peter_olsson

The New York Times reviewer -of the Canoscan 9950- said the results were good enough to put on a refrigerator, but not any better than that.

I was converted to Leica M by four good friends; Mr Nikon (a fast but

dominating guy), Mr Manfrotto (a steady guy he is), Mr Hasselblad (a

little slow, but a quality consious guy) and Mr Billingham (the

embracing, protective type of person). They all wanted to help but I

realized that the relationship was kind of wearing me down. I still

see them frequently but my back and neck much prefer my new friend,

Mr Leica.

Well, two years after I asked the follow up question above I got my

own Summicron 50, a lightweight 1970 one, so not the current version.

 

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I have since reevaluated the Nikkor and I think it is a fine lens. It

would have been my most used Autofocus-lens if I had kept it.

However, I like the Summicron much more. In black & white it has a

special quality that is hard to describe. I have used it a lot to

take pictures of indoor horse-back riding in electrical light. Even

at F/2 it gives a pleasing image quality. The images don't

scream "SHARP AND CONTRASTY IMAGE". However, they strike a very good,

should I say "balance"?. Yes, I think "balance" is the best word I

can come up with for the moment. Nothing, good or bad, sticks out.

The difference between in focus areas and out of focus areas is

noticable but still pleasing. The Nikkor images look "harder", as if

a subjects natural smoothness hasn't been recorded.

 

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Yesterday I had my first accident with the Leica. I took an

embarrassing nosedive while cross country skiing and the lens shade

became packed with snow. Thankfully I had a UV-filter on and nothing

seems to have been scratched or broken.

Hi Rich, your pictures reminds me of the few days I spent in

Monterey. Sigh... wanna swap living for a while? You get to live an

hour from the polar circle in Sweden, and I get to live in Monterey

(yes!) :-)

 

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I am also a new Leica user, have had the camera (M6 + 1970 summicron

50/2) four months. The black & white negatives are beautiful but I

find it rather difficult, actually, to get that quality to show in

the print. A bit frustrating. Colour negatives are nice too, but

being at the mercy of a store (for colour prints) makes it even more

difficult to get the quality in print. The only disappointment so far

is colour positive film but perhaps the Fujichrome 400 I used isn't

that great. I'll try something slower, such as Kodak E100s, some day

(I prefer negative film). Sounds like I'm not happy with my purchase

but I am! With some effort I have been able to make b&w prints that

are very nice and almost show how good the negatives are. I suspect

that my photo clubs enlarger is out of alignment.

Mike is of course the only one who knows what instructions he gave to

the lab but since the Ektachrome 100 is rather saturated it wouldn't

need special lab treatment if exposed at 80. In fact, this 1/3 stop

probably helped to show details in the black sweater.

 

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What really surprises me is how close the 90 and the 75 are in field

of view!

I recommend the latest issue of Lenswork, it has two short stories

that I liked, one about Eisie and one about Arnold Newman. Both of

them characters in the positive sence!

A <a href="http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?

msg_id=007hYQ">similar thread</a> if you're interested.

I'll be 38 in two weeks. This makes the average (excluding

immortals,the first average, 5-year old and Startrek reference) 43.7

years. In Leica-time I'm only 2 months. But hey, I'm 20 in medium

format!

The XP2 Super is a good film. Pushed 1 stop it works very well rated

at ISO 640 (but not the ultimate in shadow detail). However, it is

three times the price of Tri-x and the developing is four to five

times as expensive (compared to home developed tri-x).

 

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It prints nicely on Agfa multigrade RC, but long exposure times. In

120-format I have printed this film on graded fiber paper (Emaks)

which worked very well. It really tests your enlarger lens. I

compared two enlarger lenses at small prints on the same paper, using

the same aperture (8.0). The prints were 4x6 inches and the best

enlarger lens gave MUCH more detail.

 

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In summary, a good film but too expensive to use.

Stefan, I didn't notice how fast you answered!

 

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Yes, I have the soft release, but it's still a pretty long push.

Correction: "...I tend to shake the camera when I push the trigger"

should be " I tend to jerk the camera when I push the trigger".

Although far from mastering the camera I'm starting to get used to the M6 I bought last year. There is one thing that bothers me, I tend to shake the camera when I push the trigger. The "push" is rather long, meaning that the trigger is not released until I have pushed fairly deep. I have read that this can be adjusted to once preference. So, what's your preference, a shallow or a deep press before the shutter is released? Will a too short play make the meter difficult to use? What would be the smoothest?

This was a very nice way to look at those nice photos! Once loaded

(which did take quite a while) I found it the best way of

presentation I have seen on the web!

I'm new to Leica M-photography but I find the camera difficult to

trigger with thick gloves on, so I bought Toms soft-release (a Leica

shop in Sweden stocks them). With the soft release it is no problem

at all to use gloves (except for setting the aperture on the lens of

course). A great gizmo for cold weather photography! It is also does

what I suppose it was intended for; reduces camera shake when

triggering the shutter, with and without gloves. It actually makes M-

photography more fun!

 

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The soft release seems to sit securely in the shutter release button,

I haven't noticed the above mentioned problems yet, no unscrewing.

Thank you for the review/comparison. I thought you were a Hasselblad

user? I use Hasselblad with 80 and 180 lenses. The results are

technically spectacular so why would a Hasselblad user start doing

portraits with a 35 mm SLR, what was your reason? You don't like the

square format?

Interesting question, I don't see any IR-index on my Summicron 50

either.

 

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If I may follow up Lukes question with another: Is it a No-no to

bring IR-film such as the Kodak during flights where it will be

submitted to X-ray machines?

Hi John, I like zooms as well though I haven't used one since I sold

my Nikon equipment 3 years ago. However, <a

href="http://www.imx.nl/photosite/leica/rseries/testr/r70-

180.html">this 70-180/2.8</a> seems to be the jewel of zoom lenses

for anyone who can afford it. I've never seen one, only read about

them.

An alternative method!

 

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Put the M (or any camera) on a tripod and set the focus for where you

are going to be and set the exposure time to "B". Put up a flash on

the camera or somewhere else and turn off the lights in the room.

Trigger the shutter on the camera and lock it open with a cable

release. Then step back (don't trip over anything!) and release the

flash, either with a chord to a flash meter or to an empty camera. Go

back to the camera and unlock the cable release. Voila, a self-

portrait.

This weekend I printed the pushed b&W Portra that I mentioned above.

The film was rated EI 640 and I used the meter in the M6 for all

exposures. All pictures were taken in electric light (at this time of

the year we hardly have any daylight up here close to the polar

circle). I have seen with traditional black & white film, home

developed, that the exposure index is reduced when using electric

light compared to natural light and I suppose this is true with

Portra as well. Still, a one stop push and a rating of 640 printed

very well. I was not able to print all the way to the papers D-max

but the difference was small, my guess is 1/3 to 1/2 f-stop. I

suspect that the rating of 640 would have been on the spot with

natural light.

 

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The print quality with pushed Portra was very good, I was pleasantly

surprised! I doubt if one can find another film with smaller grain at

this EI (640) that will give this image quality. My spontaneous

feeling is that the Portra b&w is an improvement on the 400CN. On the

other hand, this was my first b&w film with a Leica + summicron 50 so

perhaps it was the lens that blew me away.

 

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The film is so good that I only have two gripes about using it: 1)

the high price of developing, 2) the general decline in film washing

(!) at places who does C41-processing. What is the cause of this (2)?

When a film comes back with a strong smell of fixer something is

wrong.

Charles, I think Victor is asking about the black & white negative

Portra film.

 

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I just got back a developed roll of 135 black&white Portra that I had

exposed at EI 640 and pushed in 1 stop in developing. The negatives

look very nice so I think EI 640 is a good guess with 1 stop push

developing of this film. I will get into the darkroom and print some

samples this weekend.

I can agree that the Noctilux photos have a strange out of focus-

rendition in some pictures. The Hasselblad CF80 can also give very

strange o.o.f.r with some backgrounds (such as branches) but very

pleasing with others. It's a matter of getting to know a lens by

using it. I'm sure the Noctilux can give great looking background

blur too.

 

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By the way, what's wrong with "snapshots"? Some of the worlds most

moving photographs belong to the snapshot category. To me, a snapshot

is just a picture taken at the spur of a moment, and which includes

both one or more easily identifiable subjects (mostly people) in the

action of doing something. HCB comes to mind as a great snapshooter.

I collect used fixer and developer in large separate containers. When

I see the amount that is accumulated over a few months it would make

me feel sick to pour it out into the sewer. Here, in Sweden, it would

be illegal to begin with, but even if it wasn't I would need to see

som scientific proof that it was harmless before I poor anything out.

I do not subscribe to the "just dilute it in more water and then it

will be harmless-theory". The accumulation of bio-hazardous chemicals

and heavy metals in nature has showed that the dilution theory does

not work. And no sewage treatment plant takes away 100% of anything.

Also, not all sewage treatment is chemistry based, some are using

biological methods to treat the waste water. The bacterias in bio-

treatment can easily be upset (die) and stop working when they have

to deal with certain chemicals.

 

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Keep hazardous stuff out of the sewer, when you have alternative

safer ways of handling it, period.

Thank you Jack!

 

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Posts like this are worth their weight in Cash for us new-comers to

the Leica M-system.

 

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What distances did you photograph at?

I just have to ask Scott Eaton if this picture was intended as a self-portrait, with the aid of self-timer, and you just happened to take one step too much backwards?

 

Anyway, nice picture!

I'm another Sekonic 408 user. I like this meter, I use the flash

function almost daily this time of the year. A flash meter is great

since it makes it much easier to use bounced flash and get the

exposure right. In practice, the 5 degree spot is tight enough for

99% of all real life picture taking. For the last % I have to take a

few steps closer to the subject.