Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This reminds me of a study which proved that a major league baseball player is simply unable to react fast enough to hit a pitched ball, considering how quickly it takes the ball to arrive at home plate. And yet, they do hit them. dan c. At 07:19 AM 08-10-00 -0400, gbicket wrote: >Good morning LUG, > >>From the start, I confess I am moderately indisposed to using >tripods--meaning that I do use them, but only when I don't think I can get >the result I want without one, or using anything longer than the f4 280mm, >and quite often with that lens. > >Went to the Really Right Stuff site this morning, and found an interesting >quote: > >"Handholding is strictly for dead photographers: A human pulse beat will >cause 200 microns (.008 inch) displacement for 1/10th of a second. Assuming >a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second, this movement alone will cause a >loss of 22% of resolution with a system capable of reproducing 100 lines per >mm (lpm). And at a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second, this performance >would degrade to only 53 lpm--a 47% waste of of what you purchased." John >B. Williams, Lens Clarity, page 191 > >If Mr. Williams' science is accurate, it seems to me that many of us Leica >Users are defeating or at least compromising the purpose of the acuity of >the lenses we buy by being highly disposed towards handholding OR, and it's >an important distinction, we are starting with lenses of exceptional >sharpness, to yield pleasing results net of the unsharpness slow speed >handholding creates. > >Thinking about all this makes me think of some of the beautiful hand held >results of so many of our LUG photographers, the velvety black and whites >from Tina Manley, the venerable Ted Grant, Filipo Caroti, and so many more, >and it makes me wonder if some of the slow hand holding that many of the LUG >talk about [sometimes endlessly] is directly akin to [oil] painting in a >very real way. The deliberate ambiguity of the way those silver crystals >get laid down in a shot of a parent holding a child by candle light creates >a sensation much like a brush stroke. > >The incongruity, but the clear nexus between obsessing about lens sharpness >[often endlessly] and making photographs in situations with no hope of >capturing the sharpness of which the lens is capable, just struck me >interesting before coffee this morning. Mastery of the obvious perhaps, but >worth a grin before engaging in the day's tasks, nevertheless. > >Enjoy the light. > >Greg Bicket > > > > >