[Leica] Re: LUG[Leica} Tri-Elmar and zoom

[Eric Welch <ewelch@neteze.com>]

sometime around 12/18/99 2:40 AM, Erwin Puts at imxputs@knoware.nl was heard
to write:

> Some comments on the maximum aperture. We now speak with some disdain
> about an f/4 aperture. Do we remember that from 1925 till 1960 the
> workhorse lens was the Elmar 3.5/50? And that with film sensibility
> around 10 to 50 ASA. Many HCB pictures are made with apertures around
> 5.6. In my view the demand for f/2 lenses and wider, even in the
> classical M picture environment is a bit exaggerated.

I disagree on this point. For some people yes, and I guess that's probably
what you meant. A bit is a bit after all. But there is no way in the world
I'm going to settle for F4 lenses. If I would, I'd buy a Mamiya 7 and be
done with the image quality issue for good. It might not zoom, but the
pictures will be better.

W. Eugene Smith complained quite a bit about having to shoot with a 28mm
lens with a 5.6 maximum aperture, saying that was the reason he used to use
so much light in many of his early pictures. To ignore the value of fast
lenses is to ignore the world of some of the great masters of color
photography today. The primary one that comes to mind is William Albert
Allard, whose work in color has few if any peers. He owned three 50mm lenses
for his M cameras so he could use them each at wide open apertures.
Summicron, Summilx and Noctilux.

Available light and street photography all owe the improved image quailty to
fast lenses. Cartier-Bresson would not have use an Elmar lens if a Summilux
was available. 

In my view, it's the folks who can get along with an f/4 lens that would be
the minority in the M world. It's a design compromise to make that lens f/4.
Any faster and it would be too big to fit on the M6 and work.

- --

Eric Welch
Carlsbad, CA
http://www.neteze.com/ewelch

"You can't cajole someone into loving you by simply being nice to be
around." - Garrison Keillor - As heard on "A Prairie Home Companion"