M8 Price Increase October 1st ??

[Gabriel M.A.]

Wow, the Curies managed to make it into a price increase speculation thread. I'm impressed.

I do remember that photo; and his telling of how it came to be -- both priceless. And *that* is how I like pictures to be, no fancy lighting, posing here, do that...in short, no additives or preservatives. Just life as it is, not as some easily-distracted short-attention-spanned-everything-distracts-me-because-I-don't-have-the-capacity-to-savour-the-picture so-called critic.

So... October 1st, eh?

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Buy a Nikon 9000 scanner, shoot film, save yourself the hassle of a digital M. That will save you $4k over the price of an M8 comce October and buys a hell of alot of film and processing.

/T

Or buy all of the above. A Coolscan 5000 or 9000, film, digital M. It's all good.

The means, however, is another matter. There's always the Epson 4490 or 4990; a very "cheap", if not elegant, alternative. I use my Epson 2450 and 4490 for Medium and Large Format. Hardly, lately, but the tools are at my disposal.

 

[rsl]

Rowell's work has achieved enough commercial success that it's probably reaching a little far to insinuate that the results are closer to P&S than LF.

Ben, Don't knock P&S. In the late 30s some people were claiming the reason Walker Evans got the kind of pictures he got was because of his fine equipment, so he bought a box camera and went out and shot the same kind of pictures (with not quite as much resolution of course, though resolution never had much to do with the quality of Evans's pictures.)

Here's a shot I made with a P&S a few years ago, before really fine digitals were available. I doubt it would be improved if I'd shot it with an M8.

 

[Ben Z]

Yes, and HCB used a Leica for all his portraiture, but neither HCB's nor Eistnstat's portraiture was "formal" portraiture.

Sorry, different definitions. Your definition of "formal" is what I call "posed". My definition of "formal" portraiture is where the subject knows they're having a portrait taken, vs a candid shot. I have a book with several portraits by Eisenstadt (Bernard Shaw, Carl Sandburg and others) which were "commissioned" or "assigned" and he went to their homes or offices with the express purpose of taking their portraits. He had portable lighting with him, though he didn't always choose to use it. The detail in those portraits is astounding, not only considering they were made in 35mm, but with lenses and film far below that which is available today.

Ben, Don't knock P&S.

I don't. In fact I have a D-Lux-3 which I intend to backup my M8. Yes there were some film P&S's that had extremely good lenses, and even some manual overrides to the automation. They were usually on the high end of cost though, often as much or more than a decent SLR. Leica Minilux, Contax T2, Minolta TC1 come to mind, and there were others. There was a Zeiss-lenses Yashica that was very reasonably priced. Whereas if you got a good lens, a 35mm P&S could keep up with the big boys, nowadays unfortunately P&S digitals have the tiny sensor to contend with.

 

[rsl]

Sorry, different definitions. Your definition of "formal" is what I call "posed". My definition of "formal" portraiture is where the subject knows they're having a portrait taken, vs a candid shot. I have a book with several portraits by Eisenstadt (Bernard Shaw, Carl Sandburg and others) which were "commissioned" or "assigned" and he went to their homes or offices with the express purpose of taking their portraits. He had portable lighting with him, though he didn't always choose to use it. The detail in those portraits is astounding, not only considering they were made in 35mm, but with lenses and film far below that which is available today.

To see "formal" portraiture check Karsh. When he pulled the cigar out of Churchill's mouth the result was a bit less formal than what he usually shot, but it still was "formal" portraiture.