Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/07/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I just got hold of a book by Dr. Paul Wolf 'My experience with Leica', it is in German and it is the fifth edition printed in 1934. Generally I try to avoid German Doctors but this book is quite readable and I like some of the pictures. And there is only on nazi uniform in the 200+ pictures. I guess it would have been different if the book had been a first edition printed in 1934, but that is besides the point. There is a lot of technical details for each picture, lens used, f-stop and shutter time and type of film (pan or ortho) and filter used. Generally I do not care much about this type of information, but I found it interesting in this case as it reflects the working conditions in the late 20s and early 30s. The film speed is not shown for any picture, but in the general text there is a reference to medium speed film being about 19° Scheiner. I asked in the rec.photo.darkroom what 19° Scheiner would translate into ISO-wise. I got a couple of answers ranging from 3 to 64 ISO. There are obviously both an US and an English Schneider and they differ, and in 1934 Germans would probably not have used any of these two, and there are different measuring methods etc etc, so all the answers were correct in one or another but not quite what I wanted. So I tried to figure out the film speed using the sunny-16-rule (when it is sunny, the shutter speed in fractions of seconds equal the ISO film speed at f 16). Now there were beach photos with short, sharp shadows so I thought the sunny-16-rule would apply there. These photos were often shot at f 6.3 and 1/100 sec which means that the film speed was around 16 ISO. Life is easy now for a Leica photographer compared to then, which makes me admire old photos even more. I wonder what the old photographers would have achieved with Tri-X, HP5, Delta 3200 et al.. - -- christer almqvist eichenstrasse 57, d-20255 hamburg, fon +49-40-407111 fax +49-40-4908440 14 rue de la hauteur, f-50590 regnéville-sur-mer, fon+fax +33-233 45 35 58