First Noct' Shots

[grg]

Hi all. Well, I have posted enough 'for sale' postings in the past

couple of months, so I thought I'd actually post some pictures for a

nice change. I have posted my first shots taken with a Noct/M7 <a

href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?

folder_id=303443">HERE</a>. Sorry, no technical data other than Tri

X 400, aperture at f1, M7 on AE. The negatives were scanned on a

Minolta Dimage Scan III. Comments welcomed. Thank you. Regards, Gil.

[fotografz]

Gil, some nice casual catches there.

 

I don't know if it is the scans, but a few are washed out on my

monitor, and the focus could be better (not that everything or

every picture needs to be razor sharp). I'm troubled by the eyes

being out. At least the eyes (or in the case of a Noctilux...an eye)

should appear sharp. keep at it, the lens is demanding to focus.

 

Just a fellow Michiganders' opinion.

[thomas_t]

Nice shots Gil, my favorite is the triple montage, which stands out with a bit of mystery. Cheers.

[grg]

I know what you mean about the eyes Marc. I do have trouble critically focusing on the eyes in low light. The side of one's face or nose is the only thing I can ever seem to 'see' in the rangefinder patch (when it's not flaring). The M7 has the 0.72 magnification. I recently purchased a 1.25x magnifier, but not before I took these shots, unfortunately.<p>

Also, I think I need to get a can of pressurized air to blow the dust off the negatives before scanning. I had to do some aggressive dust filtering in PS Elements.

[grg]

Thanks Tom. I work with the girl shown in the triple montage. She's very camera shy (getting better though) - I have a growing collection of pictures of her hands!! I'll post more Noct photos from the same roll this evening.

[peter_mann3]

Hear no evil; speak no evil; see no evil.

 

Interesting montage.

 

Not sure f1 was the aperature for these--depth too shallow.

 

Nice to see your pictures. Thanks.

[gerry_szarek]

Gil, the couple you shot, are slightly out of focus, if you look at the mans jacket you can see the focus point is probably just in front of his face (elbow appears to be sharp). The montage is nice.

 

What magnification is your M7?

[patricks]

Gil, thanks for sharing.

 

I do like the triple montage the best, but I find the rest of these environmental portraits to be a bit weak, specially with the eyes, as Marc pointed out, being out of focus. Let's face it, one doesn't need $5K of Leica equipment to produce these type of photos.

 

Having said that, I too have a [very] long way to go when it comes to becoming an accomplished photographer, or even simply producing the type of images I'm envisioning. That is what is great about using Leica equipment IMO, it is not trivial and it demands something from the photographer, you simply have to invest time, effort and brain in the learning process.

 

I quickly went through you folder, there are some nice family/baby portraits in there, thus you do have an eye for this, so keep on shooting, share and ask for feedback.

 

Cheers,

 

Patrick

[grg]

Hi Patrick. I agree absolutely - one certainly doesn't need $5k in equipment to produce these images. But, I like knowing that I have a lifetime to grow into my equipment. OK, maybe hopefully a little sooner than a lifetime.

[grg]

I should probably add that I was well aware of the fact that I could have and should have stopped down to increase depth. But, with a 50 'lux in my bag I was determined to explore f1. Yes, yes, I know . . . the aperture ring is there for a reason. :)<p>

[dave_cheney]

gil, don't forget, under tungsten light tri-x drops to only ASA200, so you have to add extra compensation on top of the compensation for backlighting etc.

 

i would recommend against using any kind of dust removal in PS, its all basically a controlled gassiuan blur which robs the image of their sharpness. I'm not sure I know PS elements but if it has the rubber stamp tool you can dust spot your images quite easily with that (even if time consuming)

 

my practice for scanning is to develop my film, hang them in the shower with a heater on in the room to speed up drying. As soon as they are dry, i cut them and store them in neg folders. I find that one or two scans is the best I can do before they pick up serious dust so I try to scan all the good ones in one pass then I archive the negs for the day I get a real dark room (or nikon creates Digital ICE that works with silver backed film)

 

cheers

 

dave

[djl251]

Gil - The other thing you should do is to check the rangefinder

accuracy of you lens-camera combination. What I have done is

take and have the subject hold a pencil vertically in front of their

face for focus assistance, then drop the pencil and shoot. It's

also a good distraction for your camera shy types. You can also

print out the focus test chart on this site by Bob Atkins:

http://www.photo.net/learn/focustest/ . Thanks for sharing the

photos. I hope to see more soon.

[russell_brooks]

Highlights are blown out. Check the negatives. I bet they're over developed. Eyes are key as the others have said. Also remember with the Noct at f1 only the center of the image has a chance to be in focus so it better not to compose off-center as you would normally to make a golden rectangle. Also stick to f1 as the Noct has a focus shift when stopping down. And subject movement is key. It's nice if you can shoot at 1/60th or faster. You might want to play with TMAX 3200 or Delta 3200 an rate them around 1000. That way you still get all the tons and pick up a stop of speed to stop subject movement. And the others are correct: the only one of these photos that would have interest to people other than those in the photos is the montage. Oh, and dont obsess too much about a higher mag viewfinder. I've used both the .91 and .72 and either will work just fine.