[Leica] Washington Field Trip

[Bob Adler <rgacpa@pacbell.net>]

Dear All,

Last week I had the priviledge of traveling with my
daughter's 7th grade class on a field trip to D.C. 41
12/13 year old girls, 10 chaperones, an M6, M7, 35/2,
50/1,4, 90/2,8, SF20 and Mr. Konnerman's soft-fill.
Additionally, Mr. Brick was generous enough to loan me
his RapidWinder which was placed on the M7. I wanted
to share some thoughts with you about the performance
of my equipment and film vs digital.

One of the primary reasons that I moved to Leica was
to downsize the weight/volume of the equipment I had
to carry on "assignments" like this without loss (and
perhaps increase) of optical quality. I was able to
carry all of this photo equipment, plus cleaning
supplies in a small, Domke PhotoRunner pack. What a
delight! All that photo capability hanging on my hip
at minimal weight and easily accessible.

The equipment performed absolutely flawlessly. I shot
10 rolls and got back 346 well exposed (and if I may
boast a little, well focused!) negatives. My M7
batteries went down, but I expected that and had
spares, so not a shot was missed. I love this
equipment!!

I've often thought of moving back to SLRs for digital
shooting. I was concerned that digital would be better
for this type of trip as I could see if I got a shot,
could shoot a lot more, and could distribute the
results to the parents quickly (electronically). From
this experience, I'd say there is no need. My
negatives were developed with 2 prints each and medium
sized TIFF files burned to CDs for each roll within 24
hours. I uploaded all the images for the parents to
Ofoto (a Kodak website for sharing and ordering
prints) and as of this morning (Wednesday) all the
families have access to all the photos to view and
order as desired. I have a CD and two identical photo
albums to give to the school. I don't think digitial
would have been any faster and I have the alternative
to scan any negatives I like at a higher resolution
for more artistic display if desired.

So I have the best of all worlds; a compact photo
system that works flawlessly and provides beautiful
images, rapid sharing across a geographically diverse
community, and the ability to capture images to a
medium that gives me the flexibility of old or new
technologies for higher quality reproduction. Man, it
WAS worth it!!

Thanks for reading. As I work on a couple of the
images I like, I'll post them for you to see. I was
just so thrilled with how all this worked together I
wanted to share these thoughts with you.
Bob

=====
Bob Adler
Palo Alto, CA
rgacpa@pacbell.net
- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html