Challenge of composition with an RF

[CopperB]

Hyperfocal prefocusing solves a whole lot of issues. When I get somewhere, I meter the basic light and preset my shutter speed, f stop & prefocus accordingly. I generally go into manual "aperture priority" and only adjust the shutter speed as the light changes unless the change is pretty drastic. If so, I remeter and carry on.

Critical focusing is important sometimes. But using that 50/2 'cron (or in my case, Summitar 🙂 ) as an expensive zone-focus/point-and-shot can be very liberating sometimes too.

William

The hyperfocal prefocusing is a concept I haven't gotten a good handle on yet. Can you explain in detail your process, usual choice of aperture etc. My understanding is that you need a minimum of f/8 to have sufficient DoF.

 

[CopperB]

Oh man, a hard-to-see patch is deadly to seizing the moment. You end up looking instead of seeing ...

So true, so very true.

 

[CopperB]

Patti,

I like the first one. IMO, it can benefit from straighter lines (watch your perspective when you shoot) and a bit of cropping. Like the attachment, if you permit.

Nr. 2 and 3 would have been more impressive if you had gotten closer to what I assume you wanted to shoot.

Nr. 4 might look good in color, but looses a lot in B+W, due to lack of structure. There is another tree shot in your same smugmug gallery that I like much better.

My 2 cents,

Roland.

Thanks Roland. I'd straightened #1 or so I thought. I like your crop. #3 was too far away for my Nokton 40 1.4 and I was fumbling with the focus and missed the moment I wanted to capture. That's how it usually goes. I'm beginning to think I'll never get the hang of focusing quickly with MF regardless of camera type. It's frustrating.

 

[Melvin]

Soon after I got my first M camera I took some pictures of a newspaper to see how accurate the framing is. I was surprised to find that it is very accurate, the newspaper was perfectly framed. The parallax correction really works.
So I don't think that the rangefinder system itself is to blame, it must be a subjective problem.

 

[ferider]

Thanks Roland. I'd straightened #1 or so I thought. I like your crop. #3 was too far away for my Nokton 40 1.4 and I was fumbling with the focus and missed the moment I wanted to capture. That's how it usually goes. I'm beginning to think I'll never get the hang of focusing quickly with MF regardless of camera type. It's frustrating.

Don't loose hope. Check in with Gabor / maddoc@RFF. He has some beautiful night+rain photos in his gallery and once explained that he shot them one-handed, under an umbrella, with a 40mm lens preset to 3m focus. I don't do street, but him, Simon (OurManInTangier), Ray (RayPA), TatianaShe, "photony texas", helenhill and others are really good at what they do - maybe they can give you tips, and you can technically emulate if you like some photos in their RFF galleries.

BTW, this one of yours stood really out for me:

... and I cann't even fully explain why. Really well composed for sure.

Best,

Roland.

 

[hendriphile]

"When I get a new camera, I just shoot with it for a while to figure out how it works and wants to work--it is very much like a marriage. I have no anticipation of good photographs and neither do I try to make them. But rather I just shoot to see how the camera sees and how I see with the camera."

Some great advice here, I couldn't help but quote the above. Going from DSLR to M3 is a bit like going from a lifetime of using automatic-shift cars to suddenly having to use a manual-shift. All you can do the first few times is drive around a big parking lot getting the feel of the thing and learning from your mistakes. (I won't carry the analogy further with the faded central patch)

You've made a sizeable investment in equipment which has its learning curve but then can provide great pleasure in its use & results. But it is a somewhat different approach than using a DSLR. I recommend you seek out a second-hand copy of Andrew Matheson's The Leica Rangefinder Way, there's a chapter entitled "The Leica Approach" which I think you'll find really helpful; 3 pages into it he explains using hyperfocal technique (though I don't think he uses that actual term).

 

[CopperB]

Patti,
A Contax G1 or G2 would solve this. With one of these you get fast autofocus or manually set hyperfocal distance for fast moving street photos. And the nice thing about that system is that there is a VERY limited number of lenses to choose from, and they are all GREAT Zeiss optics!
Jamie

But Jamie, what would I do with that darling little Voightlander I just bought from you????😀
I've loaded a roll of Arista Premium and will try a roll using nothing but hyperfocal prefocusing and see how I do. I had my measuring tape out last night measuring distances to get a better handle on estimating distance.

 

[CopperB]

You've made a sizeable investment in equipment which has its learning curve but then can provide great pleasure in its use & results. But it is a somewhat different approach than using a DSLR. I recommend you seek out a second-hand copy of Andrew Matheson's The Leica Rangefinder Way, there's a chapter entitled "The Leica Approach" which I think you'll find really helpful; 3 pages into it he explains using hyperfocal technique (though I don't think he uses that actual term).

Thanks Hendriphile. I'll hunt down a copy.

 

[CopperB]

Don't loose hope. Check in with Gabor / maddoc@RFF. He has some beautiful night+rain photos in his gallery and once explained that he shot them one-handed, under an umbrella, with a 40mm lens preset to 3m focus. I don't do street, but him, Simon (OurManInTangier), Ray (RayPA), TatianaShe, "photony texas", helenhill and others are really good at what they do - maybe they can give you tips, and you can technically emulate if you like some photos in their RFF galleries.

... and I cann't even fully explain why. Really well composed for sure.

Best,

Roland.

Thanks ferider.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Hi Patti,

Maybe composition doesn't depend on the type of camera... And maybe it's the same with an SLR or a RF even if framing is more precise when you look through the lens. But the order you see in a great image doesn't depend that much on where its limits are, but on the relation between elements...

This is not my idea, but Cartier-Bresson's... He used to say that he didn't compose with the viewfinder, as many people do or try to do... He said he did that job with his eyes, and then he just took his camera up to crop the image quickly. You can see him talk about it when he was old, on one of the several parts videos available on youtube...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[reiki_]

I thought about that a lot the last couple of days , because I noticed I see a lot of interesting "shots" but when i bring the viewfinder up to my eye I often get totally discouraged.

 

[user237428934]

I thought about that a lot the last couple of days , because I noticed I see a lot of interesting "shots" but when i bring the viewfinder up to my eye I often get totally discouraged.

Sometimes a beautiful real life 3D scene is not interesting anymore when projected on a 2d plane. Sometimes I see this already when looking through the viewfinder. Sometimes I see it at home on the monitor that this does not work as a photo.

 

[CopperB]

Overexposure will do it! And I agree #4 looks like a good subject. Can you go back in different conditions and try again. Might be worth trying to nail that one. Bracket a few exposures. Again, how are you metering?
I just had another thought. If you are scanning B&W negative material make sure that anything like "DigitalIce" is turned off on the scanner. It messes with the grain structure in the digital image the scanner produces.

Not much chance of returning - took it on a photo trip 3 hrs away. I just set the camera according to the incident reading from my Sekonic. I didn't adjust up or down from it.

 

[Sparrow]

I thought about that a lot the last couple of days , because I noticed I see a lot of interesting "shots" but when i bring the viewfinder up to my eye I often get totally discouraged.

I've always found that to be true, but I try not to be discouraged and take a punt at it anyway, I found one never knows

Sometimes a beautiful real life 3D scene is not interesting anymore when projected on a 2d plane. Sometimes I see this already when looking through the viewfinder. Sometimes I see it at home on the monitor that this does not work as a photo.

On the other side of that coin, I often get lucky and find something that works in 2d that I hadn't seen in real-life. Who was it that said he "found his photos in the back of the camera" ... a bit like that anyway

 

[CopperB]

"When I get a new camera, I just shoot with it for a while to figure out how it works and wants to work--it is very much like a marriage. I have no anticipation of good photographs and neither do I try to make them. But rather I just shoot to see how the camera sees and how I see with the camera."

Some great advice here, I couldn't help but quote the above. Going from DSLR to M3 is a bit like going from a lifetime of using automatic-shift cars to suddenly having to use a manual-shift. All you can do the first few times is drive around a big parking lot getting the feel of the thing and learning from your mistakes. (I won't carry the analogy further with the faded central patch)

You've made a sizeable investment in equipment which has its learning curve but then can provide great pleasure in its use & results. But it is a somewhat different approach than using a DSLR. I recommend you seek out a second-hand copy of Andrew Matheson's The Leica Rangefinder Way, there's a chapter entitled "The Leica Approach" which I think you'll find really helpful; 3 pages into it he explains using hyperfocal technique (though I don't think he uses that actual term).

I picked up a copy for about $12 online and am reading through it. Thanks for the rec.