Re: [Leica] Cool Leica Pictures

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

Eric Welch wrote:
> >To be even more radical: none of the images you show on your site (nor
> >any of the images I would be able to show on a site of my own) would
> >render any differently if you had used cheap P&S hardware instead of
> 
> I dare you to use a point and shoot and come even close to most of the
> pictures on my web site. For example the stained glass. Get the exposure
> right with a P&S. Or my night football. Or any of the other pictures that
> require lenses of 2.8 at 300mm, or anything else.

I was mentioning the rendition of the image, not the possibility of
shooting the picture or not. I am still convinced a lot of middle range
P&S could have got the exposure right on the stained glass pictures.
None of those allow 300mm f2.8 shots of football games of course, but
that is not the point: any SLR based digital camera can provide those at
a more than sufficient quality level for Web publishing. But they do not
(yet) have any price advantage on the emulsion. Some of the pictures on
site would require using 800 ISO film with a Stylus Epic at f2.8, again
with a level of WEB quality and relevance comparable to 400 ISO with an
Asph lens at f2.

My argument is not to submit your images to criticism, but to
communicate the questions I ask myself regarding the dangers of the Web
as a media to disseminate some types of pictures. It can be destructive
and counter-productive, for the reasons I mentionned in earlier posts.
 
> But you are right in the main point of image quality on the web. It doesn't
> show the potential that Leica produces. But then we can get too obsessive
> about minutia of image quality and miss the "real" message the picture
> offers. And it's mostly for that reason I put my pictures on the web.
> Anyone who doesn't think that isn't the MAIN point to a photograph, well,
> I'm not interested in their opinion.

I think we all agree with that. I also think that the "real" message of
most pictures we are refering to does not require the "potential that
Leica produces" IF the media of visualisation is the Web as it is today.
It was within this LUG group and our exchanges about "glow",
"resolution", "contrast", "boke", "curvature of field", "colour
rendition", etc, that I raised my question. All these notions are
totally destroyed by Web technology. We do all spend a lot of time in
our forums "counting rivets", BTW.

Friendly regards,
Alan.
Brussels, Belgium.