Am I Wrong ...

I think this is an incredibly ugly camera design ...

I don't mean literally wrong, because it is a purely subjective thing, but somehow I feel that it is wrong to judge something like this purely on its aesthetics. However, it's just a concept idea on the Leica Rumors site, so I guess it's all about aesthetics. So ...

UPDATE: Apparently, there are those who think I am wrong:
"Of course, Leica will probably much never abandon their iconic body design for this series. But is starting anew (and lowering prices, which will never happen) perhaps one way of bringing the M-mount back to prominence?"

How Far the Mighty Fall ...

So Leica has done a remarkable job of surviving several near deaths and predictions of doom, often by making fancy limited editions -- some classy (35th anniversary of Leica Historical Society of America, for example) and some not so much.  But this ... well, this is a bit much.

This here's the "Leica M Kumamon," and according to Techtoys.com, it "is based on the famous Leica M Digital Range Finder (Type 240). On the front, it has a smaller logo and KumaMon symbol. On the lid on, we have a very large Kumamon logo and the words with “Leica Kumamon x” indicates that this version is specifically made ​​for Kumamon mascot."

Kumamon, Wikipedia explains, is the mascot for the Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, created as part of a tourism campaign.  Contrary to what I originally thought (or rather feared), it is not a cartoon face of an African, but rather a little black bear.

from Wikipedia

I have this vision of David Douglas Duncan suddenly looking into the clear blue sky of Southern France and softly saying he felt a disturbance in the Force ...

This Is Even A Bit Much for Me ...

Leica has a new designer camera out: The M-P "Correspondent," designed for them by rock star Lenny Kravitz.

Now here's the thing: I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I'd love to have a Leica M-P, especially one carefully blacked out in the tradition of how photojournalists through the decades have personalized their rangefinders. (Now, they usually did this because the Leica M was a favorite of war photographers, and taking everything down to matte black reduced the chances of being targeted by snipers, but that's a separate thought and story, especially as photographers who never saw the wrong end of a machine gun started covering their cameras with black gaffers tape to be just as cool.)

On the other hand, I find it hilariously absurd that they have o so carefully worn down the black paint at the traditional rub points to reveal the underlying brass, so the camera will look like it has been in continuous use since around 1945.  That's taking the idea of Leica Jewelry to a whole new level.

The Leica used by Yevgeni Khaldei to shoot the famous picture of Soviet soldiers raising their flag over the Reichstag.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one who finds this mildly absurd.

Loose Stuff ...

Shall we start on the subject of Leicas?  It's not like I've talked about that before, is it?

I came across this piece (NSFW) on the internet today.  Frankly, his complaints about image quality are hard for me to see, even though I reflexively agree with him, but his rant at the end was an interesting new thought on my old digital vs. analog question.  Indeed, I have and regularly use Leicas that are 60 years old.  They work great, and it puts me in direct control of the image (no auto functions causing the camera to refuse to fire because it thinks I'm making a mistake, no weird artifacts added by some secondary processing function, and so on ...)

But how long will there be film -- nice, Kodak-made Tri-X, for example -- not to mention the chemistry and so on to process it?  I have said that one could take solace in the fact that there are photographers out there still making daguerreotypes and ambrotypes -- techniques from the very earliest days of photography -- but those are processes that use very basic chemicals that can be combined in essentially a home lab.  35 mm Tri-X is not something you can cobble together in your garage.

Back in December, Craig Mod contemplated about this subject in the New Yorker.  He told his story of transition from various film cameras, through digital to his positive impressions of pictures shot during one trip on an iPhone.  "Tracing the evolution from the Nikon 8008 to the Nikon D70 to the GX1, we see cameras transitioning into what they were bound to become: networked lenses," he wrote.  In other words, he sees the whole process of photography shifting as the value of the pictures themselves become increasingly measured by the ability of people to see them through the network.  I'm not sure I agree (per the Vivian Maier Test), but it is an interesting thought.

Vivian Maier

 Finally, there's this.  Spoiler alert: this is the final sentence: "No doubt, cameras capabilities will continue to improve and amaze, but I wonder as camera design evolves just how much joy will be left in the process of taking photos?"  However, the journey to that point is quick and interesting.

Again with the Leica ...

So this is cute ...

But if you ask me, it completely misses the point.

You use the Leica M for two reasons:
1. To be able to use the lenses made for it by Leitz and Zeiss and a few others, or
2. To be quick and quiet and inconspicuous.

Of course, I've noted a third reason in the past: because its setup and design makes the photographic experience different than with, for example, a DSLR.

Now, why would you use the Petzval lens?  Well, primarily for the old-style effect.  It's very cool, and I wish I had one, but frankly, if it's all about the lens, it doesn't matter what the box it's attached to is. It's actually a design based on lenses made in the 19th Century for big view cameras. 

And thus, attaching a Petzval to a Leica M3 is pointless.  The Leica shutter and film plane are not any more special (except that the shutter is noted for its quiet) than any other camera.  As a matter of fact, with something as spooky in terms as focus as the Petzval, I think I'd much rather be able to back check my image through an SLR viewfinder.

So, really, what's the point?

... And Also

I seem to have an ever expanding list of websites that I want to point out or comment upon, and I keep putting off doing it because I try to do the collections all at once, or in a theme, but I think I need to just start doling these out as I get it done.

There is, for example, this warning about the inevitable creative and work plateau everyone will face.

"Society has a funny way of reminding people that there’s this order for things, and at this point your Facebook wall is exploding with friends’ puppies and houses and engagements and marriages and babies. And you start asking yourself… what have you done with your life?!"

Next, I'm always amused by and interested in a blog post that gets your attention cleverly, and delivers by being more clever, like this one.

"Let’s do some math," Etienne Schottel writes.  "What can we get for $2,800 (which is quite something I must admit)?

"A) The Sony RX1 killer-camera-that-fits-in-your-pocket-alas-not-in-my-French-undersized-pockets. ...

"B) A Leica lens which is so sharp that it is considered as a weapon in some countries.

"C) A one-year flight ticket which will offer you so many good moments and pictures that you’ll never regret it.

"Yes, my answer is C. This is the price of the ticket (for one person) we paid for our one-year trip. But, you can change the amount for something smaller, even $300 my answer remains “C”. I will always prefer using my money to go somewhere I don’t know that any new camera and that is my Grail. Period (I love them)."

Good point, in its way.  As I've blogged a couple times before, and mentioned on The Guy with the Leica,  truly the best camera is the one you have, and having something decent while in an interesting place is a good combination.

But maybe not a great one.

I think he misses two points: That the camera used can affect the picture, and there are pictures everywhere.

I have blogged before about my love of the Leica M and in particular the ones I own.  As I've said before, the M style camera just makes me see things differently, basically with more awareness.  Another, more esoteric way I have put it: The M makes it clear to me what a 50mm lens is for.

However, what's more important, I think, is the idea of putting your head in the right place to shoot.  Why is it that things are more interesting and somehow more visual when you're traveling?  Why is a small Chinese child in Beijing photogenic, but your neighbor's toddler cute, but just another kid?  Try looking at your world as a visitor.  It might actually surprise you what you now see and what becomes interesting.

Finally, there's this cri de coeur by a wedding photographer.   She relates how she made herself crazy looking at other photographers' work, but then just stopped cold turkey.

"Instead? I read books. I listened to music. I drank whiskey with my friends and had impromptu dance parties in my living room. I binge-watched TV shows and ate entire boxes of doughnuts. I took road trips, stayed up all night, slept in all day. I snuggled my husband, my sisters, my nephews. I wrote and drew and sewed and took pictures with my iPhone — my iPhone, for heaven’s sake!
 
"In short: I lived. And I discovered that if I would just live my life and be a person, if I would commune with other people who live and love and ARE, inspiration grew. It blossomed out of me like herbs in the windowsill, taller overnight, greener by the hour.
 
"And instead of incessantly reminding myself of all the ways in which I fell short — the money I wasn’t earning, the gear I wasn’t acquiring, the pictures I didn’t even know how to make — I stepped back and saw that wedding photography — this beautiful, terrible, exhausting, wonderful thing I called my job — was really a direct path to communion."

It's a good lesson, I think, for all of us.  We became what we are, and became good at what we do,  not because of imitation, but because of us and all the learning and studying and various influences of all the things that interest us.  You don't have to "find your joy," it's right there, where you put it down.

Editing

For the longest time, I've thought it would be interesting to do a book on the world's top news photographers.  Each one would get two pages: on the left, a portrait (by me, naturally), a paragraph or two of text explaining who it is and why the photographer rates being considered in the "top," and a small print of his or her most famous picture.  Then, on the right, would be the photographer's favorite picture from his portfolio, along with a quote explaining why.

I think this would show two things: That a photographer's favorite picture is rarely the one others consider his best, and that photographers are usually bad editors of their own work.

Does this say "Beauty" to you?

Recently, on my "phlog," The Guy with the Leica, I posted three pictures I chose to send to a contest with the theme of Beauty.  Aside from having to plow through a lot of archives (the only requirement was that the picture was shot with a Leica camera), it took a surprising amount of thought and time to pick the pictures I sent in.

Personally, I hate editing my own stuff, especially if I have to do it right after the shoot.  I think I'm still too "in the moment," remembering what happened and what I did to make the picture, rather than simply looking at it as a photo, the way a viewer who hadn't been there would.  Often, I am mystified when people react strongly to a picture I have shot recently -- either positively or negatively.  After some time, I can feel a bit better about it, but things still carry memories and meanings for me that the uninformed viewer would not get.  Better to let a good editor come at it cold.

I have this problem with writing too, which may be another reason I have trouble blogging as often as I should.  I hate all my writing initially, then grow to tolerate it as time passes.

... Addendum

A new review of the Leica T from the Red Dot Forum:

"The Leica T looks like it might have emerged out of Apple, as its sleek uni-body aluminum design more echoes a MacBook Pro laptop than a camera."

"The camera just exudes quality and is simply gorgeous to hold and look at. And, yes, for those wondering, it is made in Germany at the new Wetzlar factory, proudly signified by the writing under the rear LCD: 'Leica Camera Wetzlar Germany.'"

from Red Dot Forum

"And yet, the camera is much more than just a pretty face. Leica is synonymous with image quality, especially with regards to optics and the T is no exception. The first of many lenses to come in the new autofocus T mount prove to be excellent. Two lenses will be available at launch, a midrange zoom and a wide-normal fast prime."

Okay, time for me to butt in here with a typical anecdote.  When Canon came out with the EOS system, I was a happy Canon user in a sea of Nikons.  The F1s I owned, I thought, were great and significantly cheaper than the top-of-the-line Nikon F3.  But now Canon had forced a choice on me.  The new EOS mount, while providing better autofocus and autoexposure function (the mounts actually started with a few more contacts than they had uses, anticipating future requirements), was completely different from the F mount I had heavily invested in.  I could stay with the F, haunting flea markets and estate sales for old glass and gear for all time, while technology passed me by, go with the expensive EOS system, or switch to Nikon.  Nikon was, as usual, playing catch-up in the autofocus business, but doing it while retaining a lens mount that accepted older glass.

I sold everything and went with Nikon.

Now Leica thinks that, for their new system, I'm prepared to invest in a whole new line of Leica lenses?  I know that they're planned to be cheaper than M, R and S glass, but still ...

"An M Adapter-T will be available as an accessory to the T for $395. Like all other Leica-made lens adapters, the M Adapter-T features solid metal construction with polished lens mounts."

I dunno'.  It's pretty and all, but I stick with my opinion about the photographic experience.

But read the review for yourself.  

The NEW Leica!

The new Leica T System

Normally, no one is happier than I when the words "new" and "Leica" come in the same sentence, and I understand that when you make a premium product (eg: expensive ... well, incredibly expensive), you need to reach out to as many customers in that limited demographic as you can, but lately I've had a stunning disinterest in some new releases from my favorite camera company.

First, it was the X Vario, and now the new T System.  It was announced in one of the big events Leica has specialized in since its glorious 9/9/09 revelation of the M9 -- a camera I would most definitely be interested in.  People are acting very excited, despite Leica releasing what PetaPixel called "The Most Boring Ad You've Ever Seen."

I still have to drill down into the technical stuff to better understand what this is, but from the company descriptions and stories about it I have glanced through, it may yet be another Leica that's not for me.

I recoil at the happy snap look, despite the Rolex-like, carved-from-a-solid-metal-block construction.  Maybe I should be more open minded, not judging the camera just by its appearance (and Leica's regularly pairing with designers from Audi or Volkswagen or some fashion house; what does that have to do with photography?)

But here's the thing: what I love about the M system is the way it makes me think and act and See when I go to make a picture.  I explain to people that those cameras make me look at the world in a different way, and approach it to make a picture in a different way.  You can't just hand me some rich man's tourist toy and expect the same reaction.

The Miracle of Digital

David Turnley writes the other day on his Facebook page about moving to digital:

Happy Birthday to Apple MacIntosh and the Digital Age.

In 2003, I spent a month mounting a clandestine mission to be smuggled from Turkey across the Tigres and Euphrates Rivers in the middle of winter across white water rapid rivers the size of the Mississippi in a truck tire inter tube by Peshmarga Guerrillas, to avoid being “embedded”, to cover the war in Iraq. I was almost killed twice. For the first time, covering this war, I was working with a digital camera. On one of these first days, shells had landed in a Kurdish village killing members of a family. With my translator, and an ex- English Special Forces soldier who I was accompanied with while on assignment for CNN we rushed to the scene and made pictures. As we drove down a country road, at the end of this dramatic day, I downloaded a flash card. Suddenly, with the sun setting, my Apple laptop computer, with the northern Iraqi mountains looming in front of me through the windshield, began to play my photographs as a slide show, to Beethoven, the default that the computer was set to in itunes. I began to cry- the years around the world- that I would never see my work for weeks after I had shipped film back to New York or Paris from some distant land, or managed to create a makeshift darkroom in a remote motel and spend a night trying to transmit one negative through an international telephone line. As we drove, these images were being transmitted over a satellite dish on the roof of our SUV to Atlanta, and five minutes later, several hundred images had arrived, to be set up to be transmitted over this International network to millions around the world as a three minute piece. For me, this was the beginning of the digital era, and I have never looked back. 

©David Turnley, From Baghdad Blues, all rights reserved, 2003.

David and his twin Peter are both photojournalists in the high stratosphere of the profession, to the point where it has become a joke among others at their level that one can judge the importance of an international event by whether one or both of them shows up to cover it, thus making it either a "One Turnley" or a "Two Turnley" story.  Tienamen Square in 1989 was a Two Turnley event.

Anyway, this reminded me of my earlier post on what I called The Devil's Bargain, where I asked what I would do if someone offered to replace all my film Leicas with one of the new digital Ms.  It does move the needle a little in the direction of "Yes," I think, but still remains with a caveat: If I sold every Leica body I owned (weeping with each departure), I don't think I'd have enough even then to buy a single M(240).  Not sure about an M9 or (better, in my opinion) M9P.

So I guess I'm safe from the Devil for another day ...

All I Want for Christmas ...

It's a plea that sometimes is played for humor ("... is my two front teeth") and sometimes for heartwarming pathos ("... is my Daddy home from war"), but sometimes it's a bit of a palate cleaner in the bacchanalic greedfest that Christmas can become.  And sometimes it is something that you just can't get out of your head.

All I want for Christmas is my camera and lens back.

A Leica M4-2

Some time ago, a very nice man -- a retired professor of biology here in Lexington -- stopped by to show me a camera he had bought new some years ago.  He knew of my book, and had seen me carrying, now infallibly, a Leica as I went about life in town.  He had an M4-2 that he had bought when it was new in the 70s and wondered if I would like to buy it from him along with a 135mm f/2.8 lens.  The offer took my breath away.

The M4-2 and its mate, the M4-P were unusual (perhaps unique -- though I think that word overused, and I guess if there are two they can hardly be unique) cameras in the Leica inventory.  When they were built, Leica's leadership had seen the writing on the wall.  Nikon and Canon were rising out of the ashes of post-war Japan, and had begun to totally command the camera market with single lens reflex cameras (SLRs), having switched to them in the late 1950s and early 1960s after a decade of producing Leica M imitations.  Leica decided to change with the times, disposing with the iconic (another overused word) M rangefinders to concentrate on the R-series SLRs.  (Also, the disasterous M5, the most unloved Leica M this side of the M8, didn't help their attitude any.)

Walter Kluck, the Leica executive in charge of its Canada facilities (where some lenses were produced) thought stopping the M line was an incredibly bad idea, and asked to be allowed to make Ms in Canada.  Leica reluctantly agreed, and it can be argued that not only the M but Leica itself was saved.  The M4-2 and M4-P were the cameras Kluck's factory produced.

Anyway, I did some quick EBay research and told my new friend that he deserved at least $1000 for his camera and lens, if not significantly more (the lens, for example, was still in its box).  I didn't have $1000.  Not by a long shot.  I might, for four years, send him $20 a month to get near that amount, but he could do significantly better on EBay.

He wasn't concerned, he said.  $20 a month was okay.  He was happy to know I loved the camera, and I did.  I loyally sent him my money -- sometimes a month or more late, with a $40 or more check, to make up the difference, but he was never cross.  Sainthood is made by such as he.

Then came a rainy evening, when I climbed out of our minivan.  I had the camera with me as usual -- it made many a great picture -- with a Zeiss 21 f/2.8 lens on it.  The lens was my wife's last extravagant Christmas gift before our total financial collapse, a thing of beauty that made images with gray values beyond belief.  It produced pictures the way I saw life; it was no accident that I was traveling with that combination.

But what happened as I got our of the car was an accident: the shoulder strap -- itself a thing of beauty, a soft, black, leather strap produced by Luigi Crescenzi of Leicatime -- caught on my knee, and in one of those moments when reality seems to drop into slow motion, I watched the camera arc past me and onto the hard pavement of our driveway, landing with a painful smack.

Leicas are tough cameras -- when the M4-2 was made, they were commonly carried by war photographers into Vietnam and other rough, dangerous places -- but they can only take so much.  Both the body and lens were damaged.  

I did some internet research, where I was depressingly told at one point to just throw the M4-2 away -- it would cost more to fix it than to just find another -- until I came to the legendary Sherry Krauter, beloved of Leica enthusiasts everywhere.  Sure, she could fix it, she said, but it might take a while.  She was busy.  I told her that was okay, as it would take me a while to find the money to pay her.  Little did either of us know ...

Dance rehearsal, shot with the M4-2 and Zeiss 21

She took the poor camera and lens in, and I put my mind to rest.  I had told her to take her time, and thought surely the money would come in one way or another.  But when she called to say it was ready, I wasn't.  I sent a portion of the bill, assuring her that Christmas bonuses were coming, and she was again more than patient.  That was roughly three years ago.  How's that for patient?


Each year -- each month of each year -- I look at payments for extra work, windfalls from jobs that come my way, and that eagerly anticipated Christmas bonus, thinking: This is it.  Now I can pay Sherry.  And every time, like the cruel torture when a prisoner is told he will be released, then sent back to his cell at the last minute, the money has to go to something else.  I'm sure she gumbles under her breath, and she should.


So what do I want for Christmas?  I could list a lot of little things: Some film, some random fascinations of late, even the money to process the film I've already shot.  And, mind you, I'm not losing sight of the big things: I'm happy that my family is housed and fed and more or less healthy.  It's not by chance that my money gets allocated to things before it comes to my camera.  But really the thing I want -- the self-indulgent gift I'd automatically ask for if you asked me without warning -- is my camera and lens back.


Maybe next month ...

Not Yet ...

So I just finished another posting in the "phlog," The Guy with the Leica, titled "Loosen Up," which really seems to have nothing to do with the content.  (Does anyone actually look at the headlines on these things?)

Frankly, it was a little message to myself.  If you're one of the half-dozen or so who have followed my stuff, especially at the phlog, lately, you know money's been tight and, as a result, the output from the actual Leicas -- film cameras I own from the 1950s and 60s -- has been two years in the waiting.  I've been shooting old film I had in the 'fridge, and just can't afford to get it processed.  I know there's some good stuff in there, but it sits in the 'fridge, carefully stored in a tidy ziplock labeled with the year it was shot in.

Anyway, I decided that, after posting pictures shot on my Nikons and even my iPhone, I just needed to loosen up.  I can't wait for the day that I get to process and post the pics from the Leicas (and I still carry one with me wherever I go) but in the meantime "The Guy with the Leica" needs to be more about the kind of pictures I make, and less about the equipment it's made on, I think ...

Finally ...

A review of the M(240) with someone who knows about video.

Sadly, it's not very positive:

"Did Leica Camera f... up?
 

"In my opinon, short and simply yes."

...

"Why would Leica produce a number of prototypes to send out to photographers so as to use their response to fine tune the Leica M camera concept, but never involved any videographers in the development of their first Leica M with video?

"I'm taking a bold standpoint here and saying that they didn't. So many things are not designed for video in the Leica M Type 240 that it indicates that Leica Camera AG simply tried to resemble the Leica D-Lux 6. A consumer camera that is very good for consumers, but unlikely to be used for videographers or professional filmmakers ..."

Oh dear.

Some colleagues at the TV station wandered over to look over my shoulder as I played the accompanying video, and we agreed that the same could be done with a DSLR for a half the price required for the Leica.  Why get it then?  Well, I said, if you wanted to go to the wilds and do, say, a multimedia documentary project while carrying just one large camera bag, this would work.  But, they countered, couldn't you do that with a Canon D5?  Uhhhhhh.

I Have Absolutely No Interest In This Camera

 I've written before about Leica obsession.  It has many colors, including one of my favorite terms (somewhere just below "chimping"): "Leica Jewelry."  That's the dismissive term used by either working photographers or camera afficiandos (the two are not mutually exclusive -- I feel a Venn diagram coming on) for those who know just enough about Leicas ("They're the very best!") to want to carry one around for the prestige, but not enough about photography to truly make use of it.  Or perhaps know just enough about photography to think they deserve to use "the very best."

Anyway, one of the prestige factors is price.  I'm not revealing anything by saying that Leicas are very expensive.  At the last Leica Historical Society of America annual conference I was able to attend (that was 2009, before the game-changing M9 was released), I watched Director of Product Management Stefan Daniel field question after question about price.  Finally, he came up with what I thought was an impressive answer: the Leica M now costs less in relation to the average income than it did in the M3's heyday in the 1950s.

So now they've released the X Vario.

"Leica has always been known as the Mercedes-Benz of cameras," said FStoppers' posting on the announcement.  "With their unparalleled quality of build, and beautiful designs, they’ve been able make and sell cameras at the premium price tags exceeding $7000. With their latest creation, the X Vario, Leica looks to bridge the gap with Leica’s quality, zoom lenses, and a sub-$3K price tag."

 Oooooo-kay.

Even inside the cult of Leica, there have always been complaints with each digital product release, and not just about price.  They want live screens, electronic viewfinders (another favorite term of mine: the acronym EVIL, though I don't think I take it the way it's meant), video, etc.  Techno-geeks who want cameras that do the very coolest new things, or photographers that think this tool or that firmware is the most useful thing since the pan-tilt lens post in the Leica Users Forum, usually with paragraph of  careful reasoning supported with charts and statistics and sample photos.  I think the X Vario is the camera for those guys.

They can have it.

Not that I'm a Luddite.  Far from it; nobody's happier than me that the new M(240) shoots video.  I fantasize the way other guys do about the Playmate of the Month about what I could do with that video function.  But that's not why I use a Leica.  I like it for the M experience, if you will.

It's something I've tried to articulate before.  Put simply: there is a unique experience, a special feeling that comes when one handles a Leica M, when one brings that rangefinder to the eye.  When one becomes used to the controls, the camera falls naturally into place -- to the point where I catch myself pantomiming holding the camera while thinking about making a picture.  I'm fully confident that, should someone catch me at it, they could slip the M body into my hands without moving them, and everything would slide into place.

The ultra-smooth, almost cylindrical body of the M8 just didn't seem quite right to me, though I understood it as a valiant effort.  The M9 was, in my mind, the turning point.  As I said to friends, I think it is the digital camera that Cartier-Bresson would finally buy.

The EVIL system, I believe, is just that.  I know there are people who think it's wonderful, especially for something like street photography, where people are less likely to catch you at work as they would with the camera up to your face.  I just have a really hard time working with that screen.

And frankly the whole thing smacks of a point-and-shoot.  It's a really nice point-and-shoot.  (For just short of $3,000, I should hope so.)  It has, I have no doubt, a great lens and a great chip and a good, solid Leica construction, and I probably would be impressed by the pics made by an able photographer with it, but still ...

No, I'll stick with the M, while I wish Leica godspeed and massive profits with cameras like the X Vario, my main concern is that they be the support for my preferred system.

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?

What Does This Image Mean?

There's a story that when Dadaist artist Jean Arp (if I recall correctly) was asked what one of his works meant, he simply recited the alphabet back to the questioner.  The meaning wasn't for him to tell, but for you to figure out for yourself.

Lately, I've had a real run of interest in surrealist images, just because it amuses me.  This, from work today, struck me as being in that vein ...



Secondary note: It's a digital image (shot on a Nikon D80 with a 17-55mm zoom lens), and it is clearly such.  Electronics look so ... electronic when shot on electronics.  This would have a whole different texture, and perhaps a whole different feeling, shot on film with the Leica.  Is that important?

What Makes a $100 Book?

When we produced our book, Rockbridge: A Photographic Essay, there was a debate about price.  I guess we could have actually sat down and done the math in terms of time and film and processing, pro-rated out equipment and gas and production (editing, cropping, etc.), as well as the obvious expense of getting the damn thing printed and shipped from China.  But if we were that good with money ... well, we wouldn't have gone broke in the meantime.

So instead, we just tried to choose a price point that would get us the maximum amount of income without hitting a chill point for the buyer.  $39.95 seemed about right, and that became the cover price.  (You can get it, by the way, at local Lexington, Virginia, bookstores, or on Amazon, or even from the publisher -- makes a great Christmas present.)

Since then, I've seen it pop up on the rare book sites for as much as $107, apparently because it was an autographed copy.  Wow.  I've only paid that much for a book once ... and regretted it.

It was a photographic history, written on a subject that is critically important, in my opinion, but inadequately covered.  In other words, it's the only book about it.  Why so vague?  Because I'm about to be cruel.

You see, the book was written by amateurs -- amateur historians and amateur writers.  It's horribly organized and poorly written, wandering from subject to subject, scrambling events in apparently random non-chronological order.  It's packed with illustrations, most of which I have seen nowhere else, but they're laid out like a 19th Century page of classifieds: wildly cast upon the page as if handled by cats or monkeys.

And yet, I paid over $100 for it, unknowing at the time what a disaster it is.  Nonetheless, perhaps I was extreme in saying I regretted it.  I wish I had paid less -- much less -- but I am happy I own the book.  It really has a great deal of useful information buried within its chaotic pages, information I've seen only in sources that cite this book.

Now, there is a new book, Leica 99 Years, for a neat $130.  (I wonder what the additional $31 are for.  Wait for it, the joke will come to you ...)  Its gotten good reviews from the Leicaratti, and it does look beautiful.  I would be tempted ... but for the price.  Seriously.  $130?

Of course, using my own equation, your average Leica buyer had a pretty high chill point.  I mean, $7,000 for a camera body ... without the $1,000 lens.  But, for what appears to be a coffee table book of pretty pictures, a celebration of just, well, being cool enough to be Leica?

I suspect the cover price was chosen in a more sophisticated, perhaps Machiavellian,  version of the process we used.  It's expensive because it's something from Leica.  The brand's image must be maintained.

Yet, in my lizard heart of hearts, I know that I would buy the damn thing if I could afford it.  What a sucker.

Maybe I can scam a review copy ...

Who Are These People?

So I was talking with my anchor the other day as we drove to shoot a story, and we were discussing how often TV equipment (including things like nonlinear editing programs) seems to have been designed by someone who has never actually used it in the field.  Quirky functions, difficult to use aspects, impractically fragile parts ... all part of one's daily life with both TV and still photography.

My favorite anecdote on this, though it begins to age now, is about when Sony first introduced the Betacam in the late 1980s.  The camera itself was transformative, in some cases unfortunately, as it made it much easier for broadcast networks to reduce the average TV news crew from two technicians -- one with the deck and audio kit, usually a shotgun mike on a fishpole -- to just one cameraman, as the deck was now part of the camera.

However, as part of that original kit, there was a brand new plate to attach the camera to the tripod.  This was a longer affair than in the past (because of the longer camera), but also had a very different quick release system, involving a trio of bolts that fitted into slots on the bottom of the camera.  When one wished to release the camera, one pulled a small, plastic lever on the side, which caused a series of mechanical pieces inside the plate to move around, which in turn moved the bolts.  Even in my late 20s, as I moved the clever but elaborate piece, feeling the parts inside slide and interact, I knew that it would last about three weeks in the field before something broke.

Then, as now, I joked that somewhere in Tokyo was some bright, young engineer showing this to his colleagues and bosses proudly, saying: "Look what I did!"

But I just know there are people who test these things before release.  I was once told the story that, in the 70s when Olympus made a decent play for the photojournalist market, they dropped some cameras and motor drives by the UPI offices in Washington.  One photographer there already used and liked Olympus, and promptly took them on.  But the motor drives in particular were oddly designed, an intentional step away from the traditional thick bar clamped to the bottom of the camera with a handgrip ending in a shutter release in front of where the camera's own release was (a design developed and long used by first Leica and then Nikon).  Instead, if I remember correctly, the handle went down, like a pistol grip, with a trigger release.

Some months later, the Olympus rep returned to ask what the photographer thought.  "It's over there," he gestured vaguely at a nearby table.  Nothing more needed to be said.  In the intervening time, he had taken the drives apart and taped them back together in the more traditional form.  The pistol grip just wasn't practical.

More recently, Leica has come out with a series of new developments on its legendary M design, finally ending with the Leica digital M.  With each release, for those in the Leica obsession world, there have come stories of a select few given prototypes to field test and recommend improvements, as well as others who are then allowed to borrow the new cameras after they've been announced but before the production numbers are high enough to be seen regularly in stores.  Who are these people?  And more importantly, what do I have to do to get on that list?

Of course, in the case of Leica, it's pure jealousy on my part.  (Though I'm very available and easy to contact -- are you listening Christian Erhardt?)  However, in the case of, say, Panasonic or Sony, I would gleefully explain to them how what they are doing makes life easier or harder for your average TV professional.  Or perhaps the legendarily uninterested Apple corporation?

But in the end, it still leaves me wondering: Where do they get their testers, or do some of these companies simply not care?  Do they just trust that clever little engineer who is so proud of his complicated design?  What are they thinking?

N is for Neville, who died of ennui ...

Got this email today, from the head of a large photo agency:

Just curious, what sort of photographic projects are you working on?

Which got me thinking ...

Problem 1: The answer is both nothing and quite a lot.  The first answer is the one that inspired me to write this, because -- though I have a lot of things in mind (that's half of "quite a lot") -- I'm not really working on a personal project.  And that's disappointing.

You see I have stacks of stuff, piles of papers and books and files, all the inspirations for various personal projects.  I have all sorts of immediate ideas running around in my head for things I'd like to do right now.  I even have a couple I've made some minimal effort to do.

Like what?  Like this:

This is one of a series of what I've called "test shots" of nighttime views of Roanoke, Virginia.  It's a vague, lazy, passing effort at a larger project of proper, night shots of the city shot with a Speed Graphic on 4x5 film, or perhaps with a Leica using a Zeiss 21mm.  (The Speed's lens wouldn't be wide angle enough for a view like that above).

It's a vague, lazy test shot because I shot it with a Nikon D80, basically on the fly on the way into work on the morning show where I am the staff photographer.  (That's the other half of "quite a lot" -- producing all the visuals for a daily, two-hour show is really time consuming.)

Anyway, this is a continuation of a project I did in DC with the Speed, shooting pictures of the city at night reminiscent of those by Volkmar Wentzel.  And I haven't really put a lot of time and effort into it.  As it is, I keep patting myself on the back for bothering to get out of the car for 10 minutes to shoot these pics.

But the point is: Why am I not working directly on a project?  And why haven't I put more effort into this blog, or my other one?  Well, hopefully with this post, that last part is gonna' end...

Problem 2: Why am I getting an email from the president of a major photo agency?  My ego knows no bounds, and I like to think he's heard of me from my work with the NPPA, or perhaps from friends who work for the agency, but it just doesn't compute.  I think he got me off a list (again, NPPA?) and did a mass mailing.

But why?  What does this say about the state of photo agencies, that he's trolling for new ideas?  In an age where many outlets think viewer photos and random input from Instagram is sufficient, photo agencies -- many of which have vanished or been eaten up by their competitors in recent years -- need to rethink their position and role in the media world.  I think there's a place for them, once the public realizes that any ol' picture isn't as good as a truly well done picture by someone who spends his life making pictures, and then publications (or whatever falls under that term, since literal publishing and its role in the media is a separate question) see a profit from using good, professional photos.  The evidence is there, but I guess it just has to become numerically obvious.

Something to think about.  Maybe while I buckle down and get to work on that next project ...

I Dream a Perfect World...

I had the most remarkable dream the other day. It wasn't unusual in its form -- just one of those false awakening dreams. Surely you've had one, where you dream you've awakened in your bed ... only to then really awaken, surprised to find the previous was only a dream? I've had them often enough that I frequently have a moment of questioning the reality: Is this really waking up, or just a dream? How do I know? (And, no, I've not seen "Inception" yet, though I know there's something about a top involved...)

So I woke up, and rolled to a sitting position to look out the bedroom window. It was hard to see out -- the shade was pulled over sheer curtains, though the fuzzy outlines of the buildings outside could be seen. I looked down at the dark narrow plank floor, then tried to see better out the window, to get oriented in the flat, pale dawn light. My wife still slept by me. Our parents were in the small houses nearby, where we'd moved them from our old house in Lexington. There were a few other houses visible through the shade, not as silhouette, but as obscured, fuzzy impressions. It felt real. Totally real. "Well," I said to myself, "It might not be the idealized Lexington, but at least it's Lexington."

Perhaps that needs explaining. I've come to realize that, in dreams, I have idealized or compacted versions of places -- a Lexington with fewer streets, a DC with the areas I frequented all pushed together so they abut -- basically places with all the irrelevant details edited out. Sometimes they're idealized; my dream Georgetown more resembles a set for a production of "Oliver!", with texturally aged, brick townhouses with dark wood porches made of thick, craggy beams, all pushed together over quaint alleys and the canal, than it does the actual neighborhood. Anyway, the point of my thought was that I'd decided my morning felt real enough, even when I looked past the foot of the bed to the large, glass doors opening out to a balcony, a town on the hillside below resembling something in Italy more than southwest Virginia. And that's when I really woke up...

And that all pretty much serves as preface to my organizing my film -- as in the stuff I put into my still cameras -- because I've been doing that around the edges of work and family care lately. You see, as we abandoned our old house, we let the utilities go, including electricity, which in turn allowed the refrigerator in which I kept my film defrost. What ice that had caked into it then, of course, melted, soaking all the film boxes. So now, I have to go through all the film, dispose of the boxes to wrecked by water to save (as well as get rid of what film was ruined), but first get the expiration dates off the boxes and write them with a Sharpie on those little plastic film cans.

Okay, that's a lot of background to get to a moment of revelation...

I walked into my room in the midst of the extended process the other night, I looked down on the sea of film canisters ... and felt an odd pleasure. As I later told a colleague at the station, if you had come to me in college, and said that, in 30 years or so, you will be sorting through scores of film canisters on an Afghan war rug, your Leicas nearby, I would have taken that as a promise of absolute success.

A part of a documentary including Larry Burrows, one of the greatest war photographers. Note about 1:34, the scene of him pulling film canister after film canister out of the box to carry with him into the field with his Leicas. This still gives me a unique thrill, to see an idol doing something so similar...

As with so many things, this seems like the story of the genie: I get exactly what I wished for ... but not really in the way I wished. I don't know whether to be ecstatic or depressed...