Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/11/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'm with Tina. Ms. Kirkwood's photographs are wonderful, charming, I'm delighted to have been introduced to her work, and I left her a compliment on her website to that effect. But it's also true that they were not done with a Leica. When I viewed them on my phone, I couldn't tell, but when I opened them on my laptop, I thought they didn't look like Leica images. Speaking purely from an image-quality standpoint, the images appeared to have something missing, perhaps the micro contrast or the Leica bokeh, the same thing I noticed long ago when in all innocence I sold my M3 and bought a Nikon F and couldn't figure out why the images looked so indistinct and fuzzy by comparison. So? So what if photographs posted on LUG were not made with a Leica? Well, I'm here to see what others are doing with the Leica not with Nikons or Canons or Pentaxes or Olympuses or Sonys or ANYthing other than Leica. Posting non-Leica photgraphs is akin to hijacking a thread: interesting twists and turns off the topic might happen, but it's not on the topic. How many photographs have to be opened and how many captions have to be checked to see whether the photograph was taken with a Leica? Judging by the info accompanying the photographs, a variety of cameras have been used for images posted. Isn't there a users group for those other cameras? I've been shooting literally thousands of photographs with my year-or-so-old Fujifilm X-100. I'm very impressed with this little marvel. And I will resist the temptation to post them here. Have any of you had the experience of shooting with a digital camera, for whatever reason -- perhaps you shoot weddings, and you've decided that having a Canon or Nikon DSLR with autoeverything will guarantee that you are ready for everything -- and then you return to your Leica film camera and discover that you prefer the portraits taken with the Leica to those with all your other cameras? I have had this happen to me, and I think it might be because I'm capturing the expressions I saw that motivated me to go "click." I can't be positive because perusing one's own photographs is hardly a scientific test. Judging the quality of a portrait is subjective; and since I know that I took it with a Leica, perhaps I'm subconsciously confirming that all that money spent on Leicas and film was justified because, by Jove, I was right, such marvelous photographs can be taken ONLY with a Leica, were it not for my extravagance, not to mention good judgment, this marvelous work of art before me would not exist. I'm speaking about Leica film cameras, by the way, which are justly famous for their almost nonexistent and most likely insignificant shutter lag. I have no experience with Leica digital M cameras, and I'm withholding judgment on them until I can get the shutter-lag issue settled to my satisfaction. For decades Leica spoke in very positive terms about the short delay between pressing the shutter release and the movement of the shutter. Now that the digital M cameras have long shutter-lag times even when compared to DSLRs, suddenly we're hearing that shutter lag doesn't matter, that nobody notices it. Really? Nobody? For capturing fleeting expressions in a portrait session, nobody has noticed it? -----Original Message----- From: Tina Manley Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 5:12 AM To: Leica Users Group Subject: Re: [Leica] Kate Kirkwood and Leica Liker Not a Leica user: *Favorite Street Camera & Lens:* Simply what I have: A Nikon D60 with a Nikkor 18-55mm lens. I didn't think those looked like Leica photos. Tina On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 1:10 AM, Gerry Walden <gerry.walden at me.com> wrote: > A friend pointed me to the quirky landscape work of Leica user Kate > Kirkwood on the web site Leica Liker and I ilked what I saw. Maybe you > will > too: > > > http://leicaliker.com/2012/11/02/13-kate-kirkwood-lake-district-united-kingdom-street-photographer/ > > Gerry > > Gerry Walden > +44 (0)23 8046 3076 or > +44 (0)797 287 7932 > www.gwpics.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > -- Tina Manley, ASMP www.tinamanley.com _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information -----Original Message----- From: Tina Manley Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 5:12 AM To: Leica Users Group Subject: Re: [Leica] Kate Kirkwood and Leica Liker Not a Leica user: *Favorite Street Camera & Lens:* Simply what I have: A Nikon D60 with a Nikkor 18-55mm lens. I didn't think those looked like Leica photos. Tina On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 1:10 AM, Gerry Walden <gerry.walden at me.com> wrote: > A friend pointed me to the quirky landscape work of Leica user Kate > Kirkwood on the web site Leica Liker and I ilked what I saw. Maybe you > will > too: > > > http://leicaliker.com/2012/11/02/13-kate-kirkwood-lake-district-united-kingdom-street-photographer/ > > Gerry > > Gerry Walden > +44 (0)23 8046 3076 or > +44 (0)797 287 7932 > www.gwpics.com > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > -- Tina Manley, ASMP www.tinamanley.com _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information