Burning film (was Leica bashing on usenet groups)

[Kari Eloranta <eloranta@lammio.hut.fi>]

captyng@vtx.ch (Gerard Captijn) notes:

>Very often maybe only 2-3 pictures on a 36-roll are really good. In
>addition, practice shows that we often need to expose many rolls  
to >produce one really  excellent, exhibition quality image  
(National >Geographic probably won't disagree with these statements  
given the >level of film consumption of their photographers). Why?

Some time ago there was an article in NG about the working habits  
of their shooters. Although I don't find their kind of wholesome  
writing and photography so interesting anymore this was certainly  
very captivating reading. Among a staggering statistics: in recent  
years about *one tenth of a percent* of their frames ever make it to  
the pages of the journal. This inspite of them being very good  
people, surely previsualizing a lot and not just letting the motor  
chew off the film.

I don't believe that their Leica shooters are particularly  
efficient with film usage. To capture the moment and the mood in a  
definite way you need lot of film, period. Probably M-Leicas are a  
bit more suitable to capturing *the moment* than an SLR. On the  
other hand M-Leicas kind of invite you to shoot under apalling light  
conditions which automatically means a stiff film bill.

In additon to the shutter-delay advantage pointed out by Captijn  
there is another M-forte here, this time over medium format RF's
(Mamiya 6 or 7). When you have to follow an unpredictable sequence  
of events it makes a differece to have some 38 shots per roll  
instead of some 16 or 24 at most.

Regards,

Kari Eloranta