Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/03

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Subject: [Leica] Complementary focal lengths
From: Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 06:05:53 -0500

I was downtown on the 1st of this year, trying to take pictures of Columbus
that represent, or rather convey, how I see the place.  I brought three
cameras and three lenses: It was bitterly cold (though not as bad as the
night before!) and I was in  no mood to swap lenses.  Changing film was bad
enough.

Anyway, I shot with a Bessa-L with a 25mm/4, an M2 with a 50mm/2, and an R6
with a 200mm/4.  Given these lenses, I fully expected to shoot mostly with
the 50mm and only occasionally haul out one of the others for the odd
exaggeration shot.

I was wrong.  I used the 25mm most of all, the 50mm least.  To my surprise,
I found that when taking pictures with the 25mm (always trying to get
closer, closer, closer) thinking about how to juxtapose foreground and
background to get the effect I wanted, I would suddenly see a 200mm shot.
Sure enough, bag the Bessa-L, find a suitable vantage point, bring out the
R6, and there was a 200mm shot (hopefully I'll get some of these online for
"week 1" next Monday to clarify).

This got me thinking: Maybe Ted's 15mm/400mm photo project isn't as mad as
it initially seems.  I know the classic is 35/90, or maybe 35/50/90, but I
found that having a wider spread was actually useful and more inspiring.

M.

- -- 
Martin Howard                 | "We can't make mistakes like that on our
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU   |  own. We need computers to help us."
email: howard.390@osu.edu     |     -- A pharmacologist on computerization
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/    +-------------------------------------------