The Devil's Bargain

The other day, a diabolical question occurred to me.  If someone came up to me and said, "I will give you a digital Leica M(240), but you must then give me all of your old, film Leicas," what would I do?

Well, the first answer was that I should demand two M(240)s, partly because one always wants a backup, and partly because I like to have a camera with a second lens ready in a quickly developing situation.  (The best quote on this came from TIME magazine photographer Terry Ashe, who said: "If you're changing lenses, you're just watching.")  That, however, is more of an aside than an answer.  And let us take as given that this is not some tricky genie figure; there is no dark underside to the bargain.  Straight up trade: digital M for film.  What do you do?

I'm surprised at how difficult it is.  The practical me screams to take the deal and run before he figures out what he's done.  I've often wondered how long film can hold out.  Part of me says forever -- after all, you can still arrange to shoot Daguerreotypes if you want -- and part of me says it's time is limited in any sort of practical way.  Film, after all, requires factories to make it, and factories require film corporations, and those companies ain't looking to healthy these days.

But the other part of me clings to old equipment and techniques like a monk in the Dark Ages, holding on to the last copies of Aristotle and Plato while the peasants outside demand the paper for kindling.  Besides the old Leicas, I have a Rolleiflex and a Speed Graphic, and I use them when I can.  In the days when it appeared film would last forever, old gear was an exercise in technique.  I bought the Speed Graphic, for example, when it occurred to me that every great news photo I had ever seen that was made before, say, 1950 was shot with one.  How did they do it?

This leads to a secondary question: Why the Leica M?  You can get into one of those pseudo-philosophical debates about this -- you know, the kind you used to sit up all night arguing about in college?  Depending on your social class and cool factor, it could be about whether the Beatles or Stones were better, or whether Superman would beat Batman, but in the end you usually come down passionately on the side of something.

Leica users are notoriously obsessive about our cameras, and there are even crazier subsets, like those who will only use film, or think the best were the old screw-mount lenses, and so on.  And there is a collector market, which buys only pristine Leicas, preferably in the original box, only to keep them on the shelf. 

And Leica fanatics are willing to pay.  Recently, an M3 custom modified for LIFE photographer David Douglas Duncan (one of only four like it in the world) became the most expensive non-prototype camera ever auctioned, at a little over $2 million.  And it was pretty beat up, having been to Vietnam and back.  (There's a great story about that, the short version of which is when Duncan returned from covering the siege at Khe San, he went straight to the LIFE offices, still in his camouflage fatigues.  He had stored his Nikons safely in Da Nang as he left Vietnam, anticipating his return, but brought the Leicas with him.  The Nikons were stolen.)

By the way, The most expensive camera, period?  Yep, it's also a Leica.

I, for one, am a lover of the Leica M series, and I actually have given some -- okay, probably far too much -- thought into why.

Generally, my first reaction was like that of Rikard Landberg, who wrote about it on Steve Huff's blog.  When I look through the rangefinder, I see differently.  I see pictures I don't perceive when blasting away with an SLR.  I know what a 50mm lens -- normally a focal length that bores me -- I know what it is for when I put one on a Leica.  Like this guy.

Henri Cartier-Bresson described the camera as an extension of himself.  And this was driven home to me when -- remarkably late in my use of the M -- I learned that the viewfinder for the M3 (set to show a "normal" 50 mm view) can be put in front of the right eye while the left is kept open.  Then you perceive the world as you would with normal, binocular vision ... but with frame lines added.

But let's get back to the point, because the M fascination gets directly to it: the new M(240) is a direct descendant of the M3.  It has the same mechanical rangefinder for framing, the same bayonet lens mount that takes lenses from the 1950s as easily as the newest 35mm aspherical f/1.4 just released from the factory in Solms, Germany.  Aside from my pretentious ability to hold up an M3 and proclaim that it has no batteries at all, the photographic experience is, as near as I can tell before handling the new M, exactly the same.  Just digital.

So why cling to yesterday's technology?  Because there's something about film.  For one thing, it sticks around.  I can still locate 20 or 30-year old negatives and use those pictures.  The ones on last year's crashed hard drive?  Gone forever.

And there's the experience, the feeling, the old timey craftsmanship of using it.  I touched on it at the end of an earlier posting, with a reference to a blog by Vincent LaForet, who went into more detail as it was a longer leap back for him.  And there's the look, but frankly one can reproduce that in Photoshop (where my pictures pretty automatically go after the negative is scanned anyway.)

So why cling to the old cameras?  Why, when I envision the moment of the deal, do I see my hands clinging to those worn bodies of their own accord, refusing to let go?