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

[Dan Cardish <dcardish@microtec.net>]

This reminds me of a study which proved that a major league baseball player
is simply unable to react fast enough to hit a pitched ball, considering
how quickly it takes the ball to arrive at home plate.  

And yet, they do hit them.

dan c.

At 07:19 AM 08-10-00 -0400, gbicket wrote:
>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
>
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