Are we Leica users kidding ourselves??

Leica's are great to use.
Digital output from my Canon 40d can be however superior to film. But it never touches me as the output from film does. I therefore use film more and more again. It just matches with the image I had in mind when I made it. Digital never does. Might be my insufficient skills with digital and/or photoshop.
decided that I like film more, Leica's and also Hasselblad are for me the way to go because they give me the best in IQ and reliability. Period.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema
 
Al Kaplan said:
Trying to find somebody these days who is a master printer at a reasonable price? You want somebody who understands what you're trying to do and what you're expecting to portray with the image. Even if you are the one who shot the image you might make 4 or 5 or more variations before you get what you really want. You won't have many negatives that'll print 8x10 through a number 2 filter, 10 seconds at f/8, and you're done. Not if you want a great print compared to a print that's good enough for your company's newsletter. While it's true that some photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson didn't do their own printing he worked with just one printer for many years and his photographs have a light airy feel to them. The printer knew what Henri wanted. At the other extreme W. Eugene Smith insisted on doing his own printing and would often work for hours printing just one image until he arrived at a print that met his standards, with lots of dark areas with a hint of detail and he'd apply potassium ferracyanide to to lighten some areas while bleaching others back to pure white.

We all do a lot of burning in and dodging, often darkening the edges a bit compared to the majority of the picture. Many of us will use several different variable contrast filters on the same print to change the contrast in various areas of the picture, or go for an essentially low contrast image with a number 1 or 2 filter throughout the lighter and mid tones, then give just enough additional overall exposure through the number 4 filter to get the blacks black rather than dark grey. Like choosing your exposure in the camera it all becomes instinctive after awhile. You give the same negative to five printers and they'll give you five different images because they each see different things in the image. They want to impose their vision on the photograph because they have no idea what your vision is.
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I am glad there are still a few printers who can do a good job. The best way is to enclose a 5x5 in (in the case of 120 film 6x6 negs, 5x7 in the case of 135, 6x45, 6x7 or 6x9) machine print with a note of your requirements. Those printers who have done many of your enlargements before will know what to do.
 
In the end the film Leica is a very well made reliable precision instrument and film does some things much better, faster, and simpler than digital. Not EVERYTHING, but some things. You have to ask yourself what you want to get in the way of a photograph, what the end use is, and to a lesser extent the economics involved. The M2 I was shooting last night I bought at least third hand from a PJ who'd just shot both the Republican and Democratic coneventions with it back in 1972. She'd bought it from another photographer I knew. He had bought it to use at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. I was at Browne's Photo Center the day he bought it and it was a used camera then. When I bought it a new M2 was about $250 and I got this one for $100. In today's money that would be perhaps $500. It's been in continuous use since then, had one CLA for no particular good reason beyond that it was going to be opened up to have the flash contacts changed to M4 style. I think Dan's camera repair charged me under $100 for the work about 30 years ago. In all those years, it never needed a battery...LOL...or any other repair or adjustment. So how is that expensive? Here's a fifty year old camera still working like new. The cost figures out to? Less than ten cents a week. I could make a few phone calls and very easily sell it this afternoon for $500. I like using the best and I just love doing it for free.
 
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"Are we Leica users kidding ourselves?"

I won't speak for anyone else here.
My photography hasn't improved by the use of Leicas (M2,M4-P) but it hasn't gotten any worse either. When I first got my Leicas in the early '80s, I was a little consumed by the Leica religion and that somehow the camera could help channel Capa or Cartier-Bresson through me, but that wasn't the case.

For myself, there may be an advantage in having a completely manual camera when I must consider the whole affair, not just composition. No question that these are great little cameras, especially if you already own a few.
 
I have to say, that my style of photography has changed or is different when using cameras without a view through the lens.

At least I feel I used to try to get a shallow depth of field and was too much focused on the bokeh and dof when using SLR cameras. Now with RF or viewfinder cameras I am focusing more on the whole thing: subject, composition, choosing the aperture...

Of course this is not because SLR's suck. It is just my own fault and I would probably do just fine now with SLR too, but somehow I think the change, which happened because of other benefits of a rangefinder camera, helped me advance as a photographer. And I am not saying this would happen for everyone...
 
I forgot to mention the looks I get with that leica in my hand.Id have people pause and stare for a second at the M6 in my hand.It was kind of cool.
 
Ive got a great Hasselblad and its got a great mirror-slap. I now also have a Makina 67 that has great glass and other attributes but cannot get a sharp image below 1/60th (generally) handheld.

My Leica...Ive shot at 1/15 and produced sharp images. I would say the Leica did improve my images because of its RF focusing. Previously I got too many blurry shots. With my 'Blad and F6 I have to play to get it sharp into focus and then its an educated guess, especially wide open.

For me, the Leica has proven itself. Sharp in-focus fotos, fabulous low light shooting capabilities.

Two yrs ago shooting in a dimly lite church in Costa Rica shooting at 1/15 w/ 50mm Lux pre-asph I was certain my shots would be blurred. To my surprise the fotos were tack sharp. But more than tack sharp, the dark areas went into the light areas smoothly which I have yet to understand.
 
It is true, that an M7 or a Zeiss Ikon can help shooting on the run. It is not true that scanned negs cannot be printed at a high quality. In B&W the digital is still way behind scanned film. Scan on a CS 9000, use the best inkjet printer and fibre papers and you will not regret that for sure.
 
mfogiel said:
It is true, that an M7 or a Zeiss Ikon can help shooting on the run. It is not true that scanned negs cannot be printed at a high quality. In B&W the digital is still way behind scanned film. Scan on a CS 9000, use the best inkjet printer and fibre papers and you will not regret that for sure.
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High quality is always a relative thing, especially in art etc. ;)

I like film cameras and shooting with them and I even like the darkroom stuff. Scanning is not too bad either...

But just curious, Im interested to see some great digital prints just to compare, because so far even in relatively big finnish exhibitions, the overall image quality and look (in "artistic" ways) seems to be better with wet prints (and they are usually recognizable). I'm not saying digital prints couldn't be great and even better, but I have not seen those yet. Maybe most of the prints I've seen, have been "bulk stuff"...

I loved Nan Goldin's exhibition in the modern arts museum of Helsinki. Those were all Ilfochrome prints except for a slide show.
 
Till I read all the way to the end I sort of doubt that I am addressing the original posters questions...

But on the question of film or digital...

I just spent a the better part of two days helping a fellow photographer post process a fashion shoot that was shot on digital and to be printed in B&W. What a tedious process, after editing 1000 images down to about 50, then each image had to be converted, tweaked, manipulated, layered, sharpened, dodged, burned, noise added to look like grain, etc and etc, and then we still struggled to get the required tones and details. A ridiculous and stressful exercise that could been done in a few hours if he would simply loaded a camera with Plus-X and developed in D76 Stock.

I am hardly anti-digital, but since I shoot B&W almost exclusively, film still does this better than digital in my experience.

Wet prints or digital prints... I prefer wet prints, but I had to eat my words recently when I seen the results of some Lambda prints. To be honest, dodging, burning, and dealing with scratches is a lot easier with Photoshop than an enlarger.

To me, digital is an amazing medium that old photographers would have given an arm and a leg to get their hands on.

I know many artists that keep a a box of oil paints even though they prefer watercolors... so why not use digital and film.
 
Are we Leica users kidding ourselves?

Are we Leica users kidding ourselves?

Hello everybody. I also share the opinion, that for to be able to truly enjoy a Leica (or any good camera, by the way), you need to go through the trouble of learning (and enjoying) to print yourself. You can't, or shouldn't, expect that a cheap supermarket print, or maybe even an expensive professional lab, can turn a Work of Art of your negative. For that you first need a good (technically speaking) and interesting (visually speaking) negative. That is only the beginning. Then, as some already said, you need to learn the rest of the trade. All in all, it means lots of learning, frustration, re-learning, perseverance. Picking up a brush full of colour and doing some strokes in a canvas doesn't make us artists, or am I wrong on that one? In my opinion, you also still need to learn the language of the medium, study the work of other photographers you admire, ask yourself lots of questions, learn to be selfcritical. I enjoy asking people what distinguishes good photographers from bad photographers. My answer is simple: the good ones throw away their trash! You should try to develop a certain personal vision, YOUR photographic language. I don't mean creating a gimmick and using it till exaustion, like so many self-called "artists" try to do. Be honest to yourself, be prepared for some years of hard, and hopefully rewarding, work. Have fun and passion while you are at it.
Your Leica M (or your Rollei, Hasselblad, Contax, Canon, Nikon, Voigtländer, etc), are very capable instruments to help you pursuing your path. Choose them and use them according to your style, according to the task at end, to the goal you want to achieve. No camera is perfect for everything. I surelly love my Leica-M's, but I surelly won't pick up them for Architectural Photography. I can use better (meaning more specialized) cameras for the task.
I also think that we finally should stop analysing digital versus analog, in the sense of asking wich is better. Both are valid mediums, we shouldn't go confusing one with other. They better complement one another. That's my humble opinion.
Going to your main question: don't fool yourself, no camera brand per si makes a better photographer of yourself. Those cameras can surelly help, but it is you who has to lead the way. Using other people's analogies, the various cars take you to the destination, but I add that the driver is you! Maybe if you are a very healthy person, maybe then you can hire a good driver=competent printer. But also then, you will only be driven... Why have only half of the fun, when you can have the whole fun?
By the way: I am also not very happy with the marriage of b&w film and scanners...At least in 35 mm... (In large format it looks a little better). But maybe I didn't do enough homework, I know that I am not that good at it. After all it is also rather boring. Why not go directly to the wet darkroom?
One last word: one of the things a like in photography is just the action of doing it. All this ritual procedures, all this choices that need to be made, all this thinking, all this building-up of an image. That's why I love manual-analogic cameras, that's why I love Leicas, or Hasselblads(the old ones, I never tried out a digital one), or Rolleis, or large format, or...or... Using auto-everything cameras might be very fun and bring you very good results. That's true. But I personally tend to get lazy and loose some of my awareness, some of my "inner-light", some of the "fun". After all I like to load film, I like to rewind it, I like it's physical presence. I came to the point, were I even enjoy to use an old Exakta, with it's aukward mechanism, it's left-hand shutter release, it's everything the "other way philosophy". It keeps me awaken, makes me use my brain, is not easy to acomplish. The fun just lasts longer. Have a nice time and a Good Year. Rui
 
Rui Morais de Sousa said:
Hello everybody. I also share the opinion, that for to be able to truly enjoy a Leica (or any good camera, by the way), you need to go through the trouble of learning (and enjoying) to print yourself. You can't, or shouldn't, expect that a cheap supermarket print, or maybe even an expensive professional lab, can turn a Work of Art of your negative. For that you first need a good (technically speaking) and interesting (visually speaking) negative. That is only the beginning. Then, as some already said, you need to learn the rest of the trade. All in all, it means lots of learning, frustration, re-learning, perseverance. Picking up a brush full of colour and doing some strokes in a canvas doesn't make us artists, or am I wrong on that one? In my opinion, you also still need to learn the language of the medium, study the work of other photographers you admire, ask yourself lots of questions, learn to be selfcritical. I enjoy asking people what distinguishes good photographers from bad photographers. My answer is simple: the good ones throw away their trash! You should try to develop a certain personal vision, YOUR photographic language. I don't mean creating a gimmick and using it till exaustion, like so many self-called "artists" try to do. Be honest to yourself, be prepared for some years of hard, and hopefully rewarding, work. Have fun and passion while you are at it.
Your Leica M (or your Rollei, Hasselblad, Contax, Canon, Nikon, Voigtländer, etc), are very capable instruments to help you pursuing your path. Choose them and use them according to your style, according to the task at end, to the goal you want to achieve. No camera is perfect for everything. I surelly love my Leica-M's, but I surelly won't pick up them for Architectural Photography. I can use better (meaning more specialized) cameras for the task.
I also think that we finally should stop analysing digital versus analog, in the sense of asking wich is better. Both are valid mediums, we shouldn't go confusing one with other. They better complement one another. That's my humble opinion.
Going to your main question: don't fool yourself, no camera brand per si makes a better photographer of yourself. Those cameras can surelly help, but it is you who has to lead the way. Using other people's analogies, the various cars take you to the destination, but I add that the driver is you! Maybe if you are a very healthy person, maybe then you can hire a good driver=competent printer. But also then, you will only be driven... Why have only half of the fun, when you can have the whole fun?
By the way: I am also not very happy with the marriage of b&w film and scanners...At least in 35 mm... (In large format it looks a little better). But maybe I didn't do enough homework, I know that I am not that good at it. After all it is also rather boring. Why not go directly to the wet darkroom?
One last word: one of the things a like in photography is just the action of doing it. All this ritual procedures, all this choices that need to be made, all this thinking, all this building-up of an image. That's why I love manual-analogic cameras, that's why I love Leicas, or Hasselblads(the old ones, I never tried out a digital one), or Rolleis, or large format, or...or... Using auto-everything cameras might be very fun and bring you very good results. That's true. But I personally tend to get lazy and loose some of my awareness, some of my "inner-light", some of the "fun". After all I like to load film, I like to rewind it, I like it's physical presence. I came to the point, were I even enjoy to use an old Exakta, with it's aukward mechanism, it's left-hand shutter release, it's everything the "other way philosophy". It keeps me awaken, makes me use my brain, is not easy to acomplish. The fun just lasts longer. Have a nice time and a Good Year. Rui
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Hallelujah, yes! You've hit the nail on the head. You and Al.
 
I went to shooting 100% film after being totally stressed out and burned-out with digital post processing...
 
rayfoxlee said:
The problems start when I try to get top-notch enlargements from scanned negs (Coolscan V ED), and here the inevitable question arises about the quality from all of the expensive glass when compared to my Samsung GX10 digital slr RAW digital negs. Up to my max size of A4, it is difficult not to be impressed with the digital output, even in B&W. I have read all of the arguments about digital vs analogue mono work and sometimes I have struggled with getting the tonality of digital mono to look 'right', but recently I have started to question whether the film-based Leica 'story' can hold it's own much longer against the digital revolution - unless one pays the arm-and-a-leg prices demanded for an M8. A RAW file shot inside the Louvre and converted to B&W and printed on Ilford Galerie Smooth Fine Art paper has all the wonderful creamy tonality of a wet process print.:bang:

So, my question is this: Is the experience of using a film Leica rather like driving a luxury car - is the benefit all in the driving, rather than arriving at the destination? For those who seek the best quality final result, can the cost of Leica analogue equipment be justified against the new boys from the digital revolution?

And reason for this post? I am trying very hard to resist the siren call of an M7! All that lovely in-built metering and aperture priority technology. I'm not convinced that 'because it's worth it' cuts much ice, apart from the user experience. What do you all think?

Happy New Year to you all!

Ray
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1. You need to understand the difference between film and digital. Sometimes people laugh at Ken Rockwell, but he does a good job of explaining the differences here and here.

2. You are right, for handheld shooting at f8 at normal speeds, camera shake is the great leveller, so there isn't that much difference between Leica negs and Nikon or Canon negs. Hence, it's really about the experience rather than the end-result.

However, for low-light shooting, where you might go to as low as 1/4 or 1/8, I think a Leica (or ZM for that matter) will give you better results than an evil SLR with the mirror slap, not to mention the noise. Besides, wide-open performance is also where Leica lenses excel compared to other cheaper lenses.

So I believe in such situations, Leicas do give better results.
 
Those of you who claim that scanned film prints can never equal wet prints have never seen a good scanned film print. Most of this kind of complaining comes from people who just don't have the skillset needed to do darkroom work in Photoshop. It is something that, like darkroom printing, literally takes YEARS of practice to learn and get good at. If you've got no experience doing any kind of computer graphics work and you go buy a Coolscan and a copy of Photoshop CS3 I can guarantee that your prints will suck compared to what you did in the darkroom. That does NOT prove that good prints cannot be made from scans of film. It just proves you can't do it yet.

I printed in the darkroom for 10 years before buying a scanner (Nikon 8000). It was health that forced me away from the darkroom...I had developed allergies. I was lucky in a way, because in art school I learned Photoshop. I used it for graphic design and preparing photos for my layouts, not fine art photography, but that head start on knowing the program made it easy for me to get up to speed on the specific skills needed to work with film scans and make exhibition quality prints. It still took me about 2 years to get to where I felt that my scanned film prints equallled my darkroom prints. Now, I feel that they exceed them.

Most digital prints you see in galleries suck, I agree. Thats because they were made by people who didn't know what they were doing, not because it is impossible to make good digital prints from film. I wish you guys could see my prints.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Those of you who claim that scanned film prints can never equal wet prints have never seen a good scanned film print.
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I definately feel that way about color prints. But there's another factor that comes into play for me when it comes to B&W, and that's time. I have to spend more time getting a B&W inkjet to look even CLOSE to what I can get from a wet print in a shorter time. So even though I scan my film, I do that only for web use. Prints are made strickly in the darkroom.
 
Even if there was a full frame digital Leica rangefinder I suspect that a lot of serious photographers wouldn't make the switch. There's a big learning curve with digital, with no guarantee that you'll become particularly good at it in the end. If you're at that point where you're getting great work uot of the wet darkroom why waste the time learning another way to shoot and make prints?
 
It's the difference between a Zippo and a Bic... both light a cigarette.

le_me.jpg


The Zippo does it better.
 
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