Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/10

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Subject: Re: [Leica] M6 Question....
From: InfinityDT@aol.com
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 14:07:44 EDT

In a message dated 7/10/99 1:38:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
bdcolen@earthlink.net writes:

<< A Thought From Dr. Blacktape:
 
 As through this world we wander - appologies to Woodie Guthrie - we do not
 "see" through 50 mm frame lines, but through framelines that appear to Dr.
 BT to be somewhere between 35 and 24 mm. If that's the "normal" field of
 vision, why not make something in that range your "normal" lens?
  >>

A healthy person's peripheral vision is much wider than a 50mm as you say.  
It is the foreground:background (compression/expansion) of the 50mm that most 
closely resembles what the naked eye sees, not the field of view.  This isn't 
readily apparent looking through a Leica M viewfinder because the only thing 
changing are the framelines.  It's always been hard for me, when switching 
back and forth from an SLR, to overcome the tendency to want to always use 
the lens that gives the biggest viewable picture in the M's finder.  Try 
looking through a Leica 28mm accessory finder (or a 28 on an SLR) alongside 
the 28mm frames in an M6 for a direct comparison.  You'll see that the 28mm 
(bewteen 35 and 24 as you say) is *not* how we see with our naked eyes.    

DT