[Leica] All cats are grey at f8

[steve.barbour at gmail.com (Steve Barbour)]

On Mar 27, 2010, at 8:50 PM, Vince Passaro wrote:

> There are two arguments going on here: Rabs is saying that shooting wide
> open all the time is a fad of sorts and inapplicable much of the time to
> what a professional and, in his view, what an artist needs to accomplish in
> his/her photographs. Ok, matter of opinion, I happen to agree with him in 
> so
> far as I tend to find bokeh about as interesting as grits. Or as we 
> Italians
> say, polenta. There are things you can do with it and sometimes it's
> magnificent but most of the time I'm more interested in what the photograph
> reveals than what it (most artfully perhaps) obscures.

remember than it reveals far, far better,  by artfully obscuring,

it can turn a snapshot into a work of art...

it's anterior/posterior cropping, no more-- no less,

and you even were impressed and commented on the bokeh of one particular 
image, as I recall...


and I fully agree,




Steve

> 
> But there is a more important, not-mere-opinion argument here too, which is
> the assertion back up by citation of actual tests that, from f4 of 5.6 to
> f16, there is so little difference in prime lenses there's no reason to buy
> a Leica.
> 
> So I have to put in my 50-lire coin, which you used to have to have to use
> the elevator in most apartment buildings in Rome.
> 
> Many folks on the LUG are contradictory souls who like to say "why the only
> solution is to get off your ass and go hang out the bottom of a helicopter
> and shoot shoot shoot and then you'll know what's what blah blah blah," at
> the same time they're spouting pure doctrine unsupported by the vast
> majority of actual experience but religiously appealing  -- for instance, 
> in
> a recent colloquy, that the old rules of photography plus the laws of
> physics make it invariably  that you need to stop down considerably on a
> Panasonic G camera (a light high quality digital camera)  to accomodate a
> 45mm lens' tendency to shake.... except despite the obvious laws of physics
> and book larnin' that make this appear to be true I know empirically from
> shooting that it just ain't. Not that camera at that lens size, no way.)
> 90mm lens, yes. 45mm lens, no.
> 
> So I don't care what the labs say about all lenses at 5.6 looking alike: I
> know empirically that they don't.  Remember this part: Not To Me.  None of
> us sees the same way as any other one of us.  The mood or contrast or
> sharpness or color of a photgraph: we see all of them with sufficient
> differences to keep bar tabs oepn and llines ppumpintrBefore I went to
> digital I shot basically three cameras in film: a Nikon FE2, a Minolta 
> XD-11
> (ahhhh), and a Leica CL (which was lost so it was followed by a  Bessa R2).
> Nikon Nikkor manual focus lenses, Minolta MD and MC manual focus lenses, 
> and
> a Leica 40mm Summicron-C (1973), a 50 mm Summicron (rigid chrome, late
> 1950s) and a 90mm f/4 Elmar-C. Later I added a CV 21/4.
> 
> Now leaving aside Leica and rangefinders in general,the first interesting
> thing to me, having heard of Nikon's reputation in glass and the 
> superiority
> of its cameras (the latter contention seems generally true: of Minoltas,
> ONLY the XD-11 struck me as a great camera; all the others offered trouble
> of one kind or another) was the discovery that the Minolta lenses in the
> same sizes were frequently better than the Nikons,to my eye. More contrast,
> deeper and sharper. This was particulary true at 24, 35, 50 and 135 and
> 200mm -- although at 50/2 and 200/4 it was a Very Close race. ) And the
> Leicas were in those regards (contrast, sharpness) in another league all
> together.  This was true at all the apertures I shot at which generally 
> were
> between f./4 and f/8 or if it was particularly sunny out, f 11.  The Nikons
> were better in color than in B & W, in which Minolta and Leica both kicked
> Nikon's butt.
> 
> Those lenses looked different and handled the light differently and that's
> all there was to it. but of course you could compare them becaue you had 
> the
> same film most of the time.  Once you go to different sensors all bets are
> off.
> 
> But I mean a 35mm Summicron ASPH is the same as a Pentax 35mm at f/8?
> C'mon. Or as we say in NYC: Cummmaaa, forget about it.
> 
> Vince
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at 
> rabinergroup.com>wrote:
> 
>>> "Yeah-but"   when you don't have a client, f2 is more fun.
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Sonny
>> 
>> 
>> "Yeah-but"
>> Getting a strong effective photographic is more fun them embodying a
>> rhetorical exercise. F wide open and be there.
>> - sometimes you can go with the extreme selective focus approach in other
>> words wide open. But more often not as you are looking at just what you
>> need
>> in focus in an image and just what you don't. And you use the f stop to 
>> get
>> that. And it can  be any f stop on the scale.
>> 
>> [Rabs]
>> Mark William Rabiner
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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>> 
> 
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