Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]There has been some discussion here recently of difficulties photographing in France, with and without tripods. Thought I'd share some experiences. First, I've had no problems whatsoever, street shooting or otherwise -- NONE of the problems reported by others on the list. That said, I have avoided trying to take a tripod into interior locations. Fact is though, tripods are often not needed if one is shooting an M with fast optics. A case in point: St. Chapelle. The image that is linked to below was shot with an M6 HM and 35/1.4 ASPH, wide open at 1/15th on Kodachrome 64 -- HAND-HELD, using Stephanie's shoulder as a support. The link will download an image of about 400 kB: http://www.webcom.com/alexey/images/chapelledet.jpg The top image shows about 90% of the frame. If your monitor is set to 80 dpi this is roughly a 6X enlargement. The following three images correspond to the three grey rectangles in the 6X image. Each of these insets in enlarged another 10X, yielding a ~60 X final enlargement. The jpegs shown don't do full justice to the transparency. I have 20 X 24 optical enlargements of this image on Fuji Crystal Archive, and these enlargements reveal even better microcontrast/fine detail than do the scans (Polaroid SS4000). I conclude that a bit of trial and error (do I even have to say that many images taken under comparable conditions have more motion blur?), combined with wide, fast modern Leica glass and slow film, can often eliminate the need for a tripod. Cheers, Alexey - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html