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

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

From: Godfrey DiGiorgi <ramarren@bayarea.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 12:25
Subject: Re: [Leica] By the light of the Leica glow...


> 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.

There's no reason to get a more recent model.  Photography doesn't change.

I got an F5 because I had bought an AF zoom and it was a pain to focus manually
on my FG (which I still have).  The FG was always a pain to focus, anyway, with
its split-image focusing screen.  Anyway, I decided to get another body, and
since the F5 was the latest _professional_ model, I bought that (I had always
wanted an F body, but could not afford one years ago when I bought the FG).
It's an extremely nice camera body.  The buttons and switches were a bit
daunting at first, but I discovered that Nikon was extraordarily smart about
designing the controls, so that it was very ergonomic.  I got used to it very
quickly.  It also has a great feel to it, at least in my case (many other SLR
bodies are hard to grip securely, it seems).

> The F3 is barely more complicated to use than an M6 TTL...

I never had the pleasure of using an F3.

> 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.

Yeah, but I wonder about my visual precision.  Sometimes I fool around for a
long time deciding whether the images are really coincident or out (even for
subjects half a mile away).  I suppose that is overkill, since I am sometimes
moving by centimeters with depth of field from 5 feet to infinity.  At least it
would be no worse at longer focal lengths--but any errors would be much more
obvious.

> 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.

Does this lens work with the camera as is (no extra viewfinder or anything)?
I'm not familiar with the longer focal lengths.  At present, I'm not sure that I
want to use long focal lengths with the Leica.

> The photographs I took on Sunday are, every one of them, razor
> sharp and perfectly focused.

Mine too.  Every single shot I've taken has been perfectly focused.  The
rangefinder works well, coupled with a relatively wide-angle (35 mm) lens
especially.

> Don't confuse the meter's lack of features with its
> quality. The M6 meter is very high quality, lack of
> features notwithstanding.

Good.  In my tests against my other meters, it did seem to be right on the mark.

> ... it measures the light in precise accordance with
> the sensitivity pattern ...

Which reminds me... since the white spot is on a flexible curtain, does the spot
ever crack, fade, or wear out?

> 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.

Yup.

> 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.

True, but since you can't see all of the resolution in either case, it doesn't
matter.

> 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.

It doesn't matter, because you cannot _see_ all the information in the negative
on a print that size.

With perfect vision, you can see about 2600 picture elements horizontally in a
4x6-inch print, at ten inches.  A 2700-dpi scanner will give you 3826 pixels on
the print, which is fully 50% more than you can see.  The lens (at 77 lp/mm)
will give you 5544 pixels, which is more than twice what you can see.  So
whether you scan or enlarge, you can't see the difference, as they both produce
more detail than your eyes can resolve.

Unless you look at picture albums with a loupe, worrying about resolution in
this context is a waste of time.

You're also forgetting everything else.  Scans preserve a lot more of the
dynamic range than prints; they more closely approach transparencies than
prints, in fact.  As a result, a scan looks a lot nicer than a print, overall.
Prints look exceedingly flat, compared to scanned film.

> 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.

No, the point I was trying to make is that scans displayed on a screen show more
of the detail than prints, with respect to human vision, because a full-size
scan displayed on the monitor is equivalent to roughly a four-by-six-FOOT
enlargement of the negative.  You can thus examine the negative a lot more
closely with even a 2700-dpi scan.

> I have scanned a few of the negatives and looked at most
> of them with a 12x a loupe --- they are extremely sharp and
> full of marvelous details.

I'm sure they are; but you won't be able to see the different in 4x6 prints, no
matter how well the prints are made.

> ... there's a lot more resolution in the negative than
> I can acquire with a 2700 dpi scanner.

And a lot more than you can see without a microscope.  So don't worry about it.

There is a lot more to image quality than resolution, although many people seem
to forget this.  The overall quality of a direct scan from film is far better
than the quality of any 4x6 print.

> 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.

It's all detail that you can't see or use.  This isn't a spy-satellite
application, after all.  For _human_ viewing, you already have more than enough.

  -- Anthony