Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/17

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Subject: [Leica] Limits and look
From: "Don Dory" <dorysrus@mindspring.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 23:16:34 -0500

I have been following Erwin's comments for what, two or three  years?  He
has a gift for putting into English descriptions of lens performance that
matches what I get with the lenses he describes.  There is no question that
he can be relied on to state what a lens can do.

But...better performance is not everything.  This thought process comes from
Erwin's comments about TMX.  It is sharper, it is finer grained.  But in my
system the highlights blow out, and the midtones are ugly: sharp,
fine-grained ugly.  Which leads me to bring up the art of photography.

Photography is a craft as well as art.  Most of the time the latest from
Solms is the best answer.  The lenses are incredible wide open into the
light, holding detail from shadows into the highlights with little or no
flare.  Yet I ended up making prints for my parents of flower shots taken
with the Sima soft focus lens: you want to talk soft flare?  Stephen Gandy
is correct that sometimes a Summar wide open into the sun is just the right
photo impression.  I have some portraits taken of children with Delta 3200
shot high key: soft and grainy.

My point is that often this list goes into the limits of perfection.
Finding your personal limits and your personal style is as important.  Will
you stick the lens into some strangers face, will you try portraiture with a
21 to get you out of  your funk, will you do something knowing that the odds
of success are small just to see what the results look like, will you keep
pushing that shutter trying to figure out a lighting set up, will you follow
your muse instead of the group dictates: or will you get into some pissing
contest about whether the gen III is better built than the gen V?

For the professionals on this list, the above is the most difficult of all.
You are hired for your past work with some expectation of similar work, how
do you not go stale?  How do you find the time to work out new things while
holding your standards?

I hope I haven't bored anyone, but moving into making better images is more
important to me than whether someone is or isn't of some or another
political persuasion: any image publicly presented makes a statement that is
shared between the artist and the person looking at the image.

Heading for the fallout shelter

Don Dory
dorysrus@mindspring.com

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Replies: Reply from Feliciano di Giorgio <feli@d2.com> (Re: [Leica] Limits and look)