[Leica] Steady as she goes there, lad [y]

["gbicket" <gbicket@email.msn.com>]

Good morning LUG,

From the start, I confess I am moderately indisposed to using
tripods--meaning that I do use them, but only when I don't think I can get
the result I want without one, or using anything longer than the f4 280mm,
and quite often with that lens.

Went to the Really Right Stuff site this morning, and found an interesting
quote:

"Handholding is strictly for dead photographers:  A human pulse beat will
cause 200 microns (.008 inch) displacement for 1/10th of a second.  Assuming
a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second, this movement alone will cause a
loss of 22% of resolution with a system capable of reproducing 100 lines per
mm (lpm).  And at a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second, this performance
would degrade to only 53 lpm--a 47% waste of of what you purchased."  John
B. Williams, Lens Clarity, page 191

If Mr. Williams' science is accurate, it seems to me that many of us Leica
Users are defeating or at least compromising the purpose of the acuity of
the lenses we buy by being highly disposed towards handholding OR, and it's
an important distinction, we are starting with lenses of exceptional
sharpness,  to yield pleasing results net of the unsharpness slow speed
handholding creates.

Thinking about all this makes me think of some of the beautiful hand held
results of so many of our LUG photographers, the velvety black and whites
from Tina Manley, the venerable Ted Grant, Filipo Caroti, and so many more,
and it makes me wonder if some of the slow hand holding that many of the LUG
talk about [sometimes endlessly] is directly akin to [oil] painting in a
very real way.  The deliberate ambiguity of the way those silver crystals
get laid down in a shot of a parent holding a child by candle light creates
a sensation much like a brush stroke.

The incongruity, but the clear nexus between obsessing about lens sharpness
[often endlessly] and making photographs in situations with no hope of
capturing the sharpness of which the lens is capable, just struck me
interesting before coffee this morning.  Mastery of the obvious perhaps, but
worth a grin before engaging in the day's tasks, nevertheless.

Enjoy the light.

Greg Bicket