Re: [Leica] The World at F1

[Jeff Moore <jbm@jbm.org>]

At 12 Oct 1998 06:02:40 +0000, Dan Khong <dkhong@pacific.net.sg> wrote:

> In my photograph published in PT, I did a bit of cropping in the darkroom
> and this would have given the impression that vignetting is not a problem.
> In fact, it's all over the corners in every of my contact prints.

Fie!  When I submitted prints for consideration by PT, all were full-frame.  I 
mean, jeez, a stated aim was to show how the lens images -- delivering a hunk 
chopped out of the middle would seem somewhat inconsistent with that aim.  
And... call me persnickety or unrealistic, but I tend to consider a photo which 
doesn't work full-frame, as I shot it, pretty much a failure.  That doesn't mean 
I'll never crop when necessary, to salvage something useful -- but I just don't
feel particularly proud about it.

That having been said, on the subject of the Noct's vignetting:  I've come to 
expect it, and build it into my expectations of the finished product, of 
course;  but often, shooting in the dim, it just isn't obvious anyway.  To 
illustrate, I've slapped the two submissions I made to PT which happen 
already to have been scanned into a page for your viewing delectation.  
These are full-frame scans from the negatives;  the only cropping I've done is 
a few pixels off an edge or two to trim off sloppy-scan artifacts.  The room 
was dark (what may look like daylight outside is the glow of a
none-too-enthusiastic streetlamp), and the presumably dramatic three stops' 
corner loss in our chum the Noctilux is just lost in the noise.  Have a look 
at:

    http://www.mordor.net/~jbm/temporary/PT-Noct.html

It'd be cool if many of the folk who submitted stuff to PT did this -- I'd 
like to see some of those pictures better, and we've all been saying they were 
too damn' small in the magazine.  I expect we wouldn't have any impact on the 
issue's sales at this late date...

 -Jeff Moore <jbm@jbm.org>