RE: Studio shot? (further thoughts)

Hi David, I agree and this one is plenty sharp and the left eye is the
pinnacle of that. I was commenting about AF as a tool in my experience. You
and Doug are in a more rarefied area of photography with long lenses and
tiny, distant subjects of course.
Using AF, I have always locked the focus with the central focus area then
recomposed. I know that Doug has proven that to be slow for his work.
For me, shooting portrait type shots with an M, the eyelid/lashes of the
nearest eye are where I try to focus. Sometimes I even get it right! Working
now with the M8 and typically large apertures, there is little room for
error. It is absolutely unforgiving in those cases. More accurately, it does
EXACTLY what you TOLD it, not what you MEANT. Easier of course stopped down
or further away. I am an inexperienced user of AF, only ever shooting that
much with compacts. I have never felt truly comfortable thinking, oh it
can't possibly be isolating that line of eyelid as I am picturing. Not that
it doesn't work well, just not surgical M rangefinder sharp as I am trying
for. The various AF systems are tools to be learnt like any other, I'm sure.
By the way, I like OLY DSLRs, no doubt I'll end up with one for those times
when I'm not good enough to do it with my M stuff. One thing about shooting
with Ms, everything else looks cheap when you think about an additional
camera for some jobs!

Cheers
Geoff
http://www.pbase.com/hoppyman/e
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/gh/

-----Original Message-----
From: leica-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:leica-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of David Young
Sent: Tuesday, 26 August 2008 00:40
To: leica@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Studio shot? (further thoughts)

Geoff wrote:

.... By the way, not to pick on Oly but a worthwhile comment on AF, I think;
have you seen the print ad for the E-3 that is a close up of a painted face?
The focus misses the eyes and has the painted skin sharp? Maybe a deliberate
tactic? Bothers the heck out of me though.

.... Doug, Geoff, and all the others who commented, both on and off list, 
about the focus being a problem..

I agree, the focus point is a problem.  I think I was taken with the 
shot, because when shooting active performers, with stage lighting, 
one seldom gets shots with such clean backgrounds, where the 
performer is looking at the camera, while the shot is taken.  The 
similarities to a studio shot astounded me.   OTOH, the focus is, 
indeed, off.  :-(

As for the percentage of AF shots being "on"... Since my move to the 
AF Oly, my percentage of good, sharp, well focused shots, has gone 
waay, way up.  This, I think, is not due to the superiority of Oly's 
AF (though it is very fast and very good), but rather to the poor 
percentage of keepers I was getting with MF, due to failing eyes.

As for your comment, Geoff, on the Oly ad ... I have not seen it. 
However, here is a "grab shot", of my nephew, Nathan (10), as he came 
out of the pool, at the Water Slides.  There is, I think, a slight 
bias towards focus on his left eye, but again, maybe that's just my eyes.

http://www.furnfeather.net/Temps/Nathan.htm

Does this one live up to standards?

Thank you, all, for taking the time to look, and to comment.

Cheers!
---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Limited Edition Prints at: www.furnfeather.net
Personal Web-site at: www.main.furnfeather.net
Stock Photography at: http://tinyurl.com/2amll4






=========================================================
To Unsubscribe: Send email to leica-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in 
the Subject field. The acknowledgment that you then receive MUST be replied to 
per instructions. You may also log in to the Web interface to unsubscribe.

Other related posts: