[Leica] PAW 35, Street by Night

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Richard showed:
> Caption: Street By Night
> http://www.dragonsgate.net/photosite/PaW2005/images/35_work0002.jpg
> 50/1.4ASPH, man, the lens is sharp! This is the full size scan of the 
> woman
> and her kid ~40 feet away (about 3/8th from the right edge of the 
> picture):
>
> http://www.dragonsgate.net/pub/richard/tmp/untitled-1.jpg
>Comments, suggestions welcome.<<<<<<<<

Good morning Richard.
I awoke to these two images with coffee in hand and wondered a few things.

A)
My first reaction was, " good for him at least he tried shooting at night on 
the street." Not an easy task at anytime with success of exposure and 
content. I thought, "well he caught the lady stepping onto curb at the 
right," not bad even if by accident. He composed for an open area allowing 
to see openly across the street. Good! And the overall look of the scene 
works well as a night photograph. Basically all positive.

B)
Now picture 2 ? The mega blow-up? Quite frankly what may look sharp right in 
your face and you are elated with it's sharpness, that doesn't translate 
well to probably most other screens on the system. Simply because, it just 
looks like a big blob of grain and stuff of "soft edged mish mash." due to 
a major blow-up. And probably beyond the reality of making a print. Or if it 
were going to be a big print, our noses wouldn't be a few inches from the 
screen, but several feet from the print........ big difference.

I would much rather see the first picture only which you receive praise for 
shooting on the street at night. And only a verbal / written comment how the 
lens maintained it's sharpness on an extreme enlargement. And in this case 
no point posting a picture as we'd believe you.

Because at the moment the blow-up looks like a coke bottle bottom picture of 
some sort. I trust you don't take this personally as it's not meant to be. 
But to illustrate how these two pictures look on a positive and negative 
presentation picture to picture.

And at the moment I'd like to take the liberty of suggesting this type of 
"lens quality" presentation to the list not be done simply because quite 
often what we see in a photograph presented is a waste of time because what 
you see isn't what comes across on many other screens.  Not always, but much 
like the "DMR samples," for example, it comes down to "so, big deal that's 
what you get for $6000.00?"

ted