Well,

When I originally posted a previous thread I had not used my 75 yet and was a bit worried that I should have bought the 50 instead.

All doubts have been removed. I used the 75 today for the first time and was very impressed. Its a keeper. Here is a photo of my daughter which I took today. Granted, its a scanned negative. But, the negative itself is very sharp.

http://home.europa.com/~torralba/images/Feb02_Leica/Liz1.jpg

Thanks for all the feedback

JT

-- Jorge Torralba (Jorge.torralba@attbi.com), February 04, 2002

Answers

Wow that is an excellent photo and great equipment result! Thanks for sharing. I have a blemish on my 75mm, and was thinking about not replacing it, but now I know I want one as an exchange. Did you find 1/1000 shutter speed too slow for a bigger aperture? Less depth of field would be nice as well, but this is good too.

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

Sorry, Jorge, but I don't find the photo remarkable. Your daughter is cute, but the composition is terrible -- the plant behind her seems to be growing from her head. Also, I don't see why this the 75 is better than the 50mm.

-- Victor (vsantiago8@aol.com), February 04, 2002.

Sorry, Jorge, but I don't find the photo remarkable. Your daughter is cute, but the composition is terrible

As much as I hate to agree with Mr. Santiago I feel the same way. The composition isn't that terrible but a close up portrait like this could use more isolation. Perhaps a larger f stop to isolate your daughter from the background more would be suitable here... if you can , go back and take the same picture with a 3 stop ND filter and slower film (50). Should give you some more isolation. Also, make a conscious effort in these portraits to get the eyes in sharp focus. Adds to the impact.

Regards,

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), February 04, 2002.

John: Up yours.

-- Victor (vsantiago8@aol.com), February 04, 2002.

Jorge, it's a very nice photo. The expression on your daughter's face and her body language is priceless. She's obviously flattered with the attention. Watch out, you may have a budding model on your hands. There's very nice separation between the foreground and background. The green of the plant compliments the blond hair of your daughter. Again, this photo is indeed priceless. As for Victor and John, they're comments are pathetic, to say the least.

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

No wonder there isn't a whole lot of photo sharing with the Leica forum. Noone wants to attach some in-fighting with their image. Anyway, I thought the advice about the ND filter and slow speed film was good for getting shallower DOF! Anyway, I like it, but yah maybe a cleaner background would be nice. The post about the expression is true, great capture!

-- James (snodoggydogg@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

Well, I can see this is the last time I share a photo. I was simply testing my lens and focusing skills and not neccessarily out to create a work of art. This was my first time with the 75 with a .58 finder. and I thought the picture was sharp enough to convince me to keep the lens.

JT

-- Jorge Torralba (jorge.torralba@intel.com), February 04, 2002.

Well, I can see this is the last time I share a photo.

Well I certainly hope that this isn't the case. Most of us get better by listening to others and "distilling" their critiques down to what's useful and what isn't. You can choose to ignore what others say but does that really help you become a better photographer? Nope. Think of flaming as a force of natural selection for refining your technique. That's how I see it.

And Mr. Santiago should really look into taking some courses on "Taming Unchecked Aggression"

;-)

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), February 04, 2002.

It's a fine photo, Mr. Torralba. Your daughter is delightful, and if the shot told you something about your lens, more power to you. I never even noticed the background or cared about the depth of field-- because you weren't asking for "criticism." All I saw was a cute kid.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), February 04, 2002.

Even if you weren't actually asking for a "critique" of your photo, what Victor wrote (his first post) was really just fine:

"Sorry, Jorge, but I don't find the photo remarkable. Your daughter is cute, but the composition is terrible -- the plant behind her seems to be growing from her head. Also, I don't see why this the 75 is better than the 50mm. "

Notice that he didn't criticize you; he criticized your composition. Don't take offense and then avoid posting photos when you receive brutal honesty. Brutal honesty is often hard to accept, but it's the best thing. How can the opposite help?

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), February 04, 2002.

By the way, I think the composition is really nice. The plant "growing" from her head is not an issue with me because it's off to one side. If the plant, or one stalk of it, was directly over her head, it would lend more of that kind of awkwardness, like that of a sign or telephone pole directly behind someone.

The one criticism that I have about this photograph (and I realize you didn't post it for critique, but I'll tell you anyway) is that it was taken in bright sunshine when your subject has to squint. Always a difficult lighting situation, though.

Your daughter is definitely a sweetie!

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), February 04, 2002.

Not sure what all the fuss is about. My criticism was restricted to the photograph. (Indeed, I said the kid was cute.) This site exists to promote better shooting and my comment was intend to help Jorge understand why his frame didn't work for me. If people can't take constructive comments, they shouldn't post their frames. As for the lens, in that light sharpness isn't necessarily an asset. Jorge should learn the way to best evaluate a lens is by using it at different aperatures under a variety of lighting conditions. Any p+s camera will give you results comparable to that Jorge posted.

-- Victor (vsantiago8@aol.com), February 04, 2002.

Hola, Jorge:

I'm sorry I couldn't get to your photo. The browser sent me to Europa main page and I got lost though several attempts.

Why not to try photo.net ? It does work.

By the way I don't think Victor has been unpolite. Just plainly frank, which is not always pleasant, right ?

But I'm sure you can learn things here if you keep posting. In fact, adjectives aside, you already got some valuable advise you could use and which you could hardly find anywhere else the same as easily.

Portraiture seems easy to do at first sight, but doing remarcable portraits is not easy in any way. And good portraiture of children is even more difficult . . .

Regards, Jorge. Happy shooting ! !

-Iván

-- Iván Barrientos M (ingenieria@simltda.tie.cl), February 05, 2002.