Re: [Leica] By the light of the Leica glow...

[Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net>]

Hello Anthony,

>If you want complexity, use an SLR.  One of the great advantages to the M 
system
>is its simplicity, and I often wonder about people who complicate their M
>investments with bizarre lenses and adaptors and goggles and what not.
>Eventually they end up with something that is just as complicated as an SLR
>system, but far more awkward.

Well, I use Nikon SLRs. I prefer to keep them simple too. I've never been 
in the least bit interested in the more recent models - I used a pair of 
FMs and an FE2 for 18 years and now have my all-time Nikon favorite, an 
F3/T, for when I need the flexibility in long lenses and close up 
capabilities that an SLR provides. The F3 is barely more complicated to 
use than an M6 TTL... and only marginally larger when not fitted with its 
motor drive. 

>How does one focus a 90 mm lens on a M6?  Everything I read says that 90 
>mm is the extreme upper limit of practicality for a rangefinder focusing 
system.

The Leica M rangefinder has enough baseline to focus a 135mm f/4 lens 
accurately, the M6 TTL .85x can likely do a 135/2.8 without any problem. 
(I'm sure Erwin Puts can give us the precise figures.) 

With the Elmarit-M 90/2.8, it's a piece of cake: the rangefinder has more 
than enough baseline to focus that lens to greater accuracy than is 
required. The photographs I took on Sunday are, every one of them, razor 
sharp and perfectly focused. 

>> The meter must be darn good because every frame
>> on both rolls is perfectly exposed.
>
>The meter is primitive and serves only as a starting point.  Accurate 
>exposures are up to you.  That was my first lesson after buying an M6.  
>For what it's worth, though, all of my exposures are correct now, so 
>apparently it wasn't that hard to learn.

Don't confuse the meter's lack of features with its quality. The M6 meter 
is very high quality, lack of features notwithstanding. It does exactly 
what a light meter is supposed to do: it measures the light in precise 
accordance with the sensitivity pattern, producing an accurate reading. 
It does not evaluate what the correct exposure is supposed to be, that's 
up to the user to decide. The evaluation of the meter reading I do in my 
head, or rather I know what to point it at to give me a perfect exposure 
by just illuminating the center dot. Either way is no denigration of the 
meter's quality.

>> The quality of the Leica lenses is evident even in junk-one-hour
>> photofinishing 4x6 prints ... I think I can
>> spy the weak force at work at the subatomic level in there.
>
>Scan the negatives if you really want to see the quality.

That's a very funny statement. Scanning the negatives, even if the 2700 
ppi figure for my scanner is correct, returns an approximate 53 lp/mm 
quantization of the information on the negative. Since these lenses are 
reputed to average somewhat higher than 75-80 lp/mm resolution to film, 
scanning the negatives throws away about 30% of the information. A 
well-focused printing machine can produce a 4x6" print image which 
displays all the information in the negative, although most are not 
well-enough focused and calibrated to do so. 

("How is this possible?" I can hear you ask. Well, I can't but I'm 
imagining things...
A 4x6" borderless print constitutes a minimum 4x enlargement of the 35mm 
frame, which if the lens is at the peak on-film resolution of 80 lp/mm 
means that it only has to be able to image 20 lp/mm to show all the 
information in the negative. B&W emulsion, single-weight glossy print 
paper has demonstrated 25 lp/mm easily, and since most printing machines 
print a 4x6 from a 4.5-5x enlargement, the optimistic 80 lp/mm figure on 
film becomes 16-17 lp/mm on paper, so the 4x6 print can easily show 100% 
of the information in the negative.)

However, the point I suspect you were trying to make is to see an 
enlargement of the images to see how sharp they really are. I have 
scanned a few of the negatives and looked at most of them with a 12x 
loupe --- they are extremely sharp and full of marvelous details. If you 
look on my website at the "Kodak Tri-X and TMax 400" link, 
  <http://www.bayarea.net/~ramarren/photostuff/tmytx/tmytx.htm>
and look especially at the TMax 400 photo taken of the electrical meters 
(lower half of the page). 

Remember that the "full scene" you're seeing is an 8x11mm section of the 
35mm negative (to simulate a Minox subminiature format negative - the 
page was prepared with another discussion in mind). Look at the full 
2700dpi, un-enhanced sections below that. Even on rather grainy film like 
TMax 400, you can make out the numerals on the meter faces. That's the 
best the 2700 dpi scanner can do. With a 12x-20x loupe, you can read 
every numeral and letter on the meter face clearly, there's a lot more 
resolution in the negative than I can acquire with a 2700 dpi scanner. I 
think a 4000-5000 dpi scanner [75-100 lp/mm] will be able to acquire 
about as much data as TMax 400's acutance with HC-110 developer allows.

best,
Godfrey