This was taken over the Don Valley Parkway (Danforth bridge) on Dec. 21st. Handheld (braced on the bridge using my shooter's vest as a makeshift bean bag) ~5s. This gives me a neat gift idea for next year. I figure if I give a heavy sweater to my S.O. I'll have someone else to carry the bean bag for me next time!

Regards,

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 29, 2001

Answers

Five seconds? Those cars must have been moving very slowly.

The shot below (Man and Ghost of a Woman) was a 1-second exposure. I had my elbows braced on the bar (and I was profoundly intoxicated). She pulled back about halfway through the exposure.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), December 30, 2001.

Yeah, there abouts. The shot was done on B. I drew my finger across the Softie on the camera, heard the click.... counted 1 1000, 2 1000... etc. Completed the draw and heard the other shutter curtain.

Maybe I'm a fast counter.

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.

Sometimes it can be confusing for others when you take your M camera out for a "night jaunt"

"Hold on a tick" she thinks. Where's the flash? Is this guy for real?

Just love how disarming this style of photography is...

-- John. (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.

Why I don't do candid people photography: to me she's thinking "Ok, where's that huge security guard with the 44 magnum?"

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), December 30, 2001.

I guess there's some truth to the statement that the art of photography is interpretive. ;-)

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.

BTW, these two women in the red top appear to be the same couple who are shown in the "Noctilux" thread which follows this. So suggest this image isn't a candid photograph as such, but rather something taken with the foreknowledge and permission of the subjects.

Interesting to note the vignetting on the 50mm M Summicron when wide open though.

-- Andrew Nemeth (azn@nemeng.com), December 30, 2001.

Actually Andrew:

This shot was candid. The shot on the Noctilux thread wasn't.

Difference? Chronology.

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.

I don't see any vignetting at all (look at the top corners) but a natural drop off at the bottom where the scene wasn't as well lit. Also never saw it with my 50, which I use wide open on about half the images I take with it. This must be "Take pot shots at the 50 Summicron" month. After reading some of the comments at this site recently, you may think the current 50 Summicron is a flare prone, vignetting, average lens, when in fact I've never seen another 50mm that outperforms it.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), December 30, 2001.

Andrew, the vignetting is there.

The reason why you don't see it in your shots is because I've pushed the film 2 stops to exaggerate the contrast in this "low contrast" setting. So naturally, the minute light falloff at F2 will be exaggerated too. I don't think anyone is taking pot-shots at the 50 Cron. If anything, these images represent "exceptional" circumstances where many a lesser lens would perform far worse. To me... its a good excercise to critique something like the Cron because it keeps Leica on their toes. Kinda like what we do with our own work, if we were completely happy about what we produced there would be no room left for improvement.

If mankind was happy with photography at its conception and felt no need for improvement then we'd all be using pinhole cameras and ISO 20 000 film.

Respectfully,

-- John. (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), December 30, 2001.