[Leica] Making sure the decisive moment happens

[KCassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)]

I posted the creation of a decisive afternoon (term coined by bd)

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/2004/victoria-blue/

Juan asked:

>Kyle, that is a great example. Thanks for showing it. Out of curiosity: 
>what camera did you use for that? Looking at the whole sequence made me 
>think of the great advantage of rangefinders vs. SLRs when capturing 
>"the decisive moment". With a SLR it's always somewhat of a guess...

For those photos, I was using a Leic IIIb with a 35mm cron. Okay okay, I was
using the leica d100. 

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/2004/me2.jpg

I can't see any advantage of using a rangefinder, certianly not of using a
film camera. I knew certain elements I wanted, )I should really go back and
document the photos but you people don't seem to appreciate my blood sweat
and tears as it is! (juan excluded from "you people")) for example, I
noticed after a few shots that while she was running the side lighting gave
an unflattering apperence to her stomach which looked undulating and weird,
so I knew I wanted her to hold the dress over her midriff, I also knew I
wanted part of her in the light, and part of her out of the light. I knew I
wanted a foot in the air, and I knew I wanted some motion blur. I also
wanted her looking over her shoulder with her hair moving. So you have a
handful of elements that all need to come together (but not as well as that
old life magazine shot of the naked kid running down the hall persued by
some authority figure). The only way I can imagine doing that is with a
bunch of polaroids or digital. The only advantage I could see to a
rangefinder is the old "no shutter blackout" thing, but I wasn't even
looking through the lens. I had the camera set on a tripod and just watching
the scene in the hall, we'd do three or four and I'd run through and check
them and we'd go back to doing it again.

>On the other hand, if one routinely goes for the 150:1 ratio, digital 
>is the only thing that makes sense...

If I was shooting film, I think the only way to do it would have been to
shoot MORE exposures and pray. I'd done that a few years ago with an
elaborate setup but film costs prohibited me from doing more than two rolls
and I didn't like any of the resulting shots, the annoying thing about that
was I couldn't tell from the negatives if I liked them or not and had to
make 3x4 proofs of them all which took forever. I do so love my film
cameras, truly, but I have an underwood typewriter I really love too, but
I'm not using it much these days.

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/lj/mtm2.jpg

Thanks for asking,

kyle