COMMENT AND THREE NEW PIX" Re: [Leica] Cape Cod in Winter - Part 2

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

>>>> It's sometimes hard to decide what to square up to though.  I made
the near edge of the ATM booth
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/CAPE_COD/4_31A_0167_web> vertical in
the camera finder and it came out that way on the negative but the
far end posts and the roof sign were way out of whack as a result.<<<

Hi Dick,
What you do is, work one side to the other! In other words, once you have 
the main 15mm view you want on film and have locked down the "centre spot" 
of the frame.

Then  switch your eye to the internal M viewfinder, line up the centre spot 
first, then one side vertically correct. Then look for an aligning line on 
the other side of the viewfinder. When you have both sides of the viewfinder 
squared away, you are laughing all the way to a finely aligned photograph 
and PS becomes redundant for correcting. ;-)

And it avoids any distortion whatsoever! ;-) Yeah you might have to squiggle 
the camera slightly but it'll beat all the messing around in PS! ;-)

You may have to squiggle one side to the other vertically, but it's very 
easy and saves a great amount of time screwing around in PS because you 
didn't hold the camera properly in the first place. Do the sides alignment 
and PS is history!

Which obviously you are doing very well for such a short time using this 
super-wide lens. :-)

It's a matter of the more you use it the better you become and you also 
become much wiser in using the 15mm in creating very interesting 
photography.

Too many people have an automatic distaste for super wide because they have 
a hate thing of..... "distortion" when in reality they've never taken the 
time to learn how to get the most out of this type of lens.

I used a 15mm more times when shooting travel assignments and a number of 
the OR situations when shooting my medical books simply because it gave an 
entirely different look to the situation.

Beat's the heck out of any competition unless they're as skilled as you are 
at using the super-wide 15mm.

So far your doing just fine, stay on this path and I don't have any doubt 
you'll be making entirely different looking photographs the likes you've 
never seen before. :-)

ted