LEICA M6/M7
Battery independent shutters: 1/60 -1/125
Does not support TTL flash. Flash sync 1/50.
Advantages of leaf-shutter (each lens has one)
1) It will sync with flash at all shutter speeds
2) Small and free of vibration
3) Very quiet
Focal plane shutters
1) They are big and thus flash sync speed is slow
2) Can cause blur-producing vibration at slow shutter speeds
3) Noisy
Lens conversion factors from 35 mm to MF
35 -> 6.6:
.6X
35 -> 6.7:
.5X
MF lenses are usually one stop lower than their 35 mm equivalents
Mirror lockup
Always use for less than 1/125 sec.
Image sharpness
Measured in “lines per mm”(lp/mm)
This measures the ability of the eye to discern the number of high-contrast pares of lines in
the space of a single mm.
But, the very best color prints reproduce about 75 lp/mm. The human eye can see 9 lp/mm.
On a low contrast image, you need at least 30 lp/mm because of acutance effects.
Factors affecting sharpness
1) Lens resolution
2) Film resolution
3) Camera and/or subject motion
4) Aperture used and consequent DOF aperture
5) Film flatness
6) Film thickness (are all layers in the film correctly focused?)
7) Film grain (some films have coarse but sharp grains. Others have fine but soft grains).
8) Enlarger parallelism
9) Enlarging lens quality and aperture used
10) Resolution of the printing paper used.
Digital processing related focus factors:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Film flatness capabilities in the scanner
Native resolution of scanner ship
The Sharpening level applied in post-processing
The native resolution of the printer
The resolution of the printing paper used
Sharpness
 Resolution
 Acutance (brightness transition between edges)
Scanning and digital capture softens acutance.
Size for printing
35 mm
MF 6x6
Leica lenses
ok up to 20x25 cm
ok upto 40*50 cm
Leica 35 mm f/2 Summicrom-R has very high contrast but not very good resolution. So if
used with very-fine-grained films, it will show less details than other lenses.
CONTRAST
1) Overall contrast: range of lightest to darkest tones in the picture
2) Local contrast: the ability of a les to distinguish different tones within a narrow range,
for ex.: in the shadow section of a picture
3) Lens contrast: the ability of a lens to discriminate tonally between small adjacent areas
in the print, lending a sense of texture an surface.
Resolution of a lens: the ability of a lens to distinguish fine details.
STEPS TO IMPROVE
1) Hold camera steadier
2) Check the corners of every image
3) Check background
4) Move in close
5) Use shutter-half-press for exposure
6) Selective focus
7) Use a tripod
8) Use self timer or cable release
9) Learn and use DOF for your equipment
10) Find our diffraction limit for your camera, that is find out how far you can stop down
before diffraction degrades the image more than increasing depth of field improves it.
Awards
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