stump4545 Posted October 10, 2012 Share #1 Posted October 10, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) since i shoot mostly portraits wide open .95, 1.4 is too addicting. lately i have been wondering if the extra precision, weight, size and cost of the lenses, the miss rate, magnifiers, nd filters, is really worth it. do many m shooters go through the shoot wide open stage and then realize a portrait at 2.8 can be just as appealing as a portrait at .95 or 1.4? i want to believe f2 is great too but when you nail it at .95 the look can be so unique but the bad part is .95 makes my photography so much more complicating when i would love to keep it simple no nd filters, magnifiers, no special focus care etc... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted October 10, 2012 Posted October 10, 2012 Hi stump4545, Take a look here leica wide open stage?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
250swb Posted October 10, 2012 Share #2 Posted October 10, 2012 It can be effective, sometimes, to use f/.95 or f/1.4 for portraits, but its not at all appealing all the time, especially for portraits where most of the face will be out of focus. A unique look says more about the photographer than the subject, so decide if you are trying to do portraits of people, or just using people as a prop in your wide aperture photographs. The best portraits combine the photographers eye and saying something about the sitter at the same time. Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted October 10, 2012 Share #3 Posted October 10, 2012 It's only worth it as long as you believe it is. Here's an exercise I did a while ago: look through your books of "great" - or at least important - photographs and count how many of them have, deliberately, very little depth of field - and for each of those think about whether the photograph would be better if it was even less - or whether more DoF would have improved it. By my count there was about one picture in a hundred where the photographer had deliberately chosen a very narrow depth of field in order to make the picture what it was. The books I used were the two T&H concise histories of photography (Gernsheim 1965 and Jeffrey 1981) and The Genius of Photography (2007). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgk Posted October 10, 2012 Share #4 Posted October 10, 2012 i want to believe f2 is great too but when you nail it at .95 the look can be so unique but the bad part is .95 makes my photography so much more complicating when i would love to keep it simple no nd filters, magnifiers, no special focus care etc... I don't see that any of this is a problem when using a faster lens at f/2...... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul J Posted October 10, 2012 Share #5 Posted October 10, 2012 I think what you're talking about is a logical progression in any artists journey. Learning any particular technique or trick which gets some ooohhhs and aaahhhhs, well it's easy to adapt that and declare you'll only shoot wide open. But then you want to say more than what that trick offers so you start to objectify and question where you're at. The thing with that lens is it is far too good not to use at other apertures too. I wouldn't swap it for anything. Being able to use it at 0.95 is something really valuable to me. But I get just as much value using it stopped down where it really sings. As for wide open shooting go take a look at Magnum website. There are plenty shots made like that. It's not something to shy away of because other people are or aren't doing it. Sure, 0.95 is a beautiful language (to some) and it's easy to spend your days shooting like that. BUT if you spent your whole life talking about everything with just that one word - beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful....you'd get pretty bored of saying it, people would be bored of talking to you and it would be really quite an inaccurate thing to say. It is certainly too easy to rely on it though. It's too easy to become lazy in your style and count on the gear to create some kind of feeling. It's only the visually unaware you are pleasing though. The aim is to think about how it fits into your pictures and what you can say with it. Define what you can't say with it too. When you do pull it out of the magic box and when it contributed to a message, that's when you find the true worth of the tool. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stump4545 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share #6 Posted October 10, 2012 thank you for the advice. much appreciated. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Mathias Posted October 10, 2012 Share #7 Posted October 10, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) When I first got my 50/1.4, I started shooting wide open ("oi! bokeh!") but found out rather quickly that in many instances a little more background definition really enhanced my pictures, especially portraits. Nowadays I mostly shoot at 2.0 or 2.8 as I currently like my backgrounds detached from my subject but still somewhat recognizable (i.e. "blurry sea" vs. "deep blue...something"). It might also stem from having seen so many wide open 0.95 or 1.4 shots that I am not very interested in this particular look at the moment; same with HDR. Cheers, Jan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
!Nomad64 Posted October 10, 2012 Share #8 Posted October 10, 2012 This is a picture I caught during a ballet performance. The lens I used was the Summilux 50/1.4 PreAsph at full aperture. Focus was on the eyes. See the 100% crop. Try doing that at 2.8. You'll lose half the magic... Cheers, Bruno Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stump4545 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Share #9 Posted October 10, 2012 i guess part of the reason that m shooters like to shoot wide open is since you paid so much for that fast glass you feel compeled to use it. offtrack a bit but, at 2.8 does Leica m lenses still stand out as creating sharper more pleasing image then modern nikon/canon glass or at 2.8 really no difference to image? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
philipus Posted October 11, 2012 Share #10 Posted October 11, 2012 Nowadays I mostly shoot at 2.0 or 2.8 as I currently like my backgrounds detached from my subject but still somewhat recognizable I agree. In my humble opinion there is nothing unique - to use the true sense of that word - about portraits shot wide open. Any photographer can reproduce this look; the main skill involved is nailing focus. It is a misguided principle to follow in one's photography to shoot portraits predominantly wide open. They don't make a person look charming or pleasant - having blurry ears hover around a moonlike face with two sharp eyes doesn't do it for me. Everyone will have to find out what works for them, but such portraits usually don't appeal to me. Btw the DOF at 1m with f0,95 and f1.4 is 1cm and with f2 it's 2cm. At 2m it is 3cm, 5cm, 7cm respectively. The typical depth of a head is around 20cm, with roughly half being visible at any given time in a portrait headshot. For me, stopping down slightly, therefore, creates nicer portraits. What is more difficult, and rewarding to the viewer (imho) is shooting portraits with more depth of field. In fact, the more I photograph the more I find that it is more difficult to take good photographs - of anything, portraits, street, or whatever - with significant depth of field. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
earleygallery Posted October 11, 2012 Share #11 Posted October 11, 2012 I never think about such issues. I just choose what's right - for me - for any given situation. It sounds like using a Noctilux is actually restricting your creativity. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgk Posted October 11, 2012 Share #12 Posted October 11, 2012 I never think about such issues. I just choose what's right - for me - for any given situation. It sounds like using a Noctilux is actually restricting your creativity. Agree with the first sentence but the last should not be about the lens but about attitude restricting creativity. I have a 50'lux asph. I use it as the situation demands. If I need to use it wide open then I do, if I don't I don't. I used to own the Canon 50/1.2 which I got rid of because it wasn't being used wide open (it was too soft and I've replaced it with the 1.4 cheaper and rougher Canon lens which is ok for the amount of use it gets) and so its extra aperture was irrelevant. But I do use the 'lux at full aperture, frequently, but by no means exclusively. Owning a fast lens isn't about using it at full aperture ALL the time, but if you do use it at full aperture some of the time then it is a more versatile lens than a slower one. Issues of weight, handling and so on are somewhat secondary although if you are not using the lens wide open then they could be a tipping factor (as with my 1.2 Canon lens). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stump4545 Posted October 16, 2012 Author Share #13 Posted October 16, 2012 for the past year i have been shooting a lot at .95 and 1.4 and i do like my images. but recently i have been thinking i would be better served with smaller lens and not relying on fast glass to make the image compelling. i am thinking this is a common journey among m shooters. trying to obtain luxes/noct and then realizing crons a more practical fit and fast enough. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonki-M Posted October 16, 2012 Share #14 Posted October 16, 2012 i myself love to shoot wide-open. but i dont let the aperture dictates the picture i want, rather. the picture that you want should dictate the aperture you choose. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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