Leica Portrait: Alessio Pizzicannella from leica camera on Vimeo.
Alessio Pizzicannella has traveled all over the world documenting musicians both on and off stage. Alessio recently went on tour for an upcoming eBook with Italian Singer Francesco Renga and exclusively used the Leica S2 to document it. In this video, we caught up with Alessio in Senigallia, Italy to discuss his love of music and photography and his experience with the S2.
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12 Comments
Fantastic Video..Sooner or later you get to be a gearhead. Oh Yeah!
I hope he’s kidding. You need very high shutter speeds (or flash) to get the most out of a camera like the S2. Otherwise what you get smearing due to mirror slap and general shake, making the images have far less detail than they’re supposed to have.
If you look at 3:36 in the video, he’s shooting at 1/45, ISO1250 and f/3.5… 1/45 is wayy too low for handholding because of what I said earlier plus we all know about ISO1250 on cameras like this. The high ISO noise is going to make the image have even less detail.
If you listen to the last bit of the video you can see his articulation skills. Leica users, and especially S2 ones, are a small group and with cameras like these, the manufacturers can get personally in touch with the end-users easily. I can just imagine the conversation that took at some Leica shop…
Leica dude: Hello sir, how may I assist you?
Alessio: Hi, I’m Alessio Pizzicannella…
Leica dude: Very good sir…
Alessio: I really like the Leica cameras because they give me a sense of history, responsibility and make me feel like I’m in an exclusive club. I do a lot of event photography and…
Leica dude: Say no more sir. We’ll lend you our S2 to have a play with for a few days and later you can tell us about how you feel about it for this promotional video we’re making.
Alessio: Bellissimo…
…
What’s your point? Nikon/Canon/Hasselblad are just doing the same.
My point is there are better cameras for this job and there are other jobs that a S2 will be better at.
Nicely cynical. Think you could just be missing the point. Whether the camera is right to get the sharpest image is one way of looking at it. I suspect it’s his style he is more concerned with and feels that this particular camera gives him what he is looking for in format and result. It certainly looks from the stills that he’s got a more filmic look which is very hard to get from low light performers like the 5dK2 and the D3s without a lot of PP as hey are just too sharp and lack atmosphere on occasions. Not every photograph needs to be pin sharp and clean particularly in music photography. I could be wrong though.
Oh and we shouldn’t forget he probably gets one at a whacking great discount of course……
Two points here… First, the S2′s sensor works like the sensors in all other digital cameras, so it’s not going to produce a film look. Secondly, the “film look” is not something magical and unknown. Film doesn’t have chroma noise like digital sensors do. Also there’s no such thing as “atmosphere” in photos… perhaps you’re referring to noise here again. Either way if one really wants, the “film look” can be easily replicated. And it would be easier to get from “low light performers” than from others because they have more dynamic range.
The thing is, they would if they could. Would we be saying inflight movies are good to have on planes if one day we could travel to any point in the world within 5 minutes for the same effort/cost?
Also, you can always make an accurate photo less accurate by blurring, adding noise, messing with colours very easily. But you can’t go the other way around
Serious?
Look at the video again and see him playback the photos shot at f2.5 at ISO 1250 but at shutter speeds 1/90, I think it’s fast enough to see his photos weren’t all blurry. It’s very easy to criticize someone doing their job and doing it well. I for one enjoyed the video… about the gear-head part, that’s funny! I think a lot of pro photogs use their cameras as tools, and seldomly enjoy it for personal leisure!
Have you looked at S2 images closely? They have severe mirror-slap vibration induced blurring, if you know how to spot them.
The mediocre high ISOs of this camera are a whole different matter and they too work against the strengths of the camera.
As for doing the job well… I only give credit to the conscious things people do, if you know what I mean
No, you are right with the mirror slap, but without seeing his images up close I can’t really tell.
I don’t think the camera differentiates between different photographers
I would like to see the resulting images as high-resolution files. Everything else is feeling good marketing blubber (and -maybe a good user interface of the camera). The only question is, if that camera allows you to get pictures that you can’t get with a 5dMK2 or a Nikon D3s. There has to be a real value in spending that kind of money. It’s either superior files, superior handling or – which would do – clients that book you because of having that mojo camera. Especially, in concert photography which – somehow – doesn’t really pay for high-quality gear…
For the type of event photography shown in the video, higher end DSLRs like the 1Ds3, 5D2, D3s, D700, D3x (in no particular order) will be better than a S2 because:
* Availability of fast lenses
* Better AF
* Better reliability
* Better high ISOs
* Less mirror-induced vibrations (smaller mirrors)
etc.