[Leica] Sunday afternoon musing

[Herbert & Lee Kanner <kanner@acm.org>]

I'm spending time that should be spent either in the darkroom or 
taking pictures, in sharing a few random thoughts on photography. 
I'm an amateur, but perhaps not a totally rank one.  I've always 
processed my own stuff (Kodachrome excepted, of course) ever since I 
was a high-school kid, and I'm now 79.

Most of the time, when doing landscape stuff, I've been too damn lazy 
to lug around a tripod.  Every now and then, it gets on my 
conscience, and I bring out the tripod.  I remember the first time I 
did this--well, it couldn't really be the first time, but it's the 
first time I clearly remember.  It was at Point Lobos, in California. 
My clear recollection was, in part, embarrassment; there were other 
people in the vicinity, and here I was pretending to be a real 
photographer.  The next recollection was deliberation.  I would peer 
through the viewfinder of this SLR.  I would ask my wife to take a 
look.  I would reframe the picture by what was probably no more than 
foot or so out at the object plane--a silly thing to do since it was 
negative film and I would be cropping in the enlarger anyway.  The 
only point was that it forced me to think about what I was doing.  To 
a slight extent, the same thing is happening now when I hand-hold the 
M6.  I am so in awe of this piece of machinery that I finally own 
that I feel the picture I am about to take must be worthy of it. :-)

The other thing I want to share is at the opposite extreme: fast 
shooting.  The technique is not new to me, just forgotten until it 
was described in the LUG.  A few weeks ago, I had the Olympus Stylus 
Epic in my pocket when in a busy outdoor market.   I took a few 
photos.  I was very conscious  that this damn camera wants to think 
for me, so I carefully put it in spot focus mode and carried it with 
the cover open so as not to cancel the mode.  In the moment it took 
to make sure that the cross-hair was on my subject when I locked the 
focus and exposure, the sales girl behind one counter cried: "Don't 
take my picture."  I took this to heart when I took the M6 to an even 
busier street fair the next week.  I simply took two meter readings, 
one in the sun and one in the shade and memorized the two aperture 
settings.  I set the focus at ten feet.  Again, I was using a 35mm 
lens.  The camera went up to my face and down again so quickly, when 
necessary, that the subjects didn't have time to react.  As far as I 
can tell, I wasn't noticed.  Of course, on the few shots where I was 
photographing a performer, I took my time.

Herb