Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/25
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on 25/10/00 6:38 am, imxputs@ision.nl at imxputs@ision.nl wrote:
> Well to be honest, flare and halation do exist and can be seen. And spherical
> aberration and coma do lower local contrast and produce halation around light
> sources. These phenomena are characteristic of all bad lenses and are not
> typical of Leica lenses. No question about this. But why call these phenomena
> the famous Leica glow?
Er, because that's what it consists of, maybe? You seem to be determined to
deny all the possible causes and then declare triumphantly 'it doesn't
exist!!'. Well, we can all do that. Since a large number of people find the
term meaningful, then either they are talking about an actual phenomenon
caused by actual opto-mechanical-chemical effects such as those I and Mike
have described, or they are talking about something metaphysical that they
all magically seem to agree on. Which is more likely?
> Flare is flare and it is bad.
I see. So in that that extraorindary HCB picture of the couple sleeping on
the train where they both seem to emanate a soft halo of beauty... a picture
where the flare/halo/coma/whatever is absolutely integral to the way it
looks... the effect is BAD? Ditto Frank's glowing jukeboxes? What an
extraordinary position. Isn't it conceivable that photographers might use
these distortions for desirable pictorial effects, just as they 'distort' in
the darkroom by dodging and bleaching and burning-in? Just like a guitar
player cranking his valve amp into overdrive.
> The wellknown Hamilton
> pictures of dreamy hardly dressed young girls were made with excessive flare
> to
> create a dreamy atmosphere. Any bad lanes can produce this effect. If you call
> that "The Glow" I fully agree with you.
Wow, that's a pretty glib, cheap shot. Glow = semi porno/paedo greased lens
tack? You know that's not what I've been talking about. We're just talking
about the qualities (bad in your eyes) of non-ideal lenses. Older Leitz
lenses along with some others happen to have 'faults' that produce a
desirable pictorial effect in certain circumstances. Not 'any' lens, any
more than 'any' guitar played through an overdriven amp sounds as sweet as a
Gibson.
> But the concept of "Glow" is supposed to be something mysterious, that can be
> created only with oldere Leica lenses and some sorcerer's formulae.
> When you call the phenomenon of flare with its proper name, that is flare, I
> am
> with you and then this phenomenon does exist.
Supposed by who? All Mike and I are saying is that it's a complex
phenomenon. Not that it's magic. Like I say, the 'glow' is overdetermined.
Not just flare, but a combination of spherical aberration, coma, halo,
flare, lens design, film type and possibly even some other stuff even *you*
don't know about, Erwin.
>
> I do agree that silver-rich emulsions produce special effects which in
> themselves are unrelated to the use of flare as a pictorial effect.
(a) you defined glow as flare above, I didn't. Since we all know what flare
is and what it looks like and can differentiate between 'glow' and 'flare' I
think we should lay this one to rest.
(b) 'glow' I think refers to a constellation of effects, one of which may or
may not be the rendition of certain tonal values by silver rich films.
Since, for example, T-Grain films have a tendency to block up highlights it
doesn't seem at all inconceivable that conventional emulsions may do better
in rendering the subtle gradations of diffuse highlights than T-grain
technology.
There is a lot going on in this discussion but underneath it there seems to
be an ethic which makes the following equation:
ideally corrected lens = good
non-ideally corrected lens = bad
That may be true in a lens designer's mental space, but it is certainly not
true in every photographer's mental space.
Like I said in my original post, I ultimately prefer the look of the modern
(better-corrected) lenses but the notion that the glow doesn't exist, or is
'bad', or has no pictorial/emotional function, or is simply another word for
flare, or is achievable with any poor lens, flies in the face of the
experience of many photographers, including some on this group.
Of course, being overdetermined (not mysterious or alchemical or
metaphysical, note, just overdetermined), it resists a reductive approach.
Aha... did I touch on something, I wonder?
- --
John Brownlow
http://www.pinkheadedbug.com