Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/24

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Recipe for leica glow?
From: Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 20:32:40 -0400

on 24/10/00 4:17 pm, Erwin Puts at imxputs@knoware.nl wrote:

> There is no Leica glow. So every receipt is right. Mr Johnstons advice to
> use a low contrast about standard focal length lens, with a classic silver
> rich film, overexpose by a stop, develop short, use a diffusion enlarger and
> use FB paper and print with low contrast  is a remarkable nonsensical piece
> of
> photographic technique.

well, I disagree to a certain extent. I know the glow when I see it and I
can get it with any of the following (these are just the ones I've seen it
in):

pre asph 35/1.4
50/1.4 (second computation)
Skinny TE 90
Canon 28/2.8 LTM
Canon 35/2 FD

You use them wide open or one stop closed, especially in high contrast
environments, and it's there. The use of silver rich emulsions gives you a
richness in the grays that more modern emulsions don't have. As to the rest
I don't know because the glow is right there on the negs when scanned. It's
partly halation, partly coma, partly flare, partly spherical aberration,
partly the shape of the film's response curve... it's a lot of stuff,
really. It's a 'look'. Thankfully it's so overdetermined that (a) you can't
fake it in Photoshop (b) Erwin doesn't think it exists.

Ultimately I do prefer the look of the more modern lenses.

- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com