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SL2S + Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH

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M8 + Nokton 50/ 1.5

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SL + Leica 90mm M APO Summicron ASPH

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SL + Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH

Huỳnh Công Út aka Nick Ut

 

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Leica M5 + 90mm APO Summicron ASPH + LomoGraphy LOMO-100

A Girl, reading a book, in a bathtub, on the street.

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Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Pow Wow
Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
M10 + 50 Summilux vII

 

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7 hours ago, frame-it said:

SL + Leica 90mm M APO Summicron ASPH

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Impressive. I'd be tempted to crop just above the hands. It would make a more powerful portrait. 

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Here's a street portrait taken with the Noctilux f/1.2 wide open, from the Dore Alley street fair in San Francisco yesterday.

As other people have pointed out, this is a tough lens to focus at f/1.2, especially when the subject is a stranger and you're kind of rushing. I know I can stop down, but that's defeating the purpose of having this lens; or at least the purpose I bought it for.

The upside of shooting at that aperture is, obviously, that you can defocus backgrounds, especially busy ones, like there were at this street event. The downside is that the depth of field is so shallow that you (well, I) often miss focus. I was even using a Visoflex. 

I'm still getting used to the "glowy" look of this vintage glass. In fact, when I slightly miss the focus, as I think I did here, I just accentuate the glow in post. I'll publish a couple more portraits later where I didn't add any glow (actually, negative Clarity).

M10M, Noctilux f/1.2 at 1.2.

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What you will probably find is that you will learn to first 'see' the image and then decide if it is focussed as you wished. The image above is a fine one with certain character and atmosphere. This is more important than whether it is sharp or not.

Image first, technique second!

On my current (temporary) crappy screen the image looks sharp enough on the dog collar, which would probably put the left eye in focus. Internet degradation prevents further assessment in detail.

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I think that the negative Clarity may have worked against you here.  The model's left eye is in focus but the negative Clarity has accentuated her right eye's focus softness so that, for me, it draws my gaze to it, which is probably counter to what you wanted. 

I use a 50/1.0 Noctilux and I doubt that the differential in focus between her right and left eye is entirely down to the 50/1.2's depth of field and is probably accentuated by negative Clarity and selective sharpening. 

Regardless, I like the edgy model and the picture.

Pete.

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13 hours ago, erl said:

What you will probably find is that you will learn to first 'see' the image and then decide if it is focussed as you wished. The image above is a fine one with certain character and atmosphere. This is more important than whether it is sharp or not.

Image first, technique second!

On my current (temporary) crappy screen the image looks sharp enough on the dog collar, which would probably put the left eye in focus. Internet degradation prevents further assessment in detail.

I like the "Image first, technique second!" philosophy. I actually prefer slightly soft portraits, but soft because of the way the lens renders, not because I missed the focus. I've only had the lens a couple of weeks. Hopefully, my hit rate will improve as I get used to it. 

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Thanks for your comments. One eye is sharper than the other. My intention was to make the whole image unsharp, but in a pleasing, not distracting, way. I think it's going to take some more experimentation in post to get what I really want. 

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Here's another one from Dore Alley. As you can tell, not your conventional street fair. My goal here was to use the Noctilux's very shallow DOF to create a feeling of depth in the image. M10M, Noctilux f/1.2 wide open. Also, I had a three-stop ND filter on all day so that I could shoot at f/1.2 and not worry about overexposed highlights. It wasn't sunny when I took this shot, but it was later on. 

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Lena and Nana. Q2M

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Dreaming @ Tiffany's

M10 & Elmarit 24mm

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SL2S + Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH

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Q2

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M11 + Noctilux 0.95

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