Without Prejudice 3

[Rob C]

But often the faults are really the best photos.

Exactly!

That's why I stay with old cameras: I can use them with a free conscience, and make their output even more distressed by adding all sorts of rubbish to disguise the flaws of perfection!

As a filmo, you knew perfectly well the delights of Tri X or the Ilford alternative; as the ultra-fine stuff was already available in Pans X and F, there was no need to feel sad or ashamed about grain: one could actually celebrate it when it was there as invited guest! Everybody who counted knew it was a considered choice. How times changed, and with them this new craze for everything pristine and beautifully sterile!

The taste of freedom is very sweet.

Having said which, I'd still thank Santa for a working M9 with mended sensor...

[Telecaster]

Not taken with an M9, though much of my pic taking this year has been. (Got it late last year from an acquaintance of a friend. The same guy who sold me his M8.2 in early 2014.) Un-mended sensor, no corrosion to date.

Anyway these two come from my little Panasonic and its spiffy 100–400mm zoom. There was a Moon/Saturn *conjunction tonight. The first is a single-capture view, at ~185mm, with Saturn no more than a fuzzy speck below and left of the Moon. The second is a composite of two pics taken at 400mm, with Saturn also up-res'd by 100% in post.

[Edit: I've added a second version of the composite image, with better adjusted black levels between the two source pics. On my TV the brighter background of the main (Moon) pic was annoyingly obvious.]

-Dave-

*Evidently this has some astrological significance. My interest, however, is merely æsthetical and geometrical. 

[Rob C]

As a matter of passing interest - passing because it isn't going to result in a purchase - did you find that M-type cameras made you feel any different about your photography, or did it all end up as part of the usual GAS thing where after the first shoot with it, you found yourself right back in square #1?

My own interest is probably based on the fact that the last time I touched a working Leica (M3) was in '65 when I left my final employer. I have never owned Leica, knowing the rangefinder system wasn't really any use for my favourite portrait focal length (for 35mm fomats) - 135mm - and when I discovered the R6 it was very far behind Nikon in vital things such as full-frame viewing. But I was tempted for a while...

Rob

[32BT]

As a matter of passing interest - passing because it isn't going to result in a purchase - did you find that M-type cameras made you feel any different about your photography, or did it all end up as part of the usual GAS thing where after the first shoot with it, you found yourself right back in square #1?

My own interest is probably based on the fact that the last time I touched a working Leica (M3) was in '65 when I left my final employer. I have never owned Leica, knowing the rangefinder system wasn't really any use for my favourite portrait focal length (for 35mm fomats) - 135mm - and when I discovered the R6 it was very far behind Nikon in vital things such as full-frame viewing. But I was tempted for a while...

Rob

Mike seems to think that Fuji is the new Leica: Lenses

Scroll or read all the way down to where he writes about the term "Fujicrons"

I know you already looked at the Fuji, but Mike has some additional experience to share about actual use, and when he gives his okay on a lens, it's pretty much gospel as far as i'm concerned.

[Telecaster]

As a matter of passing interest - passing because it isn't going to result in a purchase - did you find that M-type cameras made you feel any different about your photography, or did it all end up as part of the usual GAS thing where after the first shoot with it, you found yourself right back in square #1?

The first serious camera I learned how to use (c. 1970) was my dad's M2. Rangefinders are the type of camera I still feel most comfortable with. Doesn't have to be a Leica so long as I can focus accurately and relatively quickly with it. The first SLR I had was a Canon AE-1, which I bought with a 50/1.4 lens to take on my Middle East voyage 1983–85. After that I went back to the M2, adding a few Zeiss (Contax) RFs along the way. Around 2000 I got a used Contax Aria SLR and used that, with various lenses, along with the RFs 'til the Canon 10D came out in 2003. Nothing fancy lens-wise pre-digital: 28–135mm range, though I did (and do) have a Zeiss 21/4.5 for the Contax RFs.

In the digital era I've experimented with all kinds of stuff, including an Epson R-D1 RF, but this past year I've returned to the Leicas. Ms aren't everyone's cuppa: I think you either gel with 'em or you don't. To me everything about them is second nature. Simple controls, muscle memory. The results with the M8s and M9 are no more film-like than with any other sensor-based camera, but I really enjoy using them. With SLRs, and even EVF-equipped mirrorless stuff, I always feel the urge to use longer lenses, get more reach. With an RF even a 90mm lens feels long to me because its frame in the viewfinder is so small. Dunno if the pics I take are any "better" but I certainly enjoy the process of taking them more. And for me the process, the doing of it, is primary.

-Dave-

[Telecaster]

Taken on the 1st day of Autumn

I like this one a lot. Cool light and pleasing geometry.

-Dave-

[Rob C]

The first serious camera I learned how to use (c. 1970) was my dad's M2. Rangefinders are the type of camera I still feel most comfortable with. Doesn't have to be a Leica so long as I can focus accurately and relatively quickly with it. The first SLR I had was a Canon AE-1, which I bought with a 50/1.4 lens to take on my Middle East voyage 1983–85. After that I went back to the M2, adding a few Zeiss (Contax) RFs along the way. Around 2000 I got a used Contax Aria SLR and used that, with various lenses, along with the RFs 'til the Canon 10D came out in 2003. Nothing fancy lens-wise pre-digital: 28–135mm range, though I did (and do) have a Zeiss 21/4.5 for the Contax RFs.

In the digital era I've experimented with all kinds of stuff, including an Epson R-D1 RF, but this past year I've returned to the Leicas. Ms aren't everyone's cuppa: I think you either gel with 'em or you don't. To me everything about them is second nature. Simple controls, muscle memory. The results with the M8s and M9 are no more film-like than with any other sensor-based camera, but I really enjoy using them. With SLRs, and even EVF-equipped mirrorless stuff, I always feel the urge to use longer lenses, get more reach. With an RF even a 90mm lens feels long to me because its frame in the viewfinder is so small. Dunno if the pics I take are any "better" but I certainly enjoy the process of taking them more. And for me the process, the doing of it, is primary.

-Dave-

Hi Dave,

Yes, I can see that if you more or less grew up with Leicas around then you'd naturally go there, too. Nice way to start your photography!

I mentioned finding a different look to work I printed from Leica wides, and I also found that trannies looked different from Leica. I once had to make some Cibachromes from some Leica fashion shots made, I was told, by John Swannell, erstwhile Bailey assistant. The colours were unlike my Nikon work.

http://www.modelpix.com/retroframes.html

Read the introduction, and have a smile at the man's quest for colour similarity! I think all of us have had searches for what may be a magic ingredient in another's work, but does it really exist? I suspect not; if anything, it's that person's overall technique and eye for what to photograph.

Rob

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Good thing he is behind the bars.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Anyway these two come from my little Panasonic and its spiffy 100–400mm zoom. There was a Moon/Saturn *conjunction tonight. The first is a single-capture view, at ~185mm, with Saturn no more than a fuzzy speck below and left of the Moon. The second is a composite of two pics taken at 400mm, with Saturn also up-res'd by 100% in post...

You can take such a sharp image of Saturn at 800mm (even if at 100%)? That wasn't a cutout of a magazine illustration of Saturn? If true, it is amazing what we can do today with cameras and lenses (and software).

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Been to a friend's al fresco concert (and witnessed the sky):

[degrub]

You can take such a sharp image of Saturn at 800mm (even if at 100%)? That wasn't a cutout of a magazine illustration of Saturn? If true, it is amazing what we can do today with cameras and lenses (and software).

The hard part is keeping the lens on target given the rotation of the earth and loss of resolving power from atmospheric distortion.

[GrahamBy]

Everybody who counted knew it was a considered choice. How times changed, and with them this new craze for everything pristine and beautifully sterile!

I think "craze" best describes the rush to use filters to smear fake grain over a clean image, or to rush back to use film because it's supposed more "artistic"... but we can disagree.

Yesterday I saw a quote from Ralf Gibson, who was admittedly flogging Leica's at the time: that the Monochrom (read: any good digital camera) allowed him to make a photo of anything he could see, and consequently he had no further interest in film.

It would be provoctive of me to suggest that a Leica Monochrom is an "old camera" in that it is built a generation behind what is currently possible, thereby aquiring "character" of the same sort found in the dubious electricals of Italian motorcycles of my youth...

[32BT]

Rob

Inner madness?

[Jeremy Roussak]

Been to a friend's al fresco concert (and witnessed the sky):

Hell of a sky!

Jeremy

[Rob C]

Inner madness?

Or, fear of the Black Hole?

;-)

Rob

[Telecaster]

You can take such a sharp image of Saturn at 800mm (even if at 100%)? That wasn't a cutout of a magazine illustration of Saturn? If true, it is amazing what we can do today with cameras and lenses (and software).

Handheld too! ISO 1600. I've attached a pre-upres crop of the Saturn pic. (Oops, had to convert the 16-bit TIF to JPEG first.)

-Dave-

[Telecaster]

I think all of us have had searches for what may be a magic ingredient in another's work, but does it really exist? I suspect not; if anything, it's that person's overall technique and eye for what to photograph.

Yes, Malinowski. Only vaguely familiar with him. Don't know Giacobetti at all.

Guitardom is full of "If I get the kind of guitar xxxx has I'll be able to play like xxxx!" It's an odd kind of naïveté. Maybe, if you're fortunate, in that quest to be someone else you'll find yourself.

Leica has been really good at maintaining a consistent look across their rangefinder lens line since the late '60s/early '70s. Ironically this coincided with their loss of market share (for other reasons) to SLRs. I really like the '70s & '80s Walter Mandler lens designs. He had to do the best he could given the financial constraints he was under.

-Dave-

[32BT]

Exquisitely restored Citroën Traction Avant

[Rob C]

If it hasn't got a "75" plate, then it's worthless, even if it is a tarted sister to Maigret's wheels.

That's exactly the sort of critique at which Without Prejudice excels: frank, honest, fair, open-minded and without a soupçon of pretentiousness. I feel proud to be a cog of this mighty thing, this wheel of life as she is lived.

Rob

[32BT]

I just checked, she's from 56. I think maybe the shine of the bodypaint isn't zeitgeistgenau. Or maybe that's just because my first memory of this car was in the barn of my grandpa where he used to keep one of those once-to-be-restored projects. I was maybe 4 years old and my brother and I would pretend play driving great distances to unknown destinations, often through pretend rain because the coolest thing to us was the windscreenwhipers that would be handoperated from inside the car. Not sure how that would pan out in reality...