[Leica] Leica and LF

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

> To achieve extremely fine grain, excellent resolution, and great tonality in
> large prints of scenics one should use larger format cameras.   Why fight it?



Whew. Thank you, Ferrel! It gets lonely being the only one saying these
things around here sometimes.

Actually, this was meant to be a joke, but I just remembered that the
Deadman said something the other day about going out and making a contact
print from a large-format negative just to remind yourself what that's all
about. 

Well, has anybody ever considered that maybe LF photography might be a great
_exercise_ to help make one a better _Leica_ photographer? Before you
reflexively dismiss this, consider the case of a prose writer who writes
poetry simply for practice with words, or a chess master who trains with
weights. I'm serious here. I shot 4x5 for a whole summer, full time, on a
grant. One thing I learned was that I'm not a large-format photographer, and
the work was never published, but one side effect that I noticed is that my
35mm photography got *much* better. I loosened up a *lot* and relaxed. My
35mm acquired more freedom and I started to enjoy it more.

???

- --Mike