Jul 142012
"La belle américaine" translates to "American beauty" in English. Yet, it does not exclusively apply to women as it is often used to describe old vintage American cars in French. In the case of this picture, I guess that both definitions equally work.
Since our return from the trip, I have been shooting mainly with the M9 and the 24mm Elmarit. Trying to learn something new with a very challenging focal (click on picture for high res)
Leica M9 with 24mm Elmarit at F5.6, 1/180, ISO160
Great picture! Are you using an external viewfinder on the M9 oder guessing the framing? I have so far confined myself to a 28mm to avoid an external finder and thought I'd go even wider (say a 21mm) if I were to put up with the inconvenience of an external finder.
Hi George, I use the Leica 24mm viewfinder. I have a pretty good idea of mental frames for 35mm and 50mm but not 24mm yet. Maybe at some point I’ll be able to skip it but for the moment, it helps a lot.
“a very challenging focal…” – well you don’t make it look challenging at all (though it surely is…)! How do you find the greater depth of field, given your look makes a virtue of really shallow DOF?
Llew, well I did not post my numerous failures with that focal ;)
I think that shallow depth of field work much better in some settings than others. For example, it works pretty well with portraits of cities like Paris. For more complex scenes with multi subjects or India, I have been using extensive depth of fields more. 24mm doesn't give you much choice unless you shoot very close to your subjet so in some ways, it forces me to work more with large depth of fields.
Cheers, Yanick