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How many of you know where your lens is parked right now...


Your Old Dog

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...without looking? Are you ready for the plane about to crash photo. Are you still set for your sunset shots you took last night. Can you find 12 feet (within a foot or so) without looking at the lens? Will you be staring at your camera for upwards of 6-8 seconds and then trying to find where the subject has disappeared to? Do all your lenses go to infinity in the same direction? Do you know where your shutter speed is and which direction to turn it while you're watching an interesting scene across the street? The boys that are really good know all this. In their case, the camera really is an extension of self.

 

THIS IS NOT SPORT as has been mentioned/implied/brought-up in a previous thread. It is an art but it sure helps your "luck" in grabbing the spur of the moment stuff if you know where you are and where you have to be to get your shot. Do I practice this with my M9? No. However, as a TV news photographer my camera was always set up for immediate shooting and over the course of a career it paid off on several occasions. My lens was parked on wide-angle and focused to infinity to help me find action faster and my audio pots were always on auto but later switched to manual while shooting.

 

How many of try to get in-front of the subject for active images instead of passive? As a TV shooter I always sought to get out in front of the action and let it come to me. Now with the M9 I tend to just bang/chimp away instead of working the scene harder.

 

I need to get back to that way of thinking but I got over-whelmed with gear as I got the camera and 7 lenses all with in a 2 month period. Too much to take in that fast for me!

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:confused:All experienced RF shooters will have their lens parked @ infinity and will be able to pull it to 3 m without looking ( a tab helps...). And aperture? f 8 and be there...(or Sonne lacht, Blende acht) Practice,practice,practice...Nothing new and it has been mentioned in many threads.

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Thanks Jaapv, I haven't been around long enough to see the other threads. I rarely use the archives as answers change on many topics and if we all did the archives there wouldn't be much to talk about on an old forum as everything has been re-hashed :D

 

If that's the case this thread will likely die with no responses. I was just curious to see how many of these folks felt about it. Thank goodness we don't spend much time in the archieves to see what image subject matter has been done before or we wouldn't see much. There aren't many images I see these days that I haven't seen a variant of before.

 

All the best from the land of the taxes.....NY

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The lens is always parked in the midrange of the focus scale to minimize focusing time. Exposure is approximated for quick change. (And now that I have M7 and M9 bodies I am not ashamed to say that the 'A' setting for sudden work is a blessing.)

 

This subject reminds me that I wish some lenses had clicks for certain distances such as the Plaubel Veriwide has (3 of them), or adjustable tactile and visual focus tabs such as the Hasselblad 500mm lens has.

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..........................................................This subject reminds me that I wish some lenses had clicks for certain distances such as the Plaubel Veriwide has (3 of them), or adjustable tactile and visual focus tabs such as the Hasselblad 500mm lens has.

 

I hadn't heard of that but it's a super idea!

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I must admit I am not so disciplined to leave all my lenses at the same distance and f stop. But when my antennas are up and an image is eminent I then snap to and get my settings in place. I do not tend to miss shots do to ill-focused or wrong exposures, but due to my sloppiness of not having my camera out of the bag and ready to shoot enough. I miss what could be good candid images due to this and I MUST change my bad habits.

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Way back when, I kept my M4 and 35 mm ready at all times, changing f stops, shutter speed and focus all day long, just in case. If something happened or just looked promising, I was ready! Well, almost ready....I've lately been sifting through thousands of old negatives from that period (early to mid 70s), and I am astounded at how many shots are poorly exposed, blurred, out of focus! And who needs subject matter? I apparently didn't. There's also a couple rolls light-fogged from removing the bottom plate mid-roll. Practice, shmactice! ;)

 

Larry

Edited by likalar
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Also, to keep things nice and simple:

 

when the tab of all of these lenses is pointing directly down, focal range is 1.2-1.5 metres:

3.4/21 SEM ASPH

2.0/28 Summicron ASPH

1.4/35 Summilux ASPH FLE

2.5/35 Summarit

1.4/50 Summilux ASPH FLE

 

When the focussing ring of all of these non-tabbed lenses is in the half-way position between minimum distance and infinity the focal range is 1.2-1.5 metres:

1.4/21 Summilux ASPH

2.0/75 Summicron ASPH

4.0/90 Macro-Elmar-M

 

...but unfortunately NOT for the long throw of the 1.0/50 Noctilux E60

Edited by MarkP
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If I'm going out I would set to f5.6 or f8 and then focus at hyper focal point. For a 35 or 50 and certainly for wides in tge 20s you can quivkly shoot almost anything in sight that way.

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I admire the journalistic photography experience I read about here. My old experience is different, I suppose, because not much happened in the sleepy New Mexico town where I learned photography. I mostly photographed old buildings, and mountains, and trees, and clouds. I used 4X5 sheet film which was expensive to me in those days. So my experience had little to do with pre-arranged settings and everything to do with thinking it all through carefully to expose exactly one sheet of film well enough to make a good print.

 

My most often mis-adjusted setting these days is the ISO setting. I forget to reset it to something "normal" after being in some extreme situation.

 

This thread has been a good reminder to me that I can fix that ISO problem of mine with a simple habit of resetting when I put my gear away!

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