My First M2! I'm stoked!! Some pics...

[raydm6]

M2 sounds nice...enjoy! Next time you shoot any of the C-41 process B&W films & you get that slight sepia look that's noticable in the original (before) you posted just convert it to 16 bit grayscale like this, then you can play with the contrast & such. Hope you don't mind.

Greg, thanks for the tip! I don't mind at all. It's funny, the last two exposures/scans from this roll had a strong sepia look as opposed to the others. Not sure why that happened.

 

[Richard G]

Ray, nice pictures by the way. The M2 early on was called the wide angle Leica. Yes, prefocus works well. I have the 35 f2 and straight down for the tab is 1.2m (4 feet) and rotating half way to the infinity position is 3m (10 feet). I'll trust myself with this for f5.6 and smaller and occasionally at wider apertures if I have to. I'm sure lots of us do it. The 25mm Voigtlander before the M coupled version had preset detentes for such purposes.

 

[bigeye]

Great first roll! The light in the first is striking.

(You might try a crop on the bottom to mid-hand to hold on the the face.)

- Charlie

 

[raydm6]

Charlie, thanks. I will try that and see how that works. It was eastern early/mid-morning sun and she was part of a larger sculpture set looking in adoration/reverence at a large granite crucifix. Her nose was chipped/eroded slightly so I had to find an angle that didn't accentuate that too much.

 

[Canyongazer]

"...so I had to find an angle..."

Looks like a very fine angle, Ray. Extra space in her eye direction, classic portrait "short" lighting.
Nice click.

 

[Canyongazer]

Ray, thanks for that link to Mike Johnson. Good article.
I was struck by his admonition that we practice camera operation. That is good advice for any camera, particularly for a street photographer.

I recall being impressed/astonished years ago to hear Ralph Gibson say that he practices setting controls on his M6 every day, without looking.
This from a guy who at that time had been using M's and nothing but M's for thirty years.

 

[raydm6]

Yes, I've noticed myself being too preoccupied with meter readings, fiddling too much with camera settings etc. (probably because I'm dealing mostly with static subjects most of the time) and feel I'm in the camera too much and disconnected from the subject.

I can see where the above technique excels with dynamic subjects where things are changing very quickly. I need to apply this and see what comes out.

 

[gb hill]

Greg, thanks for the tip! I don't mind at all. It's funny, the last two exposures/scans from this roll had a strong sepia look as opposed to the others. Not sure why that happened.

From what I understand it has something to do with the RGB settings on the machine they use. Not exactally sure. I thought it had to do with the orange mask on BW400CN til I shot some XP-2. Got a roll of XP2 developed & it was really bad. One problem I have when I convert to 16 bit greyscale is it wants to be saved as a Tiff or a PS File. My editing software doesn't wont to give me the option to save as a JPEG for some reason. I have to save as a Tiff & then open it up again & play with it to save as a JPEG. I can't exactally remember how I do it.😱 I'm sure it sounds crazy, but perhaps you won't run into this on the software you are using or you are more computer savvy than I am. I'm learning as I go.🙂

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Someone will correct me if I have this wrong, but I believe that JPGs are only 8-bit files. For 16-bit it is TIFF, PSD, DNG etc.