[Leica] The art of the blanket statement...

[Bryant <tbryant@wizard.net>]

Hi Luggers,

    There are lots of sweeping statements in this forum, but Mr. Brick has got
to take the cake, at least today.

> Checking critical focus WHILE STOPPED DOWN is indeed the only guaranteed
> way to completely control sharpness and/or unsharpness of your photograph.
> It is EASY to do, once you learn how and it is taught as the basis of focus
> control in real photography schools. Brooks Institute (Santa Barbara CA),
> Art Center (LA), and RIT (Rochester NY) and I'm sure many others.

    Well, for some of the lenses of the early 20th century, perhaps, but the
focus shift caused by uncorrected spherical abberation is a thing of the past,
pretty much.  With anything short of a very well equipped optical bench, you'll
not be able to detect focus shift.  The plane of the focus, as set by a Leica
M rangefinder or a reflex with it's lens wide open, does not appreciably
change when the lens is stopped down.  We M users would complain loudly if
this were not the case!

    This stopping down also makes things much darker.  When I hit the DOF
preview on my F1, with my 50 set at, say, f/11, things just got about
64 times darker.  Hard to appreciate the subtle points of bokeh in such
dim surroundings.

    I'd venture the opinion that the way to really learn to pre-visualize
is to take lots of pictures, and start to get a "feel" of how your equipment
performs in a variety of different circumstances.  I'm still working at it,
and I never know how things *really* are until I've got the pix in hand.

> You were simply babbling from an unknowledgeable position. You do not know
> what you are talking about ... You should limit your statements to those
> things that you actually know something about rather than ad-libing.

   I was going to comment at length about these, but suddenly realized that
most of you have already, with commendable restraint, done your own rants and
and been civilised enough not to post them.

    Cheers,

    Tom (The-server-is-down-with-more-time-to-read-the-LUG)

    Some other thoughts on this:


Any fool can take a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it.


A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in
airing his own opinions.

                -- Old Testament, Proverbs 18:2


Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do.

                -- Benjamin Franklin (or Dale Carnegie?)


Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so
full of doubts.

                -- Bertrand Russell