Super Seattle
By: Christopher Kavanagh
The 2009 annual meeting in Seattle was the best since first attending in 2002. When I told my wife Martha the meeting was in the home of Nordstrom's flagship store, she couldn't refuse! Enough can't be said about the "LEED" certified hotel with all its space age ideas mixed with an Asian touch. The boat trip on Lake Union and endless comaraderie impressed the bride. Martha works with other Leica equipment, hospital microscopes. But that didn't stop her from enjoying the trip, cocktail hour, tours and a sense of a much needed vacation to the west coast.
The work that goes into planning and executing these events is daunting. Professionals make hard work look easy. What a great meeting. Thanks to all.
Chris Kavanagh
The Decisive Sequence
By: Alex Shishin
The “decisive moment” occurs when the photographer captures an instant (often seemingly trivial) in which something beautiful or profound is revealed. This concept, defined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is similar to James Joyce’s literary use of “epiphany”: “… [a] sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.”
A photographic epiphany can reveal itself not only in a single moment but also in a series of moments, a decisive sequence, culminating in a single effect.
A decisive moment or epiphany is both a representation of reality and the artist’s idea of that reality. It thus hovers in between fact and fiction like a ghost. In a decisive sequence the temptation to fictionalize is greater than in a single-framed decisive moment. One can fictionalize by pressing or not pressing that shutter button at a particular moment in the sequence. Later the photographer can rearrange the chronology of the frames to create a very different story.
The four frames presented here are arranged in the order in which the action in the sequence occurred on a train somewhere between Osaka and Kobe in 1991. I used a Leica M2 and a Canadian Summilux 35/1.4 at f 1.4 with Fuji Neopan ISO 1600 film. I had pre-focused at eight feet and shot the sequence “blind” at waist level. Years later I scanned the images with a Konica-Minolta dedicated scanner and cropped to straighten them in Photoshop. There were six frames that were usable.
The two absent frames would have added only a little more continuity to the presentation. How did I choose to eliminate those particular ones? The sequence is a set on my Flickr site. Only those two had no viewer responses. The other four had strongly positive comments.
You can see the set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexes/sets/72157604283042128/
Leicas in Surprising Places
By: H. Peter Von Pawel
While visiting the Prints and Photographs Section of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., I was pleasantly surprised to find pictures of Leicas affixed to some of the tables used by researchers. The staff had the good taste to use these Leica images to denote that photography is permitted. Although there are some restrictions, hand held cameras without flash may be used to photograph documents and photographs in the Library's immense collection.
Shooting Shakespeare: Leicas and Lessons Learned
By: Alex Shishin
Since 2005 the International Theatre Company, London has come to my university in Kobe during May to perform Shakespeare in our gymnasium. Every year, except in 2009, when the performance was cancelled at the last minute, I have photographed the company onstage and backstage with my Leica Ms and other M cameras. In the process I formed a close bond with the members, who have looked forward to receiving my photographs on CD disks.
For you to better appreciate the accompanying images I must mention that the International Theatre Company, London is minimalist, using simple costumes, few props and small casts. Usually only seven actors perform. This entails doubling up roles and making radical cuts in scripts. Productions can be fitted to almost any stage. Regarding photography, the only thing the company strongly objects to is flash which can momentarily blind actors.
In 2005 and 2006, when the company did King Lear and The Taming of a Shrew, I was using my M6s and M7 with ISO 1600 color film. By 2007 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream I had added an Epson RD-1s and Leica M8 to my arsenal.
In 2008 I shot Hamlet with only the M8, M7 and RD-1s. The M8 was set at ISO 2500 (Jpeg Fine) and the RD-1s at ISO 1600 (Jpeg). The M7 was loaded with ISO 1600 color film as usual.
I include only my Hamlet images made with the M8 here.
The university gymnasium’s raised stage was designed for ceremonies, not theater performances. A dark red curtain acts as a backdrop, guaranteeing both contrast and color balance issues for the photographer. A horseshoe balcony traverses the gymnasium, putting one closest to the performance on stage left and right and the furthest away at stage center. The balcony, I reasoned, would be the least obtrusive place for me to photograph and allow me mobility to change perspectives. That is where I worked between 2005 and 2007.
In those three years I primarily employed long, fast lenses. For stage left and right I mostly used a Summicron 90/2, Summilux 75/1.4, Canon 100/2 or Canon 85/1.5. The Elmarit “goggles” 135/2.8 was the only practical lens to use at stage center. The reach was never enough, even with the M8 making it the equivalent of a 180mm lens. My stage center shots always needed severe cropping, while f2.8, even at high ISOs, often proved inadequate for the stage lighting.
In 2008 I decided to sit as close to the stage as possible.
The ideal place to sit would have been in the first row of stage center. That was impossible because the first two middle rows were reserved for VIPs. I could have sat in the third row, but figured I would be too cramped there and might possibly bother people.
Instead I chose the end seat of the first row of stage right. I had plenty of room for my bag, for one thing. For another, my colleagues, who were in charge of projecting simultaneous interpretations of the dialogue on the stage right wall, occupied most of this area. The few audience members near me didn’t mind my presence or thought it interesting.
I mostly used my pre-aspherical Summilux 50/1.4. After that, my Summilux 75/1.4 and Nokton 35/1.4 were the most useful (the former primarily on the M7 and latter on the RD-1s). I used the M8 more than the other cameras.
My balcony shots from stage left and right of previous years showed a lot of the stage floor, which was annoying in many cases. The only big problem I had in shooting Hamlet was that the stage tended to appear slightly tilted to the right in my pictures because of my shooting perspective. I fixed this through straightening and cropping in Photoshop. There were less blurred shots than before. This was my best year for Shakespeare.
All the images presented here were made with the Summilux 50/1.4 equipped with a Leica UV/IR filter but not coded. Depicted are: (1) Hamlet confronted by the ghost of his father, the former King of Denmark, murdered by his bother, Claudius, the present king, who has married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. (2) Hamlet with Gertrude and Claudius. (3) Ophelia going mad after learning that Hamlet has inadvertently killed her father, Polonius. (4) Hamlet and Horatio talking to the gravedigger, who is holding the skull of Yorick, a jester whom Hamlet knew as a child.
Mini-Test of 75f2.5 Summarit
By: Adah Walker
Mini-Test of 75f2.5 Summarit
TOM ABRAHAMSSON
There have been few sightings of the Summarit series of lenses. I saw the 35f2.5 at LHSA in Rochester last year but Christian Erhardt from Leica USA could not be persuaded to part with it, even for a few hours. I did like the design of it and it felt good, but that is not enough to base a shopping spree on.
However, I have had a chance to use a 75f2.5 Summarit for a couple of days lately. A friend, Terry Cioni bought one and graciously allowed me to put it through its paces. It does face some stiff competition; the 75mm f2.0 has started to achieve almost cult status as a "must have" lens for M-users. It is in my mind one of the best lenses Leica has ever made. Reasonably small and at the top of what can be achieved when it comes to image quality. It is also very expensive and 75 mm still suffers a bit from "is it fish or fowl". Is it a "long normal or a short tele"?
I have had 75’s since they first came out in 1982, big hulking 75f1.4’s and later the small and compact 75f2.5 Color Heliar from Cosina/Voigtländer and for a couple of years now, the Summicron 75/2. It is not my primary user focal-length, but they certainly get their fair bit of use. The idea of a new 75 was interesting and I have had a chance to shoot (and process a handful or rolls with the Summarit).
First impression is very favorable. From the point of handling, it is the best of the three Leica offerings. The lens barrel is substantial, with a very nice rubberized focus ring, a simple but effective lenshood (and a lenscap that fits over the front of the hood to boot). It is by no means a small lens, but more compact that the 75 f2 Summicron and considerably smaller than the 75/1.4 Summilux. Nice and smooth focus with no sticky spots and distinct detents for the aperture.
However, what counts is the performance. It is roughly 1/2 price of the Summicron 75 and the now out of production 75f1.4 and 4 times the price of the Color Skopar 75f2.5. Where does it fit in? Optical performance is not as "scalpel" like as the Summicron 75f2. That lens has an almost unnatural sharpness and contrast. I highly recommend that it not be used for portraits; at least if you want the subject to talk to you after you have shot them! The Summilux 75/1.4 has a different look. Wide open it has a minute depth of field and a dramatic drop off from sharp to unsharp and though not as bitingly sharp as the Summicron, it has its own look. It is also a lens that requires top notch equipment to handle it. I have found that I often have had to calibrate a specific body to it and spend considerable time setting up the focusing of the camera with occasional "drift" in focus ranges. In short not an easy lens to deal with. The Summarit 75 showed none of this, maybe because the maximum aperture of 2.5 can hide some of it, but it focused flawlessly across the range as far as I can see. It has less contrast than the 75f2, which is not all bad as too much contrast, at least with black/white plays havoc with printing. The 75/2.5 and the 1.4 has a similar smoothness to the image and with the 75f1.4 stopped down to f2.5 and the Summarit wide open at 2.5, the Summilux looked marginally sharper, but by the time both lenses hit 5.6, I could not see a difference between any of them. The small and compact Heliar 75f2.5 is softer at 2.5, but again, at f5.6 they all look a like!
The Summarit 75 also has very even illumination, very little vignetting at 2.5 and no flare, though I haven’t tried to see if it can be induced. The test will continue until Terry insists on getting the lens back!
Would I buy one? I must admit that if I did not have three 75’s already, it would be a very tempting lens. Build quality and handling is fully up to Leica standards at its best. It is comfortable to use and so far the 100+ negatives have not shown any problems that I can blame the lens for.
The Summarit 35f2.5 and the 75f2.5 would provide a nice "walk about" package and if one could get a MP with only the 35/75 lines in the finder it would remove the temptation to start hoarding lenses of different focal lengths. Of course, there is nothing to prevent you from adding another set for cutting edge sharpness though higher contrast shooting, a Summicron 35f2 Aspherical and a 75mm f2.0 Apo-Aspherical, though you would have much less money for film after that!