Photomethods letter to the editor

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

I was looking through a file of Leica stuff and ran into this "Letter to
the Editor." I scanned it in and ran it through an OCR program so I
wouldn't have to type it in. I thought it was interesting.

Jim
_______________________________________________________

Leica or Not

Because your magazine is titled Photomethods, and no doubt is interested in
such methods, I'm compelled to comment on the methods used by Bruce and Ken
Zuckerman in photographig the Dead Sea Scrolls (August 1990). Their article
suggests that they were successful in spite of variability in negative
density, and the need to make a trial exposure with Polaroid film, and they
talk about fine tuning, etc.

I once had a similar problem as a research scientist, which had stumped the
local photo lab, trying to retrieve information using view cameras and
process lenses to no avail. They had to photograph a 40-inch-square
computer-generated printout and reduce it to a one-inch-square image
without resolution or contrast loss. They concluded that using the most
expensive apochromatic lenses couldn't hack it, consequently nothing else
could come even close.

I learned of their plight and begged for a chance to fail. They sneered but
obliged, and I gave them exactly what they wanted: a one-inch-square image
on 35mm film. They were flabbergasted.

Pedestrian photographers are sometimes more influenced by gadgetry than
total system performance when considering a camera. They're usually
oblivious of the significance of modulation transfer functions or the least
circle of confusion of a given lens, but that's where the quality lies, and
in the ability of the complete system to have the negative in the image
plane, and the image sharply focused on the negative. The difference in
0.01 mm degrades the image. It's virtually impossible to mass-produce
cameras to near zero tolerance that is the ideal, but economically
disastrous situation.

In 1924, a successful microscope manufacturing company ventured into the
camera market. They knew people would pay a lot more money for a
microscopic objective that produced a clearer image. In carrying this
philosophy into photography, it was obvious that sharper lenses meant
greater enlargeability. Therefore, a high-quality lens does not require a
large format in order to produce large pictures. Consequently, the first
question they asked was, "What is the information capacity of the negative
material?" Having found this, they set forth to design lenses to utilize
that capacity. Back in 1924, they were able to obtain as much information
on a 35mm neg as one could expect to get on 6x9cm. Their quality has
improved consistently over the years, producing optics that lead the field;
because now there are hundreds of would-be imitators, any of their products
will give you a "good" 3=BDx5 photo~ut only 20 will give you a good 5x7; 10
might give you a good 8xlO; five will give you a good 16x20; three will
give you a good 20x30. But unless extraordinary quality control is in
force, only one camera can consistently give you images that used to be
seen in Kodak's Colorama in New York City's Grand Central Station, some
20x60 feet, from a 35mm negative, a Leica negative, that is.

How much easier Bruce and Ken's job could have been if they had a Leica R6
and the lOOmm Apo Macro f/2.8. The savings in film and time could buy them
one. Nothing can even come close to this combination.

W.B. Greene Vero Beach FL