Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/10/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> I had the opportunity to test an M6 recently. The pictures seemed > to display a certain emotive quality. > They have a penetrating quality. Yes, I, too, have noticed that special quality. Somehow the lenses have the ability to make the subject pop out from the background in an uncanny way. This often gives subjects an existential quality; it shows individuals as very much alone in the world in the midst of -- and even in spite of -- all sorts of connections. This possibly encourages us to identify with and sympathize with the subjects, and to project ourselves into the photographs we see and thereby increase their importance to us. It doesn't seem to be a matter of focus, because at high apertures backgrounds are often in focus along with the subject. It doesn't seem to be a matter of sharpness, because some of the lenses aren't all that sharp while some inferior Japanese lenses are very sharp yet don't have the same emotive quality; rather it seems to be an ability to differentiate planes somehow or to somehow create the illusion of three dimensions in a two-dimensional medium more so than is true of other lenses. Rather than *specifications* Leica lenses truly do have *character*. As hard as that variable is to scientifically quantify and replicate, to the frustration of many, it is no less true despite what some would have us believe.