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Pics from student protest with M9 and Noctilux


Epimetheus

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They want to keep education free (paid by taxes to everyone). There is now a possibility that the government will introduce tuition fees.

 

Thanks. Good luck with your efforts.

I personally benefitted from relatively low tuition fees when Willy Brandt was chancellor in Germany.

Right now, tuition + room and board + misc. expenses, travel, books, etc for an out of state student of the University of California for 3 quarters is about $50K to $60K USD.

Just imagine how much Leica gear one could buy with these monies for one student year, let alone four.

Edited by k-hawinkler
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You should have posted this in the Photo Forum, people section.

 

I like the images, especially the rabbit, but I'm not sure using a Noctilux at f1 for all shots is best. It works well to isolate some of the subjects, the rabbit and also I like the policeman shot, but for the crowd shots a smaller aperture would work better.

 

As a set of images however, they don't convey to me any idea of the nature of the protest.

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Thanks. Good luck with your efforts.

I personally benefitted from relatively low tuition fees when Willy Brandt was chancellor in Germany.

Right now, tuition + room and board + misc. expenses, travel, books, etc for an out of state student of the University of California for 3 quarters is about $50K to $60K USD.

Just imagine how much Leica gear one could buy with these monies for one student year, let alone four.

 

Yeah well I don't want to pay for your education or your kids. I paid for mine myself.

There is NO free lunch.

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Yeah well I don't want to pay for your education or your kids. I paid for mine myself.

There is NO free lunch.

 

I'm surprised you haven't moved to Montana and established some kind of guarded compound away from all the goddamn pinko commie liberals that seem to give you so much indigestion.

Edited by wattsy
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I'm surprised you haven't moved to Montana and established some kind of guarded compound away from all the goddamn pinko commie liberals that seem to give you so much indigestion.

 

No reply is need for your comment and no reply was need from you on my comment.

But then this is the internet. Have a good day.

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James is right, I think. Though I regret to say it, to me very few if any of these pictures benefit from the shallow depth of field of the Noctilux. IN fact, most would have had greater impact and immediacy shot with deeper DOF, a wider lens, and closer....

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Very nice photos, Markus. Personally, I really like narrow depth of field (it's the way I often shoot). For me, narrow depth of field isolates the subject against a background providing an emotional impression versus a detailed account of the moment. Plus, if you live in a northern location with long shadows and lots of gray clouds, it feels like you can better capture the mood of your surroundings with speeds like f1 during the day. Anyway, just my opinion.

 

Kurt

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It was interesting to read the comments first & view the pictures later. I thought I would agree with those who felt a Nocti wasn't optimal for the protest but I clearly liked the narrow DOF and vignetting; I think it raises the level of interest on quite a few of the pics.

 

OTOH, I could enjoy a real heated political debate.....

 

stefan

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Wow, Markus, they're great!

 

The dynamic of the colors, the inherent isolation--especially that of the bemused older guy in L1005142--all fabulous!

 

I'm with Stefan, thinking "That must be the craziest thing I've ever heard, to cover a protest with a fast lens wide open." Until I saw the pictures.

 

They remind me of my days of student protest, when I still thought I could avoid the police batons!

 

Sincere thanks for the thread!

 

 

Some of the vignetting is caused by the use of step-up adapter in combination of couple of filters.

How many NDs, what total light reduction to get these shots?

Edited by ho_co
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I am generally a fan of using Noct tight DOF. A lot of your pics benefit from it, but I would have like to have seen a small variety of differing focal lengths to vary the look of the series. Rather like in a movie where some cut away or different angles are needed to create the emphasis.

 

I think fotomiguel said there was no good focus (I have paraphrased him) but I do not see a problem there. If greater sharpness is required, that can be done in post. Some of my noct pics get labeled as not sharp. I think sharpness is often overrated and sometimes misinterpreted. With other lenses eg. 75mm cron, I do enjoy the extra sharpness, but I don't believe in getting hung up on it. It is always a personal choice.

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Interesting shots. I find it strange that you refer to them as snaps. Whether they work or not is really only your decision unless you want to sell them but since you posted the link it invites comment..... my personal view is that some work superbly and others don't. Example: Picture 4 works really well - the lady with the mike is sharp and so are the balloons but the wall behind is thrown neatly out of focus to give the main subject real punch. The next picture bothers me. Why is the guy on the left sharp but the two in the foreground blurred - what has the absence of DoF achieved. It strikes me as confusing. Pictures 7, 8 and 9 I like a lot and I can see on the steps shot why someone would query the aperture - it looks to have a lot of DoF. The rabbit is lovely and the next shot has a huge sense of fun about it. So thanks for posting and enjoy your kit. Andrew

 

What is impressive to a recent Leica returnee is the clarity and purity of the colour. These are streets ahead of my Canon dSLRs.

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I think fotomiguel said there was no good focus (I have paraphrased him) but I do not see a problem there. If greater sharpness is required, that can be done in post. Some of my noct pics get labeled as not sharp. I think sharpness is often overrated and sometimes misinterpreted. With other lenses eg. 75mm cron, I do enjoy the extra sharpness, but I don't believe in getting hung up on it. It is always a personal choice.

 

 

I'm going to try to explain myself. My words were: "no real sensation of sharp pictures" I would like to say that if you are shooting f1 and you focus at a person who is at 7m, this person will be sharp but if there are more people at 6m or 8m, they will be not sharp. They will part of the scene because there are not at enough distance to get really unfocused. So Dof is really important when shooting and aperture should be choose carefully depending of what picture you want to get. You can not shoot all the time with the same aperture not taking care of how is the main subject or subjects, how is the background and what you want to get. If you shoot a group of people and just one is sharp and the rest is just a bit unsharp, the result is a picture that looks unsharp. If you want to isolate the subject, the distance with the other part of the scene should be longer. May be at F1 not as long, but long enough.

I've read another post of photographers shooting always wide open apertures. I think it is a restriction of the posibilities of photography. It's not a matter of personal style. The personal style will be showed by the way you look for the picture, the technique, skills, courage you own, the lens you use and what your eyes are able to see.

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