Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ted and Marty,
When you are shooting pictures of your own extended family, and among them
is a 91-year-old who almost didn't make it to this Christmas and may not
make it to the next, there is no redo, there is no second day of the
project, and no one is going to be very forgiving of failures, be they of
man or machine. You can appreciate the consequences of getting burned by
not using a flash - including shadowed eye sockets, blue channel noise, and
inconsistent color balance across the frame. I'm sure you can also
appreciate the consequences of shooting with an f/1.4 lens, not the least of
which is putting some members of groups squarely out of focus. A lot of
this evades detection in the five seconds you have to check the frame (if
you even get that).
So you bring in a flash to push the light level into a comfort range for the
sensor and bring the aperture to a size that keeps everything in focus.
Electronic flash photography has now existed for more than 50 years, and if
Leica didn't believe in it, the company would not be out selling $600
flashes for the S2 and the M9. Nor would it have developed a TTL and then a
digital TTL system (well, Metz probably did it for Leica). Nor would it
have given Metz the serial codes for dedicated TTL ("GNC") function on the
Leica modules (Metz, in fact, makes the SF-24D and the SF-58).
I don't ask my M8 to autofocus, shoot at 64,000 ISO, or even compensate for
focus shift in lenses. But I do expect it to carry it its extremely
limited flash functionality without unpredictable behavior.
Dante
NO ARCHIVE
On Dec 26, 2009, at 1:57 PM, <tedgrant at shaw.ca> <tedgrant at shaw.ca>
wrote:
> Dante asked:
>>>> What I got last night, repeatedly, was a full-power preflash followed
>>>> by a
>> "normal" preflash. And this was always on the first shot after the camera
>> was turned on, even if you gave it a second to recognize the flash.
>>
>> Anyone else experience this? It didn't look like low batteries in the
>> flash or the camera. My wife (being ever so practical) thinks this can be
>> solved by "buy[ing] a Nikon [D700]." But I am not one to let
>> troubleshooting go so easily.<<<<<<<<<<<,
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Nichols" responded:
>
>> Hi Dante,
>> Simple solution. With Leica lenses, just forget the flash. ;-)<<<<
>
>
> Hi Dante,
> Jim is quite right! FORGET THE FLASH!
> It is quite simple really... forget the flash I don't even own one and
> rarely if ever used flash with any of my M cameras over the years. Have I
> been burned? Yep on a couple of occaisions, but no big deal. If you can
> see it .... YOU CAN SHOOT IT! :-)
>
> All my Christmas happy snaps beginning to end were as "you see it, were
> motivated, "SHOOT!" And they were fine. Down loaded with LR, fiddled and
> into PhotoShop second look.... print! And not one lost frame other than
> for a couple because I hadn't set the ASA to 320.
>
> Go for broke with your M8, shoot a ton of images with the flash buried
> under a pile of rocks!! This will keep you from digging them up in panic..
> :-)
>
> cheers,
> ted
>
>
>
>
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