Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/06/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Walt, You are all making this too hard. I am going to Chicago tommorrow to pack up my daughter for the summer here in Atlanta. I don't know what I will have time to shoot so I will take the 24 and the 50 current L lenses with a couple of rolls of 400 and a couple of rolls of 50 for the blurry stuff if I have time. I plan on shooting in the barber shop next week and I especially want a character study of Tommy the owner. I will use the 85 F1.5 because it has great oof so the rest of the shop will show in the background but not distract from the primary subject. Later in the week my mother in law will be in town for her quarterly cancer screen. She is almost 80 so I will use the 90 Elmar wide open. My version of the lens is sharp but doesn't cut the finer detail wide open so her eye lashes wil look sharp but the her skin will look twenty or thirty years younger; almost like using a softar I. If you have been following my images you know that I can usually get a sharp image down to 1/8 with a 90 mm subject movement willing. Sometimes the light doesn't let me hold that high a shutter speed with a 2.8 lens. So going into those situations I will lug the heavier lenses in the bag because 1/8 at F2 is possible but 1/4 at F2.8 doesn't work very often. So, to summarize, most of the time I walk around with a bag full of the same lenses that everyone else walks around with. Occasionally, there will be a specific situation that I know ahead of time will look better with a different lens. So I use that lens. I can do this because for the past ten or fifteen years I have kept my ears open for interesting lenses. I bought the Russian lens from Dante for a very reasonable price under $100. I think that I paid $85 for the 85mm Serenar. The 90 Elmar was under $100 at a camera store in Kansas City because the vulcanite was partially missing. I found the current Elmarit as NOS here in Atlanta for $500 because the store didn't know what they had. The 75 Biogon was $79 because the owner didn't think Exacta mount lenses were worth anything(they are if you have an Exacta to FD adapter). These lenses have interesting charachter that can be used to advantage for specific situations. Thanks for the conversation. It is what makes the LUG interesting. Don don.dory@gmail.com On 6/7/06, Walt Johnson <walt@waltjohnson.com> wrote: > > Don > > I approached your post with a reasonably open mind. You are an excellent > ...