Re: [Leica] zones

["Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>]

You find some of the same boring lighting in some of the earlier color
movies.  Look at the black and white films from the 30s and 40s if you want
to see how some of the great masters used light and shadow.  As a comparison
look at the color work from the 1950s.  Its very flat with multiple shadows
around every object.  They simply had to pour a lot of light on their
subject to get an exposure.  Now with better emulsions, more efficient
lights, and better technique the lighting in films is a lot more
interesting.

Mike D

- -----Excerpt from Original Message-----
From: Rod Fleming <rodfleming@sol.co.uk>
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Date: Tuesday, December 28, 1999 6:11 AM
Subject: [Leica] zones


> . . .
>If I may move on to another point, during the seventies and early eighties
>most colour photogs became slaves to the tyranny of the tranny.- Now, I
like
>tranny a lot, but the fact is that it takes away from the photographer a
>great deal of the craft of photography. Generally you have no control over
>the processing of the film, and the scale is quite short- this led photogs
>to think that using a grey card, or the incident metering system, which
>assumes that the world reflects 18% in all situations- was ideal. Well,
>these systems will give consistent results, there's no doubt about it; but
>it should be obvious that there is a huge qualitative difference between a
>misty overcast winter light and the bright light of noonday summer- which
>these methods are completely incapable of discerning.
>
>Because photogs were unable to manipulate their technique to suit the
light,
>some pretty awful things happened- look at any book of fashion pics from
the
>fifties or sixties and revel in the dramatic handling of light- then look
at
>the pics from a couple of decades later and see how everything became flat
>and directionless- as a result of photogs trying to accommodate the
>characteristics of the tranny film then in use.
>
>At the same time, the use of fill-flash (argh) became almost standard. I
>remember going on a colour training course for the paper I was then working
>on- can't remember the year, but we had just moved into colour, and the
>medium was tranny. The advice- in short, hit everything with a flash! Ugh.
>
>As I said, I love using tranny- when the light is right to maximise its
>virtues. But thankfully over the last decade colour neg emulsions have been
>developed which produce results in print which are as good as tranny, and
>digitisation has given back to the colour photog a great deal of the
control
>that has always been the privilege of the mono worker. In this context,
>photogs can look again at their technique, and use the knowledge to
liberate
>themselves, and hopefully produce better work.
>
>Hell, anything that can help get rid of the universal fill-flash has to be
a
>good thing!
>
>
>Cheers
>
>
>Rod
>
>