[Leica] All cats are grey at f8

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

There are two arguments going on here: Rabs is saying that shooting wide
open all the time is a fad of sorts and inapplicable much of the time to
what a professional and, in his view, what an artist needs to accomplish in
his/her photographs. Ok, matter of opinion, I happen to agree with him in so
far as I tend to find bokeh about as interesting as grits. Or as we Italians
say, polenta. There are things you can do with it and sometimes it's
magnificent but most of the time I'm more interested in what the photograph
reveals than what it (most artfully perhaps) obscures.

But there is a more important, not-mere-opinion argument here too, which is
the assertion back up by citation of actual tests that, from f4 of 5.6 to
f16, there is so little difference in prime lenses there's no reason to buy
a Leica.

So I have to put in my 50-lire coin, which you used to have to have to use
the elevator in most apartment buildings in Rome.

Many folks on the LUG are contradictory souls who like to say "why the only
solution is to get off your ass and go hang out the bottom of a helicopter
and shoot shoot shoot and then you'll know what's what blah blah blah," at
the same time they're spouting pure doctrine unsupported by the vast
majority of actual experience but religiously appealing  -- for instance, in
a recent colloquy, that the old rules of photography plus the laws of
physics make it invariably  that you need to stop down considerably on a
Panasonic G camera (a light high quality digital camera)  to accomodate a
45mm lens' tendency to shake.... except despite the obvious laws of physics
and book larnin' that make this appear to be true I know empirically from
shooting that it just ain't. Not that camera at that lens size, no way.)
90mm lens, yes. 45mm lens, no.

So I don't care what the labs say about all lenses at 5.6 looking alike: I
know empirically that they don't.  Remember this part: Not To Me.  None of
us sees the same way as any other one of us.  The mood or contrast or
sharpness or color of a photgraph: we see all of them with sufficient
differences to keep bar tabs oepn and llines ppumpintrBefore I went to
digital I shot basically three cameras in film: a Nikon FE2, a Minolta XD-11
(ahhhh), and a Leica CL (which was lost so it was followed by a  Bessa R2).
Nikon Nikkor manual focus lenses, Minolta MD and MC manual focus lenses, and
a Leica 40mm Summicron-C (1973), a 50 mm Summicron (rigid chrome, late
1950s) and a 90mm f/4 Elmar-C. Later I added a CV 21/4.

Now leaving aside Leica and rangefinders in general,the first interesting
thing to me, having heard of Nikon's reputation in glass and the superiority
of its cameras (the latter contention seems generally true: of Minoltas,
ONLY the XD-11 struck me as a great camera; all the others offered trouble
of one kind or another) was the discovery that the Minolta lenses in the
same sizes were frequently better than the Nikons,to my eye. More contrast,
deeper and sharper. This was particulary true at 24, 35, 50 and 135 and
200mm -- although at 50/2 and 200/4 it was a Very Close race. ) And the
Leicas were in those regards (contrast, sharpness) in another league all
together.  This was true at all the apertures I shot at which generally were
between f./4 and f/8 or if it was particularly sunny out, f 11.  The Nikons
were better in color than in B & W, in which Minolta and Leica both kicked
Nikon's butt.

Those lenses looked different and handled the light differently and that's
all there was to it. but of course you could compare them becaue you had the
same film most of the time.  Once you go to different sensors all bets are
off.

But I mean a 35mm Summicron ASPH is the same as a Pentax 35mm at f/8?
C'mon. Or as we say in NYC: Cummmaaa, forget about it.

Vince






On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 10:45 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at 
rabinergroup.com>wrote:

> > "Yeah-but"   when you don't have a client, f2 is more fun.
> > --
> > Regards,
> >
> > Sonny
>
>
> "Yeah-but"
> Getting a strong effective photographic is more fun them embodying a
> rhetorical exercise. F wide open and be there.
> - sometimes you can go with the extreme selective focus approach in other
> words wide open. But more often not as you are looking at just what you
> need
> in focus in an image and just what you don't. And you use the f stop to get
> that. And it can  be any f stop on the scale.
>
> [Rabs]
> Mark William Rabiner
>
>
>
>
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