I recently had to go thru years of photography.A few thoughts came to the front.I found that on average my Leica M images were way ahead of my Nikon,Pentax and assorted 35mm cameras.More true to life.Much more detial.What I really noticed was my composition.The RGFDR images were always centered.Like the center of a flower and the rest of the image around it like the petals.I started to 'really' look thru my viewfinders.I would pick up a Slr and focus and compose an image.even a chair in my room.Automatically I would compose quite different to the Leica-M. I look at photos by David Alan Harvey(NGS)"Cuba" and Eisenstaedt"Life" and one can actually feel where they focused. Dead center!Now the 'art' side talks of thirds etc,and,I compose mostly that way with my SLr.Yet the Leica shots are equally as good, though definitely not in abstract thirds.I may have 2 or 3 or more things happening in my frame.It feels like life.It resembles life. I hope others can understand my thoughts...messy and barely understanderble.Even HCB pictures are mostly that way.So far as I can see,the SLr gives a better (artistic) composition.The Leicas RGFDR and open viewfinder seems to frame life and capture it.Have others also noticed when looking at certain photos by well known photographers,one can determine if a Leica RGFDR or Slr was used?I think I can... I know from my wedding and portrait photography,the majority of sales always comes from the Leica.Even when some similar images were 'better' composed.

-- jason gold (leeu72@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001

Answers

Jason

As "...messy and barely understandable" as your thoughts may appear to yourself - I think that I got your point and I fully agree.

I found that Leica rangefinder cameras by forcing me to forget about DOF, composition and precise framing in turn help me to focus on life, be spontaneous and catch the precise photogenic instant.

-- Lutz Konermann (lutz@konermann.net), August 29, 2001.

I can't recall the number of times I've heard manual-focus supporters decry autofocus on the basis of the sensor being centrally-located thus producing predictably mundane results with a bulls-eyed subject. I've even heard the same statement from Leica-M users! For the life of me I can't understand what a focus sensor or rangefinder has to do with composition unless you let it lead you. I would guess that if David Harvey or any other critically-acclaimed photographer places a subject dead-center, it's not because he used a Leica, nor did he choose the Leica in order to compose with a central subject. The composition was undoubtedly intentional, and would have been the same regardless of the camera. The only time I believe I actually compose differently based on a camera-related reason is between rectangular and square format.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), August 29, 2001.

Look at Cartier-Bresson's portraits: the subject is rarely in the center of the frame. By the way, Edward R. Hamilton has Tete a Tete on sale for $10.

-- John Fleetwood (johnfleetwood@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001.

If anything, the Leica RF helps you to compose by allowing you to see so much more of the picture, especially with a 50mm lens. With the .72 viewfinder, I also like the 75mm frame being superimposed inside of the 50mm frame, which, in itself, is superimposed inside a viewfinder slightly wider that 28mm. The 75mm frame provides me with almost a "Rule of Thirds" grid. I know of no experienced or well known Leica user, especially HCB, who constantly center their subjects. If anything, composition tends to be much more dramatic. I suggest that you start practicing viewing a composition. Like when your sitting there watching television. Soon focusing and composition will become second nature. I always feel blinded with a slr.

-- Leicaddict (leicaddict@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001.

Thanks to the 1st replies.The first answer is exactly what I am talking about...I know a lot of Bressons pictures are not dead centre BUT you can 'feel' where he focused.Place imaginary Leica frame over the pictures.In theory it should be same for SLR esp older manual focus.It is not. One automatically reframes with an SLR.One comment very true.Feel like a horse with blinders working SLR.Very constricting.I use depth of field and very quick framing.Sometimes I shoot from the hip and those are even more centered.Anyway lets hear more ideas. I need to see outside of frame.Sure one can place main object anywhere,I have been accused of shooting in "Japanese" style by quite a few critics.It has also won me awards in Japan....However over the last 10 yrs been using my M3 as main camera.I noticed that Eisie too, produced what I shall call 'flower' compositions.Near center with details going around.Of course at this moment his photo of kids marching behind a bandsman comes into vision,which is not what I wanted.SAme silly thought is how much I really hate square format and yet its perfect for some portraits.

-- jason gold (leeu72@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001.

Again! television the really worst most terrible awful place to see how composition works.There its really DEAD Center with no thought. Movies on the big screen...David Lean etc , Yes Yes.

-- jason gold (leeu72@hotmail.com), August 29, 2001.

I frame my photographs before I put the camera to my eye. I know quite a few photographers who do this. I am reminded of a quote by photographer Marcey Jacobson (whose recent Burden of Time is wonderful)that opens her essay in that book:

I was making photographs of the world long before I was a photographer.

If one is already making the photograph without the camera, one can see the image and focus and viewfinder are merely implements.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), August 29, 2001.

Lutz says he finds that the Leica rangefinder forces him to forget about DOF. I have the opposite experience. I lightened up on my use of SLR's in general, and AF in particular, because I find the Leica is more conducive to focusing by scale & hyperfocal distance.

As to composition, I do experience some advantages with the reflex finder. But the ability to see the area that's being excluded from the composition helps me to compose, thus partly offsetting this handicap-- if it is one. The Nikons haven't seen much use since I went back to shooting with my Leicas. The results were always good with the Nikons, but I have such confidence in the Leica glass, and such pleasure in shooting with the Leica, that it's the one I reach for most of the time.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), August 29, 2001.

My fotos suck shooting with either, so it isn't a problem....The whole debate you're throwing up in our faces has to do with user interface and that alone. The camera is a tool and only so, but how you react with it and utilize it's capabilities is the only factor as to why you bought and why you keep it, I'll take all the theories of composition this with a RFDR and composition with an SLR that for only so long and then I gotta speak. I know plenty of photogs who are SLR (N,C,L) only persons and their stuff is as equally engaging as any thing I've seen from the greats and their use of a RFDR.

It's the singer, not the song... <

-- Dave Doyle (soilsouth@home.com), August 30, 2001.

Lutz says he finds that the Leica rangefinder forces him to forget about DOF. I have the opposite experience. I lightened up on my use of SLR's in general, and AF in particular, because I find the Leica is more conducive to focusing by scale & hyperfocal distance.

Bob

You're hitting a target here. You might as well have said: Leicas force me to remember everything I've ever learned and understood about DOF... ;o)

Still, I think you and I are talking about different pictures.

Take this one here for example. It's a portrait of a dear colleague of mine, German documentary filmmaker Thomas Schaadt. As all of us picture takers he's a quite self-conscious lad. I had a chance to snatch this Sling shot of him while sitting in a restaurant. Had it taken an instant longer for me to concentrate on anything else (ie. DOF, framing, perspective...) but the precise moment I was after it would have vanished along with the relaxed expression of my subject.

I'm not saying that I couldn't have done a similar shot with my SLR. But that I wouldn't have done a similar shot with my SLR.

And I very well know that now and then I have to pay for my spontaneous lust of snatching views with a Leica in terms of composition. Take the plants in the picture. The tight alignment of foreground, subject, background (including that tiny cactus flower blooming out of my friend's head) is nothing I could have predicted 100% by judging what I saw in the viewfinder when I clicked. For my likings I was lucky here, but I have been less lucky in other situations, with foreground/background shots, especially with longer lenses where perspective becomes crucial.

But all these restrictions do not outweight the liberty I'm experiencing and the lifelyness of what I capture.

And, yes, I did crop this one (a thing I'm absolutely not used to as a former cinematographer) because of a left-corner-out-of-focus-glass-on- the-table, otherwise ruining the shot, which I would have meticulously avoided with an SLR, risking to miss the shot... (get my point?)

Cheers

-- Lutz Konermann (lutz@konermann.net), August 30, 2001.

For myself, the photograph exists in my mind before I even bring the viewfinder to my eye. A mental image of what I want to represent on film is there for me before my actual viewing through the viewfinder. This technique came with time and much practice.I try to imagine what I want to photograph then seek it out.

-- John Alfred Tropiano (jat18@psu.edu), August 31, 2001.

Well, I am afraid I take all this M-philosophizing with a huge grain of salt. I must be a thorough-going materialist without any artistic understanding, because all this rangefinder mythologizing guff about how it "frames the world" for you and makes able to "communicate more directly" with the subject and "not let the camera get in the way of the nexus between the artist and the real world" and so on and so on, I take as amusing nonsense.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), August 31, 2001.

all this rangefinder mythologizing guff about how it "frames the world" for you and makes able to "communicate more directly" with the subject and "not let the camera get in the way of the nexus between the artist and the real world" and so on and so on, I take as amusing nonsense.

I agree with Robin. (Wait, Robin, you don't need to run out and get your vision checked.)

For me, the camera doesn't define what and where the subject is, as I said earlier, and as Mr. Tropiano says. I happen to find rangefinders far easier to use (and don't even own a SLR anymore) but I compose without the viewfinder and use the finder to level things, check the edges, etc etc. If I can see it without the camera, I can see it with any camera. But if I spend my life looking through the camrea, I miss out on most of what I might shoot.

It's worth noting that a lot of famous photographers switched from rangefinders to the Nikon F when it originally came out and no-one noticed the difference in their images.

Choice of format does have its own implications, on the other hand.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), August 31, 2001.

I seem to have found a friend in Mr. Spirer. I have "discussed" the point of seeing the picture mentally before ever putting the viewfinder to my eye with a few of my Leica friends, and they just don't understand my point.They believe you can have no idea of what you wish to compose unless you are looking through the viewfinder.True, the viewfinder does frame the subject mechanically and optically speaking, but still the pictures are in my mind first and viewed through the viewfinder second. Any more discussion is welcome. This is at the risk of agitating some contributors, which is not my intention.

-- John Alfred Tropiano (jat18@psu.edu), September 01, 2001.

People "see" differently with different cameras, different formats. AA discusses this in one of his Basic Photo books--and it is certainly true, at least for me. I approach a subject differently with a Leica, a Hassy, a Canon EOS, a digital, etc. Would it be *possible* to take the same picture with two different type cameras? Probably. But is there a *tendency* to take a picture differently with different cameras? I think so.

For example, I have a tendency to do all of my extreme digital manipulations with images acquired with my digital camera. It just seems more natural and organic to the medium to do it that way. My Leica images, OTOH, I have a tendency to print relatively straight, with a minimum amount of manipulation. In addition, with a motorized camera, or with a digital camera in burst mode, I have a tendency to shoot fast, almost carelessly, to try and capture fleeting moments- between-moments, as it were; whereas with the Leica & the Hassy I shoot much more slowly, as if to capture the timelessness of my subject.

Of course, sometimes it works out the other way around.

Which is why the gods laugh when we plan.

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), September 01, 2001.

John, when using the Leica (rangefinder) I think we do see the picture first, then put a mental frame around it, and finally frame it in the viewfinder. With practice, the mental frame anticipates and corresponds to the Leica frame pretty well. Enough so that eventually you don't really need a frame selector lever.

I don't know that this isn't mostly true of the SLR finder as well. But the image in the SLR finder is more abstracted, perhaps inviting some experimentation with the composition. Seems to me, though, that I fuss over the composition with either camera, if there's time.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), September 01, 2001.

There is no significant difference between composing with an SLR and composing with a rangefinder.

There is a big difference between composing with an SLR and composing with a rangefinder.

Flame whichever you prefer.

Salgado uses Leica R and M interchangeably - can you (without knowing ahead of time) tell which pictures were taken with which? I can't. Gene Smith was an early adopter of the SLR, but (except for the occasional fisheye use) I can't see a lot of difference between his "nurse midwife" (Leica SM) compositions and his "Minimata" (Minolta SLR) compositions.

On the other hand, I think that some very "graphic" photographers who helped 'make' the Nikon F in the 60s, (Jay Maizel, Peter Turner, Eric Meola e.g.) would have gone crazy trying to make their very precise 2-D compositions using an RF. They latched on to the 'new' way of seeing and played it all it was worth.

As I grew up in photography, it happened that most of the photographers whose work I admired and most wanted to emulate used rangefinders (Danny Lyon, Paul Fusco, Mary Ellen Mark, Costa Manos, early Gene Smith, Marc Riboud (in fact Magnum in general)).

But as a poor student, I worked with affordable SLRs, and did reasonably well at seeing the way they did (if not as WELL as they did!)

Now that I've started using RFs myself, I actually find it HARDER in some ways to compose the way I used to with SLRs, especially with lenses outside the 28-50 range. I'm certainly taking a different KIND of picture, as has been commented on by a lot of people who've seen my pre-RF and recent work.

In taking/making a picture, we are abstracting (to use Bob's very good word) a 3-D reality into a 2-D image. With an SLR we see that abstraction take place in the viewfinder, with depth of field, alignments of objects, and even "bokeh" all visible on the flat ground glass. With an RF we just see the 3-D world itself, and don't see the 2-D abstraction (except in imagination) until we look at the flat film.

"I photograph things to see what they look like photographed" - Lee Friedlander. The sentiments of a rangefinder photographer.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), September 01, 2001.

Lutz:

Nice shot! I agree this sort of shot seems to happen more readily with the RF camera. It could have been done with an SLR, but--at least with manual focus-- it is easier to focus quickly with the RF because with the SLR, you sort of have to rock back and forth to find the point fo best focus. With the RF, it either is in focus, or else it ain't. You can see it immediately. The SLR is easy to focus with faster and longer lenses, though. I'm trying out the 50mm f/1.2 on the Nikon just now. It pops into focus very decisively!

As for composition, again, it happens faster with the RF, but with the SLR I can Study the composition carefully for the effect of blur and extraneous content. I might fuss more over the composition with the SLR.

So in the end, I think it's about horses for courses. I think there is a difference in the sort of pictures I get with the two cameras, with the SLR shots being more an interpretation, and the RF pictures more of a literal record.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), September 01, 2001.

As for composition, again, it happens faster with the RF

I'll try this one more time, a bit stronger: if you aren't composing in your mind, you aren't seeing photographically.

Someone show me how Kertesz's work changed when he switched to the SLR. Or show me which of Gibson's photographs are done with a rangefinder and which with the SLR (excluding the obvious case of very close up images.) Once you learn to see photographically, it isn't the camera that influences composition, it's the photographer.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), September 01, 2001.

Sometimes I compose in my mind, sometimes I put the camera up to my eye and just wander around the subject. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know everything in advance all the time. Nor do I think that anyone who does not do as I do isn't "seeing photographically."

One of the cameras my partner Denise Sallee shoots with is an ultra- wide 4x5 pinhole. It has no finder at all. Her technique is spotty and most of the time doesn't even know what she is going to get on the negative. Yet she has done landscape photos that put many of the the Zone System fanatics, with their sterile technical proficiency, to shame.

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), September 02, 2001.

Bob

I might fuss more over the composition with the SLR. So in the end, I think it's about horses for courses.
< BR>I second you perfectly on these two thoughts. Tools for goals and preferences for likings, n'est ce pas? And I agree with whoever has expressed scepticism towards making a myth or kind of religion of one choice or the other. I rather think you have to feel confident with the tools you operate to achieve what you have in mind to achieve.

And, yes, I totally agree that images are being "born" mentally, in the sense that stimuli find resonance in the individual. What it is though, that you are after to capture by means of photography, that you are either trying to snatch from the timeline, transform in perspective (2D), tonal interpretation (B&W), framing etc., to transfigure from reality, can be as plurifold as reality (and the entity of individuals) themselves. Add a variety of tools, just a handful of camara types, emulsions, lenses and papers, add digital - and any dogma reveals itself as amusing.

Denise Sallee (...) has done landscape photos that put many of the the Zone System fanatics, with their sterile technical proficiency, to shame.

I#m more than ready to believe this. Please lead us to having a glimpse at her vision, now that you told us about her tools, Peter!

This is a great thread in a great forum. Thanx to you all.

-- Lutz Konermann (lutz@konermann.net), September 02, 2001.

Lotsa great replies.For those of you,like myself,who 'see' pictures without use of camera viewfinder,RF or SLR,we are all taking picyures that are there.The SLR allows one to see the effects of lenses,apertures and all manner of shape design.I love my SLR but things really start to happen when I carry a RF.I see humerous and sad,events that flow by,relationships.Some of what I capture is well composed but others like life itself is a bit raggedy..Even HCB did many feet amputations.Yet for all the flaws my Leica photos are my favourites.I seldom carry a gadget bag.Little pouch for my 135 tele.Some spare film.I stressed in the 1st question if come could see and recognize if a RF or SLR was used.The tools do influence the capture of moments.A 120 TLR is great for trees.I use my Rollei mostly for trees...and small landscapes.A interesting sideline,turn AA's photos upside down,large format ones.Some of them have better graphics that way because of the way he composed.No doubt many will argue their viewpoint,that there is no difference.My whole idea is to gain as much insight into my way of working and seeing how it compares to others. A few of you thought perhaps I required some lessons....We should all try to improve our seeing skills.The rest should be done by habit.Jeff Spirer is a firm beleiver in his art.I really like your work and opinion esp when it is in conflict with my ideas and thoughts. I must go now and snap some pix.

-- jason gold (leeu72@hotmail.com), September 05, 2001.