TROUBLE FOCUSING A LEICA RANGEFINDER?

Some great advice here on zone focusing:

“Leica’s aren’t meant to be shot wide open in street photography. You can’t constantly nail f1.4 shots of people moving. Furthermore bokeh shots in street photography tend to be cliche, and you lose context of the background and environment. To be frank, very few great photos in history were shot wide open.”

“I recommend you keep your aperture at f/8 by default (remember the saying, f8 and be there). This gives you a deep depth-of-field (everything is in focus) and lets enough light into your lens. I generally keep my lens pre-focused to 1.2 meters (the focusing tab is smack dab center [ed. straight down at 6 o’clock]) when I’m out on the streets. 1.2 meters is roughly two-arm lengths away.”

“When I see a subject around 3–5 meters away, I just turn my focusing tab 45 degrees to the right. When the subject is very close to me, I turn my focusing tab 45 degrees to the left (.7–1 meter). Over time, you should learn how to judge your distances well. For example, start to learn how far away .7 meters (around one arm-length), 1.2 meters (2 arm lengths away), and 5 meters (the average distance of a street from the curb to the storefront). Over time, your finger will intuitively focus with the focusing tab based on how far your subject is away from the subject.”

“What you don’t want to do when shooting street photography is this: bring up your Leica to your eye, put your focusing patch on your subject, and fool around for 5–10 seconds trying to nail your focus. What you should do is this: see how far your subject is, pre-focus to that distance (without looking through your viewfinder), bringing up your camera to your eye and quickly shooting. Essentially a Leica in street photography should be used like a point and shoot camera.”

More at http://leicaphilia.com