[Leica] PAW 35, Street by Night

[richard-lists at imagecraft.com (Richard)]

At 07:55 AM 8/30/2005, Ted Grant wrote:
>Good morning Richard.
>I awoke to these two images with coffee in hand and wondered a few things.
>
>A)
>My first reaction was, " good for him at least he tried shooting at night 
>on the street." Not an easy task at anytime with success of exposure and 
>content. I thought, "well he caught the lady stepping onto curb at the 
>right," not bad even if by accident. He composed for an open area allowing 
>to see openly across the street. Good! And the overall look of the scene 
>works well as a night photograph. Basically all positive.

Thank you. Coming from you, if things are ever so slightly tilted to the 
positive range, I am very happy!!!! The person (to be honest, I am not sure 
about the gender, but I think it may have been a male) stepping on the curb 
at right is precisely why I snapped at that particular moment. I know as 
Phillipe said, there isn't a strong focus, so I was trying to at least make 
something out of the person walking with the headlights from the car coming.

And re: B) point below. You are right. I committed the classic "Pixel 
Peeping" offense. There is no point in posting "full size" crop as they 
don't do anything artistically and we Leica people do know how good the 
lens are. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. This is after the post where I 
said I will try to post less to. Penalty time for me!

Thanks again.


>B)
>Now picture 2 ? The mega blow-up? Quite frankly what may look sharp right 
>in your face and you are elated with it's sharpness, that doesn't 
>translate well to probably most other screens on the system. Simply 
>because, it just looks like a big blob of grain and stuff of "soft edged 
>mish mash." due to a major blow-up. And probably beyond the reality of 
>making a print. Or if it were going to be a big print, our noses wouldn't 
>be a few inches from the screen, but several feet from the print........ 
>big difference.
>
>I would much rather see the first picture only which you receive praise 
>for shooting on the street at night. And only a verbal / written comment 
>how the lens maintained it's sharpness on an extreme enlargement. And in 
>this case no point posting a picture as we'd believe you.
>
>Because at the moment the blow-up looks like a coke bottle bottom picture 
>of some sort. I trust you don't take this personally as it's not meant to 
>be. But to illustrate how these two pictures look on a positive and 
>negative presentation picture to picture.
>
>And at the moment I'd like to take the liberty of suggesting this type of 
>"lens quality" presentation to the list not be done simply because quite 
>often what we see in a photograph presented is a waste of time because 
>what you see isn't what comes across on many other screens.  Not always, 
>but much like the "DMR samples," for example, it comes down to "so, big 
>deal that's what you get for $6000.00?"

// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please 
use richard at imagecraft.com)