[Leica] Photo quality - a Luddite view revisited.

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Everyone's comments are noted. Tina is right. Technical quality counts for
those pictures that are submitted to stock agencies or those that will be
blown up to a double page spread in a fashion magazine. Or the pictures
taken by spy satellites that are used to read license plates from cars
parked at the Rongovian Embassy. But by far the largest number of photos
today are viewed in the manner shown by Jeff Moore at a New Years party.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbm0/5321568630/in/set-72157625614839289/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbm0/5321568998/in/set-72157625614839289/lightbox/


And sharpness doesn't matter given the right scene and emotional impact.
Witness this photo from today's NYT.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/violence-and-art-in-the-afternoon/?hp


Of course if you look at the entire bullfighting sequence you will see that
some pictures are wonderfully sharp, others appropriately fuzzy. Sometimes
distortion in a picture adds to the effect. I remember when Contax and Leica
were compared on the basis of how the horizontal and vertically moving
shutters distorted the motion of racing car wheels. Leica was preferred
because the shutter motion made the wheels look "faster." For me the problem
was academic because in my brief newspaper career my beautifully sharp 4x5
Speed Graphic photos were printed on newsprint through a 65 line screen. The
technical quality of the original didn't much matter. It was the photo's
impact that sold papers.

Larry Z