tony_senzaorbi

It would be improper, not to mention against the forum rules and rude to the other members of photo.net especially the originator of this thread, to bring up the matter here.

Not.

"Oooh! Can I borrow a phrase from G.W. and say... "Bring it on...?"

 

Ok.

"Paul T Photo.net Patron, mar 14, 2006; 10:06 a.m.

Tony, put your toys back in your pram. Kevin accused you of Leica-bashing - perhaps untrue, but nonetheless fair comment - and you retaliate by attacking his photos. And now you're intimating you have a big brother who's an attorney - I'm sure everyone's quaking in their boots."

 

Paul, you really don't want to get involved in this, it's serious. I could care less about the Leica-bashing accusation. Kevin has accused me repeatedly on a public forum of lying about my occupation and my name. That is libel according to my attorney, who is not my brother. I am not trying to make others quack in there boots, I have no beef with anyone else lets keep it that way.

"Kevin Mendenhall Photo.net Patron Prolific Poster, mar 13, 2006; 07:53 p.m.

Tony, since "Senzaorbi" is a fake name"

 

You might want to ask an attorney for a working definition of libel. I have.

"But I do find it odd that people find such great sport in bashing Leica here on the Leica forum. Particularly in your case, "Tony," when they post no images of their own."

 

I find it odd that you "Kevin", expect everyone to accept those digital p&s shots of car engines as proof you know more about Leica's marketing practices than I do, and furthermore that they entitle you to thumb your nose at the forum rule against personal attacks.

Used to be you compared film for sharpness, saturation, contrast etc and compared cameras for features. Now with digital these are inseperable, so e.g. someone might think the DMR rocks in terms of sharpness and color but the frame rate or the crop or the lack of AF-on-demand doesn't cut it for there needs.

"what do you think the outcome will be?"

 

If I could be certain of a future outcome without being privvy to inside company info, I could quit both my jobs and be the oracle of Wall Street. However if Leica's history is any indication, regardless of how long Leica makes them wait, there will be a group of people who will buy a digital-M and most of them will say it's the greatest camera on earth. Even if by that time Canon is making a full-frame d-SLR with 50 megapixels for $500, some people will still claim the 10MP 1.3-crop digital-M is better in some un-measurable quality like glow, pay $5000 for one. I think Leica's beancounters have it easy, because I think they already know to within a few dozen, how many of them they can count on selling.

Well I won't tell you to get a Cron because I figure you want more than 1 stop upgrade from 2.8 and if you wanted a Cron you wouldn't have asked spricifcally about the Summiluxes. I'd say, if your considering between a new-unsold 50 Summilux and maybe a demo Summilux-ASPH then by all means I'd go with the ASPH. Like wise if your shooting USAF resolution targets or landscapes wide opened at 1.4 and blowing up to 20x30 then by all means go with the ASPH no matter what it costs. Likewise if what really satisfies you is owning the most expensive 50/1.4 on the planet then by all means go with the ASPH. If you use 1.4 in low light like for candids with Tri-X maybe pushed a stop and half, and you can pick up a minty older Summilux for south of a grand, you might be surprized at what a performer it is. Lots of great shots taken with those over the last 44 years.

Here's a thought: why not just buy an adaptor for R lenses for your 1Ds? You can put in a screen with a focusing aid if you really need it, there's no crop factor, and for landscapes stopping the lens down by hand shouldn't be much of a big deal. 1 and 2-cam R lenses are dirt cheap (compared to new)and the # of cams is irrelevent. I dunno what you paid for the 1Ds but there going for $2500 or less today on account of the 5D, seems like a shame to give it away when it's already got more megapixels than a DM-R and no crop factor. But that said, as a LF man myself, you can't beat LF for landscape.

Never used an R8 or R9 (never even held one or saw one up close, just pictures of them on the 'net)but unless there's something radically different about them than other SLR's the biggest upside compared to the M would be seeing thru the lens, and the biggest downside would be not seeing anything at the moment of exposure. For that reason I much prefer the rangefinder unless the subject is a building or a landscape or a macro.

I think my monitor must be crapping out. They all look about 2-3 stops underexposed on mine.

I seem to recall there's something called a Paint Stick that the camera repair guys and dealers use to "detail" those markings. I'm not sure where you'd get one but probably a good old google search would turn up a source.

I dunno whether getting stoned would help my Leica photography but it might make some of these threads seem really deep, man.

Nobody else but me I know even knows what a Leica is (except my boss but I don't "hang out" with him).

The bigger you go the more every defect gets magnified including mis-focus and camera shake, which are (at least to me) more distracting than differences between brands of lenses, or even grain. What several people said about viewing distance is true. People who look at photos for their content rather than as a test of photo equipment do so at a comfortable distance. That said I routinely print to 16x20 and occasionally to 20x30 from 35mm. The question becomes more about subject matter and circumstance: if your shooting permits using slow film, medium-small apertures and a tripod, and your not climbing a mountain, why make life harder than it needs to be, just shoot medium or large format. OTOH if your subject is fast-action sports, or birds and animals in the wild, or even candid life on the street, 35mm equipment lends itself better to the task, so you hope the shots have impact and people will view them from a reasonable distance and you print them only as large as you need to.

I don't own a digital but I shoot one at least once a week, sometimes more, as I work a second job for a wedding photographer. He has several Canon 20D's (he has a 1DS MarkII at his studio, tried a 5D but didn't buy one because he said it took him too much time cleaning up the vignetting in Photoshop). I like the camera ok, but I'm not the one who does the post processing and that's a huge part of digital. Why I shoot a Leica for my personal photography is because I am adept in a darkroom so I get better results from film. I'm not saying film is better than digital, just that I am better at "post processing" film than digital. I am trying to learn the digital way, and at some point I may feel as comfortable and confident there as with film and chems, and at that point I may switch. I do have a Canon A1 and some lenses but I haven't used them in years. A SLR has the advantage of seeing thru the lens yes, but that eye goes blind at the exact moment of the exposure.

Thomas! It's refreshing to hear someone who speaks and understands the Zone system. Doesn't happen often anymore.

What your seeing is where the 2 halves of the rangefinder prizm are cemented together. If you had xray vision and looked down from the top of the camera the prizm is square but composed of 2 triangular ones cemented with the cemented surface running diagonally.

 

The "J" in the wax seal means it was CLAd by Kinderman. I sent my M3 there a bunch of years ago and it came back with a J instead of the L.

That's all fine and dandy except for one thing: arie said the shots made using the incident reading were overexposed, the ones made with the reflected reading were properly exposed. So there's nothing wrong with his gray card or metering technique. Arie, when you made the incident readings, how were you and the meter positioned? Were you standing at the subject position with the meter dome pointed at the camera position and the meter approximately perpendicular to the ground? Usually when there is a discrepancy in the situation you described, the incident reading leads to under-exposure (because the operator has unknowingly tilted the dome upward toward the light source, thinking he needs to read the light literally "falling on the subject").

 

One last possibility: does your Sekonic have 2 modes of incident reading, one standard and one "contrast"? I know the 408 does (but that one has only 5-deg spot). There's 2 postions of the dome, one is more fully extended than the other. The extended one is standard incident.

Hoodman Hoodskins. Come in a pack with several sheets with die-cut peel-off protectors in various sizes made for the screens on digital cameras. They adhere by static and peel off with no residue.

"To Tony, our photography teacher: Bruce photographs his model *against* a bright background. Consequently the subject's face is not front lit and the Sunny-16 Rule does _not_ apply."

 

To PC B, our?????: In fill-flash the way it's taught in every textbook and manual you will find, the flash is used and calculated to just illuminate the subject's face in a subtle way that doesn't scream "flash used here", while the ambient exposure is set to correctly expose the background, so in this example sunny-16 _does_ apply. Perhaps you do fill-flash differently, if it works for you that's fine.

"I am planning a trip to Germany/Austria in the summer...What film should I take?"

 

There's enough time between now and then for you to try a few and decide for yourself. It's not just the film either, it's the processing. The same film often looks completely different printed at different labs.

The most expensive things to fix on an M3 are: shot DS winder ($300 or more), decemented rangefinder ($250 to recement, $600 to replace), and messed-up shutter ($100-200 to rebuild and replace curtains). I know people who have had to have one of each of those done to theirs recently. The vulcanite is a non-issue, cause first of all its only cosmetic and second of all theres some guy in Japan who sells lookalike recovering for $20. The frame selector is handy, the glass plate by itself is a non-issue except that those are the ones with DS and mostly without the selector too. The ones made in Canada are collectible so you'll pay a premium for one. I had an M3 for many years, sold it for an M6 but wish I'd had the money to keep it. Can't beat one for the finder if you use a 50 a lot.

Lutz, gotcha. We were just talking at cross purposes. If the SF20 can do f/11 then it might be fine. Then all he'd need to worry about would be if all the d/o/f at f/16-f/22 would work for the shot. One way or the other that 1/50 synch speed is a limiter. True, you can pile on the ND filters over that expensive Leica glass. IIRC the M7, which bruce has, is capable of HSS (ya its manual-only and a kludge but it does let you use faster shutter speeds). I don't know if the SF20 cooperates or if he needs a SF24 or a Metz 54.