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A new good one from Erwin Puts.


patrick parker

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Mr. Puts is somewhat of a romantic if not a Luddite but there is some truth in what he says, especially to me, "A picture needs to be printed and studied on the table and on the wall, not at a 100% screen magnification."

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These are the sort or principles advocated for centuries by 'gentleman amateurs' in a variety of fields and are perfectly reasonable if you have time and money to spare......

 

Not sure that the average jobbing photographer ...... or those where photography is an 'artform' ..... would have any time for it.

 

I have to say I'm with him 99% of the time, but there are occasions when a touch of Silver Efex Pro 2 doesn't go amiss :rolleyes:

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These are the sort or principles advocated for centuries by 'gentleman amateurs' in a variety of fields and are perfectly reasonable if you have time and money to spare......

Not sure that the average jobbing photographer ...... or those where photography is an 'artform' ..... would have any time for it.

I have to say I'm with him 99% of the time...

+1 except that i'm with him 0.9% of the time but it's just me. :D

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"There should be nothing between the recording lens and the final print. In such a view the final result is the work of the photographer and if the result is not as hoped for then the photographer takes the blame. I would propose that this approach might become the new paradigm for Leica photography."

Hardly new that. How many times have i heard this mantra in 30+ years? As if good photogs never dodged, burnt nor masked their images. Or as if a good camera should be recognized at the quality of its "OOC" jpegs.

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Why is software and processing always said to be so evil. Sure pictures are nice in print. But digital photography wouldn't be half as popular today if it weren't for the software that makes it easy and fun to work with your snaps.

 

And I love 100% magnification - it is another way to really appreciate the performance of the camera and lenses, to enjoy details that would get lost or distorted at other magnifications or even in print. And sometimes it does affect the rating. How it looks at 100% has an important effect on further processing and even printing.

 

Puts still struggles with the idea of digital photography and there is no sign of healing yet. As a result he is at risk of putting the digital M's in a bad light just because of his perceived problems with digital in general. What is one to make of his final thought that "Leica lenses will feel good again" - that they are somehow not good? Or "towards a modern paradigm" - that we are all still behind on something? His musings are wide open to misinterpretation.

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"There should be nothing between the recording lens and the final print." Hardly new that. How many times have i heard this mantra in 30+ years? As if good photogs never dodged, burnt nor masked their images //

 

Polaroid?

 

It's a thought provoking article, however... the choice of film has always given the photographer an opportunity to give an image a "look" and then further personalise it in printing. DNG gives everyone the same negative (positive) to work with and then the chance to add your "film" and darkroom (lightroom) work in software.

 

Now where's that "Velvia" preset...

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I like Erwin. His sometimes-dense verbosity aside, I always find what he says to be interesting. I'm looking forward to his soon-to-be-released compendium.

 

But I agree with the notions expressed above that Erwin does seems to protest too much. His own essay captures the essence that he seeks... "... the honest and realistic fix of a visual memory" and yet he then almost immediately follows that with its antithesis... "There should be nothing between the recording lens and the final print."

 

I'm surely not a fan of image manipulation. The best final image, in my mind, is the one that represents what I had in my head when I pressed the shutter. But our technologies - from the 1830's until today - have all required a degree of work after the shot in order to get back to that remembered visualization. And so all the decades of emulsions, developers, darkroom techniques, print materials, and, now... software tools. I don't find a raw converter to be amazingly different from what came before.

 

Image manipulation - representing something that never was - has always been with us.

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zzzzzzzzz

 

"Leica Photography" should we have this cast in granite somewhere? Maybe we need a temple with some incence, or some other hallowed ground.

 

Pictures, are pictures, are pictures. Leica or otherwise.

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