My website:

dingoboy

has some pictures that I took before dawn in February. I was out with my rowing team with an M6, a Noctilux and plenty of Ektachrome P1600 and Delta 3200. Good fun. Some of photos from later in the morning were with a Nikon and a long lens - you can probably tell which - but foolishly, I didn't take notes after I was done (I was too bloody cold!). I discovered that rowing shells are easy to photograph in the dark with a rangefinder: they have a nice bright light on the stern; perfect for focusing on. fergus

-- Fergus Hammond (fhammond@adobe.com), April 23, 2001

Answers

You have some great mood shots there, Fergus. Both the color & B&W seem to convey the early morning light very well. Is the one with vignetting a Super-Angulon shot?

Regards and keep up the good work.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), April 23, 2001.

I was also curious about 3 of the shots that exhibit severe vignetting --were those taken at f1.0? Nice effect if used to its advantage--like having a built in matte box frame. I love shooting in low light late in the day, and you never know exactly how the images will turn out.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), April 23, 2001.

Yes, tell us about the vignetting. Is this really what the Noctilux gives you at f1? The color shots seem to be manipulated but the b+w in the bottom row, is that a natural vignetting? Tks.

-- Jim Shields (jim.shields@tasis.ch), April 24, 2001.

Now, I'm really regretting not taking a notepad with me!

Let's see...

No Super-Angulon, Bob; just the Noctilux. However, I think the color shots with the severe vignetting were actually with a Nikon 80- 200/2.8. Both the second from the left and second from the right on the third line down were modified slightly in Photoshop (Levels, of course).

The black and white shots were all with the Noctilux. I used the Levels command on them only slightly - making the scan more like the original, rather than for anything else. FYI, I used a Nikon LS-4000 to scan these.

This is my favorite Noctilux photo:

pool

My girlfriend picked up the Leica and snapped this one night. Bloody brilliant. The guy on the right always refers to this as the "package shot"! I'm in the middle.

fergus

-- Fergus Hammond (fhammond@adobe.com), April 24, 2001.

Never encountered even the slightest vignetting with the 80 to 200 Nikon lens. Sure looks like the Nok at f1.0

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), April 25, 2001.