1st Roll

[nikonbob]

I did a little checking on 35mm lens vs med and large format lenses regarding resolution that they are capable of. It turns out that 35mm lenses have more resolving power than med or large format lenses. Enlargements from the larger film formats appear to contain more detail because they are not so greatly enlarged as with 35mm film format. The resolution requirements of 35mm lenses are simply much higher but still cannot produce the detail found in the larger formats prints because 35mm has to be enlarge so much more for it to a achieve the same sized print as the larger formats. Funny thing is that it seems that size also matters in digital too and for much the same reason,

Bob

[mickeyobe]

Michael,

Splendid pictures.

Re: your first shot of the Fat Duck ---

I know it is a very old problem that was substantially cured but is it possibly, in this day and age of advanced technology, halation?

Mickey

[Doug T.]

Michael,
Don't get me wrong. I just thought that it would be an amusing little experiment
I had a Mamiya ZE-X that had the most amazing optics I've ever found in a 35mm SLR. We had to part ways a couple of years ago; I really wish that I would have kept that camera.
As for the different photographers, I more of a WeeGee kind of guy
Doug

[PeterW]

Michael,

Your "rant" as you call it makes perfect sense to me.

You mentioned Cartier-Bresson. What many people forget about C-B is the era during which many of his most-remembered pictures were taken.

Many date from the early 1930s when he first bought a Leica, possibly because it was the camera that best suited the type of photograph he wanted to take.

In a two-hour television interview some years ago he said he wanted something small and unobtrusive so that he and it could blend into the background and take pictures of ordinary people going about their ordinary everyday lives both at work and when relaxing.

What he bought was a Leica II, screw-thread of course, with the standard f/3.5 Elmar lens. This was a lens designed by Max Berek at Leitz and based on the standard Tessar layout, the patents for which had expired.

I have no idea how many line-pairs per millimetre the Elmar would resolve, nor what its MTF (Modular Transfer Function) curve looked like. I doubt whether Max Berek himself worried about that sort of thing, and I have severe doubts whether C-B did either. The camera and lens did what he wanted it to do, and most of his early pictures were with the standard Elmar.

I don't think anyone has ever recorded what brand or speed film C-B used. Until 1934 when Kodak launched August Nagel's disposable cartridge (cassette) to go with the Retina, 35mm film was available only in bulk rolls, intended for cine cameras. The film had to be cut into lengths in a darkroom and loaded into Leica cassettes before it could be used. The end had to be trimmed to suit the bottom-loading Leica's take-up.

I doubt if C-B did this himself, it may have been done for him in the Magnum darkrooms.

Standard cine film didn't have a very long greyscale, and its grain was quite coarse compared with 35mm films of the later 1930s. The speed was seldom quoted, though converting from the H&D speed mentioned in technical books of the time suggests it was usually around 80 ISO, and labelled "fast panchromatic".

Does all this matter when we look at C-B's photographs of the time? Of course it doesn't. We don't compare the "sharpness" with that from a Leitz, Nikon or Canon lens made 70 to 75 years later. Nor do we look for the film grain.

What we see, or should see if we're reasonably receptive, is the atmosphere of the picture that Cartier-Bresson saw and felt, and captured for us.

Before he took to photography, C-B was a reasonably accomplished painter, and his art training no doubt helped him to compose and frame the picture in the Leica's tiny viewfinder, but in the interview he exploded another myth that has grown up.

Some writers have said, in print, that C-B would not allow his pictures to be cropped. This has been repeated by other writers. When he was asked in the TV interview if this were true he laughed and said "Of course not."

How a picture was cropped to suit the page layout in a magazine was nothing to do with the photographer, he said. It was everything to do with the layout editor. What I did ask, he said, was that when prints of my pictures were sent out to magazines by Magnum, the whole frame was printed to give the layout editor the greatest choice of how he wanted to crop it to suit his layout.

He also spoke at some length about his famous phrase "The decisive moment", but I've rambled on long enough for now. I'll leave that for another time.

PeterW

[nikonbob]

PeterW

Catch your breath and give us the rest of the story. I would be interested to hear what he said.

That old Elmar 50/3.5 with modern film still turns in a credible performance. They are not as good as modern coated lenses in some areas but the uncoated pre war one I have surprised the ell out of me.

Bob

[Deleted]

One of my greatest regrets is getting rid of a used Japanese Leotax (Leica Copy) probably made shortly after the war. I swear the Elmar copy on that camera was the sharpest lens I ever owned. It must have been. Have you seen what a used Leotax fetches these days?

Wayne

[colray]

Michael is the food good at the Fat Duck?