M-A negative borders not straight

[Martin B]

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27 minutes ago, mosh1 said:

Here's the right side of my current production M6 which looks similar. My scanner doesn't get the top and bottom edges but you can see the side edges are curved in. It seems this is part of their production process. Too bad, I would like perfectly square corners.

 

After film scratching batch issue now also curved edges of the frame? Wow. 

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[Jean-Michel]

Hmm, I no longer have my film Ms (I gave and/or traded all my M3's, M4 and M6's bodies over the last couple years). All of the bodies had slightly uneven edges. Those edges never showed up in prints as most enlarger masks would do a minuscule crop to make straight edges. Some photographers, me included for a while, would modify glassless negative carriers or adjust the blades of glass carriers to include the negative edges in prints. When using transparencies for projection the transparency slides would also crop and usually have curved corners. So, the edge issue' was never an issue. That applies to all formats and all camera brands. And, spaces between frames could be different from body to body. One of my M3's had to be adjusted a few times as the space between frames would creep to almost nothing. And, in all cases the viewfinders of all cameras did not match the actual film gates, most SLR's showed a smaller frame to sort of match a projected slide, and when it comes to rangefinders, the viewfinder edges are mostly a nice approximation. All in all, none of this is a real world  issue.

[250swb]

I doubt this would even be registered as a problem if HCB hadn't insisted on black borders (just so the layout people knew they had the full negative before deciding on the crop). In his ground breaking book 'The Decisive Moment' he didn't have black borders around the photographs and only in other compilations do we see the predominant use of borders because the reproductions are taken from archive prints meant for general publishing (and cropping). But wait a minute, what am I seeing, many of the black borders aren't straight, some even have wonky corners! OMG, be careful of what you think you know.

[Pyrogallol]

For the past decade or more I have always printed the whole negative using an enlarger carrier that I filed out to show the clear edges of the negative, a la C H-B. Early screw Leica bodies have a curved cutout in the film gate that shows at the top centre of prints and the sprocket holes often show as the film may not be perfectly aligned due to up and down movement of the cassette inside the camera, possibly from using an IXMOO which is slightly shorter than a FILCA. I don’t mind these little details showing, they can always be cropped out.

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Edited December 31, 2023 by Pyrogallol

[f8low]

Thanks @burchyk for opening this thread - this issue has been on my mind for a while but I had never compiled an actual comparison. This is my chance to do so. 

Attached scans from a Leica M2, a Leica M-A and a Nikon F2. The negatives come from the same roll and - for once - have been DSLR scanned between two thick sheets of AN glass. The pictures were taken at 50mm, f8 and infinity focus.

Please excuse motive, change of light, dust and the very unfortunate piece of a roof on the M2 shot. This is of course not from the camera 🤦‍♂️ Also the M2 is known to need a bit of cleaning around the stage. Finally, my grid overlay might not be 100% spot on.

Observations: I think the difference in 'straightness' becomes pretty clear. I'd argue that for the M-A we're not just talking the extreme corners but also the upper/lower, say, 20% of the shorter side. 

So much about the facts for this sample of an M-A and an M2. Whether those borders are important and how straight they should be is highly subjective I guess. But I'd argue there are decisions to be made in the engineering of a camera as to how the borders will be. So one can go either this or that road. Nikon apparently liked the corners round 😁

Personally, when looking at a framed picture I quite like the look of a thin black line under a bright passepartout. So when I print I try to include them, be it with an enlarger or a digital printer. Frankly, before I got my M-A I was never concerned how those 'real' borders look precisely. Yet when I look at the M-A scans... I am a bit disappointed and occasionally get a slight sense of looking through an old bent window... for me personally, there's a bit of a sloppiness conveyed which I don't like.

Again, assigning value to these 'real' borders is subjective and should not be argued about. But if I had to argue with Leica about the look of the borders, I'd say they are an inherently analogue artefact and that a brand leveraging its analog history so much (and rightfully so!) could put a bit more care into capturing them 🙂  That being said, the M-A is an excellent camera otherwise....

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Edited January 2, 2024 by f8low

[f8low]

Another round with f1.4 and relatively close focus. Unfortunately the focus with the M2 is inconsistent (too far) so take this series with a big grain of salt….

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[fotomas]

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[Pyrogallol]

Perfect black borders on prints are a digital give-away. Film is organic, more human.

[Jean-Michel]

6 hours ago, f8low said:

Thanks @burchyk for opening this thread - this issue has been on my mind for a while but I had never compiled an actual comparison. This is my chance to do so. 


Personally, when looking at a framed picture I quite like the look of a thin black line under a bright passepartout. So when I print I try to include them, be it with an enlarger or a digital printer. 

The way one printed a straight black border in the darkroom: after exposing the print you covered that part of the paper, removed the neg carrier, exposed the paper margin to white light, developed the print, and voila a print with a 'perfect' black border. You could even print a coloured border using a similar method when using colour printing. Granted, that was a bit tedious, but it worked quite nicely. LR makes it all so, so much easier!

[burchyk]

Thanks @f8low and @fotomas!

I guess not everyone has the same understanding of what "Pure Mechanical Excellence" and "A masterpiece of precision-engineered perfection" means.

[earleygallery]

On 12/25/2023 at 11:40 PM, earleygallery said:

Can you overlay a 35mm frame on your scan? I'm wondering if the 24x36mm frame fits within yours?

If you were wet printing the neg holder of most enlargers would have an exact frame size - I suspect that the Leica is giving you a larger than 24x36 frame (and not expecting that people will scan the whole neg area).

As I've already mentioned, the correct size for a 35mm frame is 24x36mm. Are these examples of the film gate apertures larger than 24x36?

My guess is that they are, and when cropped to the correct full frame size, you have a perfectly straight frame edge with sharp (not rounded) corners.

[skahde]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb burchyk:

Thanks @f8low and @fotomas!

I guess not everyone has the same understanding of what "Pure Mechanical Excellence" and "A masterpiece of precision-engineered perfection" means.

Sounds like a A. Lange und Söhne Wristwatch but not any kind of camera to me. Leicas are fine cameras but far from the perfection they are widely attributed with. The more or less ragged borders are a well discussed isssue for decades. Just don't get obsessed with details. Feel lucky your's not having Leitz-leaks or scratches the film. I love Leicas with my heart but it helps to keep a cool head and judging them as artistic instruments and not as art by themselfs. 

[burchyk]

6 minutes ago, skahde said:

Sounds like a A. Lange und Söhne Wristwatch but not any kind of camera to me. Leicas are fine cameras but far from the perfection they are widely attributed with. The more or less ragged borders are a well discussed isssue for decades. Just don't get obsessed with details. Feel lucky your's not having Leitz-leaks or scratches the film. I love Leicas with my heart but it helps to keep a cool head and judging them as artistic instruments and not as art by themselfs. 

To be fair, I'm not expecting a guilloché-engraved gear train.

Other parts of the same camera body are probably cut with a CNC. Why not the film gate? Wouldn't that be cheaper?

[skahde]

Leica obviously never decided there was anything which needed improvement and they sticked to the established method:

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Edited January 3, 2024 by skahde

[f8low]

10 hours ago, skahde said:

The more or less ragged borders are a well discussed isssue for decades.

That's interesting to know - if only there had been internet in the 60s, so we'd know about M2s with rough borders 😉

[Vlad Soare]

It has never crossed my mind to take a close look at the negative borders, but I will as soon as I get back home. I'm out of town right now.

I do, however, happen to like the imperfect borders I'm seeing above. They look more human to me. I'm also a car enthusiast and have come to appreciate tiny little niggles in cars, which make them feel more special, more human. An Alfa Romeo is a special car. And special cars, like special people, have flaws. An Audi may be absolutely perfect, but it's boring as hell. I can love an Alfa, whereas an Audi would be just a tool to me. It's the same with people. Nobody likes to live with a saint. Saints are boring. Our friends and loved ones have faults. Who would you rather have dinner with, if given the choice? Jimmy Hendrix, or an emmeritus professor from Harvard? I'd have Jimmy anytime.

Perfection is the realm of digital cameras. In other words, boring tools. Mechanical Leicas, like mechanical watches, aren't perfect. And we love them for that. My 44 year old Seiko runs one minute fast per week, and yet nothing in the world could make me trade it for an exquisitely accurate quartz watch. Film colours are intrinsically inaccurate, but that's precisely what makes a film photo so much nicer to look at than a digital one where the colours are absolutely spot on. Perfection is soulless.

That being said, I do wish that Leica's quality checks were a bit more thorough. I can live happily with a crooked frame edge, but not with a sloppily aligned rangefinder, for instance.

 

Edited January 3, 2024 by Vlad Soare

[Vlad Soare]

To be honest, I actually hope that next week when I'm back home I will discover that my borders look like that. I really wish that. If they do, then I will start printing them and will take pride in them. That is, if I can source a spare negative holder for my enlarger, which I could then file a bit to include the borders. I wouldn't want to make irreversible changes to my one and only film carrier. We'll see...

I believe my scanner's negative carrier already is a bit larger than the actual frame, and the cropping happens in the software. I'll check. If that's so, then I'm good to go. 🙂

Edited January 3, 2024 by Vlad Soare

[RobW0]

1 hour ago, Vlad Soare said:

To be honest, I actually hope that next week when I'm back home I will discover that my borders look like that. I really wish that. If they do, then I will start printing them and will take pride in them. That is, if I can source a spare negative holder for my enlarger, which I could then file a bit to include the borders. I wouldn't want to make irreversible changes to my one and only film carrier. We'll see...

I believe my scanner's negative carrier already is a bit larger than the actual frame, and the cropping happens in the software. I'll check. If that's so, then I'm good to go. 🙂

Many enlarger manufacturers sold 37x25mm negative carriers for printing black boarders. 

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[skahde]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Vlad Soare:

To be honest, I actually hope that next week when I'm back home I will discover that my borders look like that. I really wish that. If they do, then I will start printing them and will take pride in them.🙂

If Leica took pride in negative-borders and realized the opportunity they'd do like Hasselblad did and file some fancy edges into the border. And I'm using a suggestion from about twenty years ago here, when I first stumbled upon this exact topic on a german leica-forum. 

[Jean-Michel]

In North America, common enlarging paper sizes are/were, in inches: 4x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 16x20. None of which come close to the 2:3 ratio of a 35mm (24x36mm) or  21/4 square, or 6x7cm, or whatever other odd size negative. But they do match large format sheet film sizes since that is how it the standard back then.

Consumer frames also come in the same sizes, plus US Letter-size (8.5 by 11"), 4x6 frames that do match the 2:3 ratio are plentiful, but not so much 8x12 or ... .

Magazines and photo editors constantly crop/cropped images to fit the layout in spite of photographers' indignant howls. 

And, as I wrote earlier, no one ever can claim they knew the exact edge of the image when they made it.

I happen to like the 2:3 ratio and do generally print the full image, but will adjust as need be. All done much more easily in LR than in the darkroom.

Do not let fuzzy neg edges fuzzify you life,