, or should we be happy to look how it was done 100 years ago"

I firmly believe, the era of the warmer, and softer images stopped , when  Leitz
sold the last Summar lens.
The Summitar after, was a fabulous lens, followed by the Summicron, which was the
just about as perfect as was possible. But something had changed, the emphasis was
more on the reproductive accuracy and some of the aura was lost.

Regards,  Horst Schmidt