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Kitty vs. the DMR


blakley

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Bob,

great color work, I read your DMR post and was wondering if Jerry at precision camera does

CLA's? I need some work on a lens, I am in Houston but get to Austin about once a month or

so. It would be great to get it done in state.

 

Todd

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Eliot, the first one is cropped to 8x10 dimensions from 24x36; the second is cropped more severely (probably only 70% of the original long dimension), so I'm a bit further from the subject than it appears in both cases.
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Todd, Jerry does CLAs and does a great job; he often has a backlog though so you should ask how long it will take to turn it around. He CLA'd Barney for me, and he also removed the vulcanite and applied the new leathers to Barney & Kermit (I did Kitty myself, as MP leather is a lot easier to remove than M3 vulcanite).
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Actually 2 meters or just a little more is about right in both cases (might have been about 3 meters in the second shot), and a few inches' DOF is also accurate; if you look in the first picture you can see that the far side of the subject's collar is already out of focus, and in the second shot there's also a really narrow range of focus.

 

I think the incredible bokeh of the 1.2 Noct is actually deceptive, and it tricks the eye into thinking there's more DOF than there really is, because the transition is very smooth.

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Here's an actual-pixels crop of my scan of the first shot; you'll notice that the subject's hair is out of focus; his suspender is pretty sharp but the collar is very unsharp everywhere - though the rendition is very smooth.<div>00GowV-30396384.jpg.36bbdceda0880d21e727839957be4dd3.jpg</div>
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Bob, what did the models think of Kitty? Every once in a while I'll tell my daughter (now 11 years old) that I want to change my M2 into a Hello Kitty camera (but maybe a lavendar one), and she freaks out every time. It's funny.

 

It's also nice to see that Jerry had some models and sets that look more interesting than what I had imagined when I read the ads.

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The models are all staff at Pioneer farms, which is a really nice venue (though it's outdoors, which in Texas in June is taking a chance). The guy in the first picture is a carpenter and woodworker, and is a really fascinating individual. He showed me lots of interesting stuff about how hand-hewn building members are made, and then pointed out a lot of details in the original 18th-century barn he was working in.

 

The girl in the second picture is a guide and also a camera enthusiast; she was taking pictures with her Nikon. they also have a blacksmith, who has got to be the hottest human on the face of the earth today - he actually said that the good thing about the job is that it feels cool when he goes out in the sun!

 

Everyone likes Kitty (though they like Kermit better, for some reason). Another guy working with the carpenter has an M3 and, upon seeing Kitty, immediately recognized her as "a real camera" asked all of us Leica nuts lots of questions about our cameras.

 

My daughter LOVES Kitty - no freaking out at all.

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I *was* pretty inconspicuous, but then I'm small and non-threatening generally. I got probably more than 10 pictures in which the subject didn't even notice I was around until after they heard the shutter (yep, sorry about that - you can hear an MP shutter on a quiet afternoon...)
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Nice work. Very nice shot of the young girl. Looks like something from an old issue of

National Geographic.

 

Just for kicks, have you tried dropping the gamma in those shots by about 10-15%? Maybe

it's just my monitor.

 

I've been shooting Tri-X for years and keep forgetting just how lush color film is, especially

compared to digital. Color neg has so much more tonality...

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We had Leica day in the store (2 days actually - Fri & Sat.) but then there was a separate event Sun. at Pioneer Farms - an outdoor historical museum & working farm outside town. That's where the equipment was loaned out.
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Bob, did you get any pictures of the carpenter working?

 

Also (and I know this isn't really the right place to ask), is Portra 400NC even gentler to the skin than NPH? It seems so in your pictures, but then I may just be used to NPH prints that are oversaturated in the printing.

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Scanned on a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual at 1600 dpi, 16 bits.

 

I did get a few shots of the carpenter and his partner working but haven't had time to scan them yet. Portra NC is the best film I've evers used for skin tones.

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