Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Christoph C. Feldhaim on July 26, 2010, 07:53:04 am

Title: Test shooting of high res film plus loaned Leica gear ...
Post by: Christoph C. Feldhaim on July 26, 2010, 07:53:04 am
Coming Wednesday I'll have some loaned gear from the local Leica shop for testing.

It will be an M6 or MP plus a 35mm f 1:2 and a 90 mm f 1:2 most likely,
and the best is, I get it all for free, since on the long run it will be (they hope, I guess)
part of a buying decision.

I'll shoot 2 films of some High-Res b/w film (http://www.spur-photo.com/spurorth.html)
which can do 600 lpi to test this combo.

Of course I'll have a tripod with me.

I am thinking about a mix of motives, maybe Hamburg harbor or something and
some testing shots of sector stars/brick walls and such.

Any additional suggestions / ideas for that specific combo of gear/film ?
Title: Test shooting of high res film plus loaned Leica gear ...
Post by: Rob C on July 28, 2010, 09:00:23 am
Quote from: ChristophC
Coming Wednesday I'll have some loaned gear from the local Leica shop for testing.

It will be an M6 or MP plus a 35mm f 1:2 and a 90 mm f 1:2 most likely,
and the best is, I get it all for free, since on the long run it will be (they hope, I guess)
part of a buying decision.

I'll shoot 2 films of some High-Res b/w film (http://www.spur-photo.com/spurorth.html)
which can do 600 lpi to test this combo.

Of course I'll have a tripod with me.

I am thinking about a mix of motives, maybe Hamburg harbor or something and
some testing shots of sector stars/brick walls and such.

Any additional suggestions / ideas for that specific combo of gear/film ?



The very first thing I would do is forget all about shooting b/w film. You are introducing all sorts of external factors than can only make quality worse: experience with the particular film, its exposure, development and then there is the tiny matter of the enlarger and its lens and how good the eye that will focus on the paper and so on and so on.

Buy a cassette of slowest Velvia and use an incident light meter and illuminate the subject as evenly as possible. Have your favourite shots drum scanned and then examine them on the monitor at 100%. You don't need to make any prints. That is an almost zero price investment against what you will be spending if you buy the equipment.

Your objective is to see how good the machinery can be, not to check out how clever your technique; don't confuse your lighting eye or even lighting skills with the possibilities available from the camera and lenses. If you shoot with unchallenging light, then you will know that the results are as good as you can make them outwith a dry laboratory experiment.

If you do your 'mix of motifs' you are just trying to make a set of pretty pictures on borrowed equipment. Use a single subject and save yourself all the unnecessary effort of changing locations etc. Do one task at a time: check the camera, not your ability to make pretty pics - that can come later if the camera/lenses reach the quality level you want. There is good reason why people photograph boring, well-built brick walls. If your problem is to discover if or not you like a rangefinder camera, you don't even need to buy a film or leave the shop; it's as basic as that.

All any test can do is show how well the equipment works; all else is photographer input and not something you can measure through camera/lens tests.

Rob C