Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/27
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On Dec 28, 2009, at 12:18 AM, Dante Stella wrote:
> Ted and Marty,
>
> When you are shooting pictures of your own extended family, and among them
> is a 91-year-old who almost didn't make it to this Christmas and may not
> make it to the next, there is no redo, there is no second day of the
> project, and no one is going to be very forgiving of failures, be they of
> man or machine. You can appreciate the consequences of getting burned by
> not using a flash - including shadowed eye sockets, blue channel noise,
> and inconsistent color balance across the frame. I'm sure you can also
> appreciate the consequences of shooting with an f/1.4 lens, not the least
> of which is putting some members of groups squarely out of focus. A lot
> of this evades detection in the five seconds you have to check the frame
> (if you even get that).
>
> So you bring in a flash to push the light level into a comfort range for
> the sensor and bring the aperture to a size that keeps everything in
> focus. Electronic flash photography has now existed for more than 50
> years, and if Leica didn't believe in it, the company would not be out
> selling $600 flashes for the S2 and the M9. Nor would it have developed a
> TTL and then a digital TTL system (well, Metz probably did it for Leica).
> Nor would it have given Metz the serial codes for dedicated TTL ("GNC")
> function on the Leica modules (Metz, in fact, makes the SF-24D and the
> SF-58).
>
> I don't ask my M8 to autofocus, shoot at 64,000 ISO, or even compensate
> for focus shift in lenses. But I do expect it to carry it its extremely
> limited flash functionality without unpredictable behavior.
>
> Dante
>
> NO ARCHIVE
>
> On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:57 PM, <tedgrant at shaw.ca> <tedgrant at shaw.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Dante asked:
>>>>> What I got last night, repeatedly, was a full-power preflash followed
>>>>> by a
>>> "normal" preflash. And this was always on the first shot after the
>>> camera
>>> was turned on, even if you gave it a second to recognize the flash.
>>>
>>> Anyone else experience this? It didn't look like low batteries in the
>>> flash or the camera. My wife (being ever so practical) thinks this can
>>> be
>>> solved by "buy[ing] a Nikon [D700]." But I am not one to let
>>> troubleshooting go so easily.<<<<<<<<<<<,
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Nichols" responded:
>>
>>> Hi Dante,
>>> Simple solution. With Leica lenses, just forget the flash. ;-)<<<<
>>
>>
>> Hi Dante,
>> Jim is quite right! FORGET THE FLASH!
>> It is quite simple really... forget the flash I don't even own one and
>> rarely if ever used flash with any of my M cameras over the years. Have I
>> been burned? Yep on a couple of occaisions, but no big deal. If you can
>> see it .... YOU CAN SHOOT IT! :-)
>>
>> All my Christmas happy snaps beginning to end were as "you see it, were
>> motivated, "SHOOT!" And they were fine. Down loaded with LR, fiddled and
>> into PhotoShop second look.... print! And not one lost frame other than
>> for a couple because I hadn't set the ASA to 320.
>>
>> Go for broke with your M8, shoot a ton of images with the flash buried
>> under a pile of rocks!! This will keep you from digging them up in
>> panic.. :-)
>>
>> cheers,
>> ted
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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