Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/09/27

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Subject: [Leica] Unsharp with 90mm
From: kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 22:38:21 -0700
References: <A03DF638-41EC-46C8-B701-934C176C335F@acm.org> <7F744EDC-3CA9-4738-A513-D648187CCBFE@gmail.com>

Thanks to everyone who responded to my query. I particularly like Bob's 
suggestion to use Auto ISO, a facility I had not thought of using. That's 
almost an analog of shutter speed preferred mode, even better, because you 
get to choose the aperture also.

I was so puzzled, because the test shots I did just before writing to the 
LUG were hand held, but I was concentrating on being steady, not on the 
subject, so I would guess that shooting at real subjects and thinking about 
the subject and the framing does not necessarily lead to steadiness.

This tempts me to tell a story. Some time in the early 1940's, living in 
Chicago, I bought a small 35mm camera called, I think, a Wirgin. I also 
think it was at a store in the Loop called Central Camera. I felt lucky, 
because cameras were damn hard to find then.

I took it to New York on vacation and shot a set Kodachromes in a friend's 
garden. I'm sure I used a shutter speed that was commonly considered ok for 
hand-held: 1/25. When returned to Chicago, I took the camera and slides in 
to work to show to a colleague. It was a Manhattan project lab, and one 
security guard wagged a finger at me for bringing in a forbidden camera, but 
he made no more of it. Well, my friend started looking at the slides with a 
20X magnifier and said: "These aren't sharp; your camera is no good." Then, 
when he came to the last one, he said: "Hey, this one is sharp." The reason 
was that the sun had been going down, and the last slide was shot on a 
tripod.

I was so traumatized by that experience that my minimum speed for for 
hand-held  became 1/250 for years! It was a surprise to me to find that I 
could get sharp pictures at 1/25 and even 1/15 if I was lucky with the M9 
and a 35mm lens.

Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.




On Sep 27, 2013, at 11:56 AM, Bob Adler <rgacpa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Herb,
> 
> Since you seem satisfied with the post Leica calibration test shots, my 
> guess is it is camera shake caused by the longer lens and heat of the 
> moment. My suggestion would be to manually set the shutter speed at 1/250 
> or higher, set the ISO via the menu to AUTO with the max ISO being your 
> limit of tolerance (maybe 1200 for daylight shooting, higher for indoors), 
> and then simply choose the f/stop as you would on aperture priority (which 
> is what you use now probably). So really no change in your shooting style. 
> 
> The only thing I am unsure of on the M9 is whether exposure compensation 
> still works when using manual mode. So you may have to meter the way older 
> M film cameras did (M6 and after with the built in meter) by finding an 
> area to meter and depressing the shutter half way and reframe. Just watch 
> your histogram to avoid over exposure.  
> 
> Walk around and shoot a few flowers and see what you think. 
> Best,
> Bob
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Sep 27, 2013, at 10:41 AM, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:
> 
>> Since 99,9% of my use of my M9 (and my M6 years ago) has been with a 35mm 
>> Summicron, I confess to being a rank amateur when it comes to the 90mm 
>> Chron. After being irritated by too many soft-focus shots with the 90, I 
>> did a careful test of a fence from about 12 feet and found that the 
>> rangefinder/lens coupling was slightly off. So I sent it in to Leica, got 
>> it back about $350 later, checked out out and found it to be spot on.
>> 
>> OK, now here's my experience. When I went to the first of two outdoor 
>> band concerts in a park, a couple did some very spectacular dancing to 
>> the music and I failed to get a picture. So, for the next concert, I 
>> brought my 90mm so that I wouldn't have to get under their noses or have 
>> to do an extreme crop. 
>> 
>> Well, the dancing couple didn't appear, but I took a lot of snapshots and 
>> every one of them came out very fuzzy. I don't have a record of shutter 
>> speeds or f numbers, but I was outdoors at reasonable ISO and lighting, 
>> so I assume the I was probably around f/8/of f/5.6 and probably around 
>> 1/250. I should have had a depth of field of about twelve feet or more 
>> for some of those shots and at least two feet for the close couple I 
>> took. None of them appeared to be sharp anywhere.
>> 
>> Could it be the increase in the effect of camera shake with the longer 
>> lens?  I would have thought that the inertia from the extra weight of the 
>> lens would have compensated. Yesterday, wondering if the lens had 
>> mysteriously lost its calibration, I did a hand-held test at 12, 50, and 
>> essentially infinity feet and the pictures were needle sharp. However, to 
>> be critical, I did the test at f/2, so I got pretty high shutter speeds.
>> 
>> Any advice from users of longer lenses on Leica M series? 
>> 
>> Herbert Kanner
>> kanner at acm.org
>> 650-326-8204
>> 
>> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information



Replies: Reply from rgacpa at gmail.com (Bob Adler) ([Leica] Unsharp with 90mm)
In reply to: Message from kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner) ([Leica] Unsharp with 90mm)
Message from rgacpa at gmail.com (Bob Adler) ([Leica] Unsharp with 90mm)