Leica Glow

Trius said:
Actually, it's a good walk spoiled. :p

A good line from a master:
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I can imagine the comments he would have about 'glow'.
 

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I think Ambrose Bierce rather than Clemens would come up with the best "glow" quotes, ie, "The Devil's Dictionary".

I will concede that if you substitute the phrase "pictorial effects evident on certain images due to a certain combination of lens aberrations, flare, lighting effects, focus variations and histogram curves" for "glow" that this is a phenomena that certainly may exist and be repeatable with luck and certain lenses.

Brian Sweeney, I am not trying to be insulting or to emulate "photonet".

Albert Einstein said this:

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, 1931

The defintion of "superstition" is the belief in some occurence that is possibly irrational without scientific evidence. It's similar to faith.

I would bet any amount of money that if you took a stack of 1000 photos taken under identical conditions, with top quality lenses from top manufacturers and processed and printed the same, NOBODY could pick out the difference or pick the Leica shots with any statistical accuracy. I'm not saying that differences in rendition don't exist, but that the differences are below the threshold of perception. This is the "emotion" or "I am more sensitive/appreciative/on a higher plane than you" argument.

For the same reason, double blind tests have consistently failed to point out the difference between high end audio rigs, even with the "golden ears" crowd, although there is always some rationalization from them about why this is so.
 
Edward Felcher said:
This is the "emotion" or "I am more sensitive/appreciative/on a higher plane than you" argument.

For the same reason, double blind tests have consistently failed to point out the difference between high end audio rigs, even with the "golden ears" crowd, although there is always some rationalization from them about why this is so.
And how does that make you feel? I mean, in a quantifiable, nonrelative way.

Extra points if it doesn't involve the use of "double blind", "audio" and any variation of the word "superior".
 
People with a large investment, either financially or emotionally in a hobby, religion or technology will feel the way they have already decided to feel, hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see.

I enjoy good photographs, beautiful images, well-reproduced music but I feel that I can appreciate them without the delusional self-mesmerization that often accompanies the use of certain equipment, etc.

There is reality and there is vivid imagination. There is a large grey area which divides the two.
 
Two were taken with Contax IIA, Sonnar wide open, two with cheapo digital....which is which??? (wow, look at that "glow")








(yes, it's Fedka)
 
Brian Sweeney said:
Don't corrupt us with your technological superstitious ways of self-mesmerization with your use of special equipment! How dare you talk about something I don't understand! I've never seen "Efficient segmentation of cellular images using gradient-basedmethods and simple morphological filters"! Therefore I declare it doesn't exist and, furthermore, it's a figment of your emotionally-invested hobby!

Damn, you, Copernicus, it's been a slippery slope since then! Jupiter my foot! Microbes? It's a conspiracy by the telescope/microscope-builders/pharmaceutical-military complex. Penicillin was ripped off bread and cheese, stripped of its romanticism, and shot into our delusional arms.

I'm off to call Marx. Not Groucho, the German one.
 
Oh, so youse "artsy" guys like them grainy "atmospheric" NYC pitchers:







 
Edward Felcher said:
Two were taken with Contax IIA, Sonnar wide open, two with cheapo digital....which is which??? (wow, look at that "glow")

First and last with the Sonnar.
No statistical significance, though.

Roland.
 
ferider is right. BUT, I realized after I posted that the angle of view in the photos gave it away, the 50mm shots are obvious.

OK, what camera/lens combo was used to take the second group of photos? You'll never guess or I'll be a monkey's uncle.
 
Edward, in the first one I did recognize the bokeh of a Sonnar (was this a Jupiter?)
with Coma ... (you should have Brian look at it, BTW :) )

The last one was mostly guessing: you wouldn't take a picture with a small
digicam of a couple like this, would you ? But the (lack of) corner sharpness gave
it away, too.

I usually recognize Sonnars. But for more modern lenses I mostly
agree with you. Raid's 35/40mm test shows how similar they can be ...

Roland.
 
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Judging by the flare, it's probably a 50 Nokton on the third one. It's very likely an R-D1.

I'm beginning to understand. If I'm right, of course. But to many, I'm delusional.

Edit: including this one, so there's no confusion which "third" I'm talking about.

 
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Actually, the Sonnar is very good. I was shooting directly into a pinpoint light source behind the box, trying to mask it, and it was something like a 1/4 second handheld exposure that I propped against something. I thought the box was hysterical and didn't have another camera handy.

Unless it was an 50mm f1.5 1951 Jupiter that I also used on the camera. My memory is hazy on that one.

Both lenses have really no apparent coma.
 
Pretty close! R-D1 at ISO 1600.

Nikkor Screw Mount f2.5 35mm wide open on all of them. Very slow shutter speeds.

The lens has almost no flare and is razor sharp stopped down to say, f5.6 in daylight. Best on a cloudy day, one of the sharpest lenses I've ever put on an R-D1, bar none.

Judging by the flare, it's probably a 50 Nokton on the third one. It's very likely an R-D1.

I'm beginning to understand. If I'm right, of course. But to many, I'm delusional.
 
Edward Felcher said:
Unless it was an 50mm f1.5 1951 Jupiter that I also used on the camera. My memory is hazy on that one.

Both lenses have really no apparent coma.

Here is the coma, Edward.

Roland.
 
Brian Sweeney said:
> "Efficient segmentation of cellular images using gradient-based methods and simple morphological filters"

Funny thing is, that algorithm could be adapted to differentiating between images produced with high contrast/ lower resolution lenses vs lower contrast/higher resolution lenses. But I would need my old scanning densitometer for film. The monochrome CCD in the Kodak would be good, but the back-focus is wrong. Too much scanner noise in "modern" consumer stuff.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/brianvsweeney/segmentation.pdf
Perhaps you haven't invested too much in one so you can not see this noise which undoutedly somebody will say doesn't exist, so your argument is possibly irrational. Therefore, your "faith similitude" or "superstition"...

Edward Fletcher said:
The defintion of "superstition" is the belief in some occurence that is possibly irrational without scientific evidence. It's similar to faith

...has no scientific evidence. Possibly. Irrational, isn't it? :rolleyes:
 
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