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

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Subject: RE: [Leica] M6 Question....
From: "Henning J. Wulff" <henningw@archiphoto.com>
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 17:23:02 -0700

>Dr. Blacktape Responds:
>
>I was thinking about field of view, rather than depth of field or
>compression of field. On the other hand, normal vision provides what appears
>to be, even if it is illusion, incredible depth of field...
>
>But the bottom line is that it all depends on what please you
>aesthetically....I personally like what I can do with the 35 and what it can
>do for me...although there are times a 50 is ideal.

Our peripheral vision may be huge, but the area we see in sharp focus is
extremely small. We overcome this by scanning, but our optical systems are
extremely good over a very tiny angle, and autofocus, but pretty poor 'in
the field' as Erwin says. DOF is OK, but again, it's the scanning that
makes the whole thing work. This is what makes it so hard to say what is a
natural focal length. Extreme wideangles are not 'natural' because we never
see as much as a 21mm lens at one time, with equal sharpness and
comprehension. Extreme telephoto lenses are not 'natural' because we don't
see that much detail, and exclude everything else so thoroughly.

Some days I see like my pan camera, some days I see like my 105 macro, some
days I see like a 50mm lens. All seem right at some time, but none are
really 'natural'.

   *            Henning J. Wulff
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