[Leica] Recent photo trip to Olympic National Park

["Mark E Davison" <Mark_E_Davison@email.msn.com>]

Just got back from a beautiful weekend at Olympic National Park.
Some thoughts on the photography:

1) I took my Olympus SLR system, thinking I would be doing lots of macro
stuff. Wish I had brought the M6, because the rain forest is definitely a
place of available darkness. In many places incident meter readings were 10
stops darker than sunny 16 on the forest floor (and this is on a sunny day).
Many of the slides have focus just a little bit off, which is typical of how
my 46 year old eyes interact with a wide angle lens and an SLR in dim light.

2) its amazing how often the 24mm lens was just the right focal length for
the scene I had in my mind's eye. And you can't step back in the forest--you
end up running into a tree or falling over a cliff.

3) I wish I had brought color print film rather than Ektachrome 100 color
slide film.  Typical scene brightness range in the forest was about 6 stops,
as the sun would filter in and light up one side of the tree trunks. The
slides all either have bleached highlights, or inky black shadows.

4) At Soleduck Falls (I am not making the name up!) the tourists were
snapping away with their point and shoot cameras, and their little onboard
flash guns were going off, trying to light up the face of the falls 30 feet
away. It made me think that the current crop of point and shoots are too
specialized. They take great flash snap shots of people (if you don't mind
the startled-deer aesthetics), but they are often worthless for scenery. Why
can't we bring back the reasonable-cost pocket range finders of the 70's
(like the Olympus RC or the Cannonette)? At least then you have complete
manual override or everything if you want it, and you have optical focus
available.

The autofocus wars on the LUG have often overlooked the plight of the
compact camera user, who has no optical focus alternative when the active
autofocus fails, which it does all too often. But who wants to photograph
water, wet rocks, flowers or any of that?

All in all I had a good time, but wish I'd taken the Leica.


Mark Davison