Author Archives: Leicaphila

Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 5cm 1.5 for Leica

For a very short period during World War II, the Carl Zeiss Optical Factory at Jena built Sonnar lenses in the M39 lens mount used by their biggest competitors, Ernst Leitz Cameras in Wetzlar. During WW2 trade with Nazi Germany was either restricted or forbidden in most countries. The German government, needing foreign currency for the ongoing war effort, appointed the president of Carl Zeiss to coordinate export of German products, probably because of Zeiss’s established contacts with foreign companies.

Carl Zeiss-made Contax foreign sales, along with Leitz’s, had plummeted during the war. However, German military organizations were commissioning Leica cameras to be used by military photographers and German journalists assigned to the Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and the Wehrmacht. To ensure ongoing Zeiss production, the president of the Carl Zeiss Jena plant ordered that Leicas should be fitted with Carl Zeiss lenses. And so Carl Zeiss in Jena retrofitted several Contax mount lenses for the Leica Thread Mount: a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 50mm f2.0, a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 50mm f1.5, a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 85mm f2.0 and a Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm f4.0. All were produced and sold, although in quantities limited by the contingencies of war, until the end of WW2.

By the end of the war, the Russians had overrun Jena and appropriated the Zeiss manufacturing plant there. The Soviets ran it under their auspices for some time, continuing to produce Zeiss optics under the Carl Zeiss Jena brand, including the M39 LTM Sonnars. The company that remained, “Carl Zeiss Jena,” was not a “fake” company bearing the name of Carl Zeiss; it was the same company in the same factories where all the pre-WWII lenses were made. The company name remained “Carl Zeiss”, and the location of the company remained marked on the lens as the wartime lenses had been.

The Soviets subsequently dismantled the factory and transplanted it to Charkov in Ukraine. They took with them to Charkov Zeiss designs, machines, stock, and workers forced to relocate to Charkov, where the Zeiss factories were reconstituted by the Russians as restitution for the German’s destruction of the Charkov FED plant during the German invasion of the Ukraine. They left, as a legacy, an unknown quantity of Carl Zeiss Jena lenses in M39 mount. These Zeiss Sonnar lenses are the progenitors of the the Jupiter-3 (50mm f1.5), Jupiter-8 (50mm f2.0), the Jupiter-11 (135mm f4.0) and the Jupiter-9 (85mm f2.0), which would be built to the same design, and often with the same machinery, as the Zeiss optics built in Jena. The Russians even adapted the Contax-mount Biogon 35mm f2.8 to their Jupiter-12 35mm f2.8 in LTM.

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The legitimacy of M39 LTM Leica Mount Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnars are often called into question by web “experts.” The problem is that much of the factory records were plundered or lost during the Soviet occupation, offering fertile ground for all sorts of whacky “Red Scare” theories about the Russians “faking” CZJ lenses. Contrary to what is usually claimed, almost all the M39 lenses that have come onto the modern market are genuine and can be established as such with some critical examination (see below). What seems to confuse collectors is this: many of the CZJ Sonnars are post WW2 Russian Army Of Occupation lenses, which are only different in build date from their WW2 German build counterparts. However, the internal components are the same as the 1941 to 1943 assembled lenses, and they were assembled with Zeiss machinery and know-how. All Jena factory made WW2 CZJ M39 lenses made during the war had “ears” just as their Contax counterparts did (remember, these were retrofitted Contax lenses), while the post-war Russian-made LTM lenses were produced with Jena factory optics, machines and parts, often don’t have “ears”, but are still legitimate “Carl Zeiss Jena” lenses.

Another thing which confuses collectors is that, even before the partition of Germany, there were three organizations with the name of Zeiss. Carl Zeiss Optical, established by Carl Zeiss; after Carl Zeiss’s death sole ownership passed on to his partner Ernse Abbe, who established Carl Zeiss Stiftung which would acquire Carl Zeiss Optical as one of its core divisions. Carl Zeiss Stiftung grew and diversified, in 1926 acquiring four camera manufacturers, merging them to form Zeiss Ikon, its photographic equipment division, based in Dresden. Zeiss Ikon bought lenses from Carl Zeiss Optical for its cameras but Carl Zeiss Optical was free to supply its lenses and other products to other camera makers too. Given all of the above, confusion and misunderstanding seem to trail vintage Zeiss optics at every turn.

Illegitimate CZJ lenses do very infrequently pop up for sale, usually by sellers in the former Eastern Bloc. These are Contax lenses hacked into Russian Jupiter lens mounts, being sold as original Carl Zeiss Jena M39 Sonnars. Or they’re Jupiter-3s with the front lens ring removed and replaced with a fake Carl Zeiss Jena lens ring. Those are the fakes. But it seems to me that there is no practical incentive to try and turn an old Jupiter 3 into a CZJ. The effort and expense of machining a CZJ front ring and replacing it in a early 50’s era Jupiter 3 doesn’t match what little extra money the CZJ would bring over a Jupiter 3 sold as such. So, the bottom line is this: if you’re lucky enough to have found one along the way, your CZJ Sonnar is probably genuine, irrespective of the irrational claims of some self-appointed experts who see fakes everywhere.

If you know what you’re looking for, it’s not difficult to spot a fake. The first step in determining whether its a fake Zeiss lens converted from a KIEV is to look on the lens’ focusing ring. Russian lenses use metric screws while Zeiss used non-metric screws. Additionally, the Zeiss ring has one short and one longer screw; converted KIEV lenses have equal length screws; the Kievs will typically have a big “M” for the focusing scales while real CZJ’s will have a small “m”; and the “T” engraving on the front shield, which should be red, will often be white on the fakes. *

In his book Non-Leitz Leica Thread-Mount Lenses, Marc James Small states: “For the most part, [the wartime] lenses have serial numbers in the 2,6xx,xxx to 2,8xx,xxx range, are ‘T’-coated & marked, & all are inscribed ‘Carl Zeiss Jena.'” The 276 series was the last true wartime series, 279 and up were produced in the Jena plant after the Russians had completely taken over Zeiss plants and production. Thus, my copy, #2,866,450, the one shown in the photos, would have been produced in the Russian run Jena plant post-war using Zeiss optical glass, parts, labor and know-how.

I bought my copy from a guy who was selling camera equipment he had inherited from his father years earlier. It was dirty and unused for probably 30 years before he put it up for sale on Ebay, from Ohio, with some really cheesy photos and a description that clearly indicated he had no idea what it was. In talking to him afterwards, he told me his dad had brought it back with a camera from Germany during the occupation, but that’s about all he knew. The lens, bearing all the marks of being legit, cleaned up nice. I had it disassembled and the tech said it had the internal markings consistent with an original.

Older lenses like the CZJ Sonnar weren’t designed with the same tolerances as today’s computer designed and robotically manufactured optics. They don’t have the same materials and were subject to more impurities. They age and discolour. They often have a single coating rather than being multicoated like modern lenses. The Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar is a cool lens, both as a collectible and as a user, obviously very vintage in character – not very contrasty, not super sharp wide-open but better and better as it’s stopped down. Wide open it has a beautiful soft character with a creamy rendition of out of focus areas, nothing like the clinically harsh and contrasty look of modern Zeiss optics built by Cosina. The photos below are good examples of its character.

I find it a great lens to use on my M8, a way to build some imperfection into a digital image. Or, better yet, pair it with some Double XX pushed a few stops and developed in D76: perfect.

Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar. Photos by Andrew Fishkin.

* I’m definitely not an expert, so please take what I’m saying here with a healthy dose of skepticism; I’m essentially repeating common wisdom with respect to telling the real from a fake. If you have better information, and if some of mine is wrong, please feel free to set me right.

Garry Winogrand and His Leica M4….errr, M3?

So, here’s a picture of Garry Winogrand with his famous M4, you know, the one he ran about 100,000 rolls through and generally beat the hell out of, the camera itself now somewhat of an icon. Except that, as alert Leicaphile Andrew Fishkin points out to me, the shutter advance lever is most definitely not an M4 lever, but rather the old style M2/3 full metal lever. So, given the presence of a dedicated exposure numbering window next to the shutter release, this would appear to be an M3 as opposed to an M2. Whatever Winogrand was doing with an M3, well, we’ll never know.

Winogrand’s M4

As for the lens, the more I look at it, it looks like a 21mm Super-Angulon and not the 28mm Elmarit he “always” shot with. So much for “what everybody knows” about Winogrand.

Meeting Mary Ellen

By Philip Wright for Leicaphilia. All photos by Mr. Wright.

The first time I met Mary Ellen Mark we were in Oaxaca, Mexico and she asked me if she could see the back of my camera. “Excuse me?” I mumbled, somewhat overawed, a tad bemused and probably more than a little jet-lagged, having arrived from Melbourne, Australia just the day before. “Would you mind turning your Leica around so I can see the back?” Her first ever words to me. Repeated patiently, as if to a slightly dull child. I’d worn the camera as it was day one of a ten-day workshop with this master photographer that I’d been gifted as a very generous Christmas present from my wife and family.

I finally comprehended, turned around my M6TTL and saw a big smile make its way across Mary Ellen Mark’s face. No LCD screen. “Oh that’s really good, you’re using film. I don’t mind if people use digital but I do like to see that there’s still a few people using film in these workshops.”

It was March, 2011, and the digital maelstrom really did seem to be sweeping all before it. Dangling around the necks of fellow workshoppers was a swag of shiny new (and big!) full-frame Canons and Nikons, plus the odd M9. Yet maybe half of us had film cameras – Leicas of all ages, Nikons, Mamiyas, a Contax, a Bronica, a Holga.

We were gathered in the beautiful ancient hall of what had become an arts centre in St. Augustine on the outskirts of Oaxaca for item one on the workshop agenda: portfolio reviews. It was fascinating to see each participant nervously place her or his work on the large table. I’m not really sure what I expected to see, but the variety of approaches and styles was flabbergasting. Mary Ellen had an innate ability to instantaneously grasp what level the student was at, and what his or her strengths and weaknesses were. Often this wasn’t at first obvious to the casual observer, but she was always spot on. Realizing that people were generally baring their very souls with the work, she’d couch her response to that person’s work with affirmative, guiding observations and advice, often asking questions about why they’d chosen a particular approach or what their overriding interest and intent was. This encouragement became somewhat contagious, as gradually more and more of the group joined in with expressing positive remarks about the work.

My own turn eventually came and my portfolio was met with some encouraging remarks – words that will stay with me forever. Her advice to me for the duration of the workshop was to find one thing, apart from the set excursions that were pre-organized, and stick with it. “Preferably find a family” she casually added, as if it would be the most natural thing in the world to somehow find some willing family in a country I’d never been to before, who spoke a language I didn’t understand, and convince them I needed to revisit them multiple times in order to take photographs. Yeah, right.

A couple of days of organized photo shoots followed. In and around Oaxaca at that time of year there are many festivals and parades, and the local people adopt a festive mood and are completely welcoming of a bunch of loco gringos with cameras. What wonderful sights and sounds we were witness to! Brass bands marching in the streets, insane grease-covered semi-naked men taking over town jangling bells and wearing cow horns, transvestites parading at dusk – click, click click! Crazy!

Each day we were allotted a time when we’d have a ten-minute one-on-one review of the previous day’s shoot with Mary Ellen. So each night the deal would be: drop the film and pick up work prints at the appointed lab; then each morning pick up the developed film and contact sheets ready for the review.

My review time was allocated at 12:10, so whatever I was doing that morning I had to ensure I’d be back in time. Mary Ellen liked you to have up to five contact sheets to look over, though sometimes I had six or seven and she didn’t mind. She’d quickly zap over each frame with a large Mamiya loupe, occasionally hovering over one picture or maybe comparing two similar ones. Anything she liked would get a yellow paper dot stuck next to it. It was a matter of pride how many dots you got each day, and people would often compare dot scores, even though talking about your pictures or showing them to others was considered strictly out-of-bounds. As if that was ever going to float! Anyway if you were lucky enough to get a yellow dot or two you were then encouraged to get 5” X 7” work prints made of those frames, so you dropped off those negatives to the lab along with your undeveloped film from the day’s shooting.

Mary Ellen didn’t say too much during those one-on-ones, but her words were chosen carefully. If you were erring into the realm of touristy shots she’d steer you off that course. One day I’d taken a small series of pictures of a lady making tortillas and she advised not to do “how to” shots. She wasn’t crazy about vertical shots and she strongly encouraged uncluttered frames. On the other hand if you had latched onto a subject that was looking interesting she’d point that out, too, often asking whether it was possible to go back for more. “Go back – you should always go back” was one of her mantras. So, following these sessions, freshly armed with her advice and observations, you’d eagerly face the afternoon’s assignment with renewed enthusiasm and vigor. After all, one of the truly great photographers of all time had just encouraged you on your way – how could you not respond?

One day I’d spent the morning photographing at the town dump with one of the other attendees, Ariadna, who’d attended a couple of previous workshops. Many, if not most, attendees were there for the second or more time – one girl was on her tenth workshop! Following my portfolio review that afternoon Mary Ellen suggested I again hitch a ride out of town with Ari, who was going to revisit a family she’d photographed a number of times previously. “OK” I said, before prompting “er, what will I do?” “Oh, you should try to find a family and make some pictures with them.” Uh-huh. Delusional, I thought. Mary Ellen then added “And take some oranges – just to have something you can give in return.”

Ari’s subject family lived in a dusty remote place some way out of town. Once she got out I said to our driver, who was part of Mary Ellen’s organizational crew, “Right. Now where will we go to find a family to take pictures of?” He looked at me with something between pity and petulance in his eyes. “Not we. You. I’m going to have lunch.” “But… what am I going to do?” I asked, wondering, indeed, what I was going to do. “Don’t worry,” he said assuringly, slipping the car back into gear. “Something will turn up. I’ll see you back here in two hours.”

Did I mention it was hot? Hot, dusty and, for all intents and purposes, slap bang in the middle of nowhere. Ari had of course by now vanished from sight, so I started walking down the road, observing the distinct lack of houses, shops or any building for that matter that might conceivably contain a family. Still, I thought, I have my trusty camera with me! So I started taking a picture of a cactus, a tumbleweed, or a buzzard tearing into some previous photographer’s bones or something. When I turned back to the road two young boys were approaching. “Hola” I said, demonstrating in one fell swoop most of my Spanish vocabulary. They replied “Hola. Una fotografía?” Thinking “Here’s a stroke of luck, I might get one picture after all!” I went to get my camera out of the bag but they said “No” and indicated I should follow them.

Now back in Australia – this stuff just doesn’t happen anymore. Camera, middle-aged guy, children – that’s pretty much enough to get you into some very precarious territory with the hysteria crowd. But, hey, what the heck! Mexico had already demonstrated to me that it didn’t share the hang-ups of certain advanced Western democracies. So I followed. A couple of hundred meters later we were at their casa and, much to my relief, Mama was home and I was welcomed inside. There were five children altogether and Papa came home for lunch, too. The two boys I’d met explained that I was going to take some pictures and suddenly, everywhere I looked, I had the most incredible subjects vying to be in a picture, and a delicious lunch was set for me. I fumbled out my miserable offering of oranges and it turned out to be the most wonderful couple of hours. Before I left, remembering what Mary Ellen had said, I asked in my best attempt at Spanish, if I could return. They said yes and I was over the moon.

All told I went back there three times, once taking with me Leslie, an American workshopper who was at loose ends one day. It was so nice to get to know this wonderful family a little bit, and I made sure I took gifts and work prints each time. I’ve kept in contact with them via Leslie and am pleased that she has subsequently visited the family numerous times and has even exhibited her pictures of them in New York City!

So, at the end of the workshop, two of the three pictures Mary Ellen chose of mine to go on the final day’s “honour board” were of that family. Later that year, my wife Sue and I, along with Morganna who was another workshopper from Melbourne, went up to Sydney and spent a lovely evening with Mary Ellen and her assistant Chae, who yet again was an attendee at the same workshop. They were there to photograph on the set of Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” and had shipped the big 20” X 24” Polaroid camera over to Australia for portraits of the actors, although Chae indicated that Mary Ellen was generally a lot happier snapping with her film Leica.

In May 2015 we heard the unexpected and terrible news that Mary Ellen had passed away. It is hard to put into words the sense of this loss. She was one of few whose work I venerated. In meeting her I came to understand a little about what a genuinely lovely and compassionate person she was, and her passing will affect many people deeply. Yet she leaves such a wonderful legacy – not just of photographs, but also of her wisdom, her teaching and her refusal to accept anything other than the very best you can do.

And if there’s one thing I will never ever forget, it is her advice to “Go back. You should always go back.”

William Eggleston’s 300 Leicas

Born in Memphis on July 27, 1939, and raised in Sumner, Mississippi, Eggleston acquired his first camera, a Canon rangefinder, in the early 1950’s. Of course, one thing led to another, Eggleston bought a Leica, became a massive Leicaphile and has never looked back. “I have about 300 right now,” he claims.

In addition to classic chrome Leicas, he owns rare, custom-painted Leicas in shades of blue, green and dark gray. His camera case—a leather briefcase bought at a Memphis shop and retrofitted in collaboration with a woodworker friend—is similarly customized.

He still photographs every day. He takes only one photo of any subject, never taking a second shot of the same thing. Eggleston is currently archiving his negatives, approximately 1.5 million of them. “That’s a guess,” he says. “I haven’t really counted.”

Famous War Photographer Don McCullin Hates Digital Photography

Lebanon civil war, young Christians with the body of a Palestinian girl, Beirut, Lebanon, 1976

Don McCullin doesn’t trust digital photography. Calling it “a totally lying experience”, McCullin, famous photographer of war and disaster, says that the transition to digital capture, editing and storage means viewers could no longer trust the truthfulness of images they see.

One of the 20th century’s greatest war photographers, McCullin covered conflicts in Cyprus, the Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and the Middle East. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including his acclaimed autobiography, Unreasonable Behaviour (1990), and 2001’s retrospective Don McCullin. Winner of numerous awards, including two Premier Awards from the World Press Photo, in 1992 he became the only photojournalist to be made Commander of the British Empire (CBE).

Speaking at Photo London in Somerset UK after having been named the Photo London Master of Photography for 2016, McCullin said he did not consider his photograph “art” and did not enjoy it being “sanitized” as is so easily done with digital media. According to McCullin, the inherent truth of photography has been “hijacked” because of the quick and easy nature of digital image making. “I have a dark room and I still process film but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience, you can move anything you want … the whole thing can’t be trusted.”

Under pressure of time, McCullin does use digital cameras for assigned work, but he remains committed to film, recalling one of his best experiences with film being just this year, standing on Hadrian’s Wall in a blizzard. “If I’d have used a digital camera I would have made that look attractive, but I wanted you to get the feeling that it was cold and lonely,” which it was, he said. For that, a roll of old school Tri-X or HP5 fit the bill perfectly.

McCullin particularly dislikes how digital cameras allow manipulation of color. “These extraordinary pictures in colour, it looks as if someone has tried to redesign a chocolate box,” he said. “In the end, it doesn’t work, it’s hideous.”

The Leitz Elmarit-C 40mm 2.8. A Leica Lens Not Good Enough For Minolta

The Leitz Elmarit-C 40mm f2.8 is a peculiar lens in the history of Leica optics. Leitz intended the Elmarit-C to be paired with the Leica CL, itself a joint venture with Minolta that was to produce the compact “Baby M” Leica CL and Leitz Minolta CL, the same camera offered by both companies with differing engravings, between 1973 and 1976. The bodies themselves, be they labelled Leica or Minolta, were to be designed by Leitz and built by Minolta in Japan. Leitz, pulling rank with their reputation as the premium optical manufacturer, were tasked with designing the optics for both the German and Japanese iterations of the camera.

Designed by Leitz, the lenses themselves were to be built by each company to identical spec, either in Germany for the Leica or in Japan for the Leitz Minolta. Leitz designed and proposed the Elmarit-C 40mm 2.8 as the standard lens. Minolta, upon receiving the prototype, came to the awkward conclusion that the lens was a dog, not up to Minolta standards, and requested Leitz to submit a redesign. Leitz reconsidered, recalibrated, and submitted the Summicron-C 40mm f2, a wonderful lens that holds its own to this day.

The barrel design of the Elmarit-C is similar to the Summicron-C 40mm f2 but is shorter in length, making focus and aperture setting even more difficult than it is on the Summicron. To fix this the Elmarit-C 40mm f2.8 featured a tab for both the focusing and aperture ring. The lens also stopped down to f22, unusual for a Leitz designed lens. Aside from that it was pretty much the same lens as the Summicron-C except for its optical quality. The lens is soft close up at any aperture but becomes less noticeable at further distances when stopped down to f5.6 or slower. Contrast is also very low wide open.

The change from the Elmarit to the Summicron happened so late in production that about 400 examples of the slower Elmarit-C f2.8 lens had already been manufactured by Leitz; stuck with them, Leitz gave them to their employees. Infrequently one will appear on the collectors’ market, a rare and unusual piece of Leica history. That doesn’t mean you should buy one. It is, by all accounts, a terrible lens optically. If you are looking for a compact 40mm M mount lens to use, the standard CL Summicron-C 40mm f2 lens is just fine, as is the faster Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f1.4 for about the same price. The only reason to get the Elmarit-C 40mm f2.8 lens is if you are a collector. It was never offered commercially, making it catnip for Leica collectors as it is obscure, hard to find and no one knows precisely how many exist. Other than wanting it to sit nicely on your display case there is no reason to put it on a camera. Even Minolta agrees.

Why I Shoot Film…And Print My Negatives

Digital photography renders a certain look, nothing much like the film aesthetic. Whether you find it better, or worse, is a matter of preference. Among traditional photographers i.e. film photographers, it’s become a cliche to complain about the sterility of the digital photo when contrasted with the thick, expressiveness of film. It’s the reason why many of us claim we still shoot film. The film look. Some of us, having trained our eye with a lifetime of looking at and creating images captured with film, much prefer the film look. Its familiar, understandable, capable of being manipulated in manners we’ve learned through trial and error to create what we want to communicate.

Which poses a question: If and when digital technology advances to the point that it can reproduce the appearance of films and formats precisely, will the processes of analogue capture alone be enough to keep using it? For hand made processes, where idiosyncrasies are intrinsic to the print, undoubtedly. But what of industrial films, which are designed to react with light in a consistent way without variation? Now that we can mimic the film look with our iPhones and a 5 dollar app, what further purpose does the slow-mo variant – loading film, tripping mechanical shutters, rewinding film into cassettes, waiting for the results while we employ arcane development procedures – serve? All this so we can escape blown highlights? Or is it so that we may continue to claim photography as a learned craft, our expertise hard-won, allowing us to look down at the happy-snapper as a trivial dilettante, engaged in something beneath us?

Only the most shallow, or willfully ignorant, can deny the revolutionary nature of the changes being wrought by the “digital revolution.” Unlike film photography, where an image is transcribed physically onto a material substrate, digital media translate everything into “data”, waiting for a machine to reconstitute it. Digital photos are coded signifiers, usually clicked on a screen, infinitely repeatable abstractions in which original and copy are exactly the same, yet just as easily transformed into something completely different.

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The 2D experience of digital tech is fundamentally at odds with the physicality inherent in human perception and action. There are very deep biological factors at play in creative endeavors. The hand and handiwork is what sets us apart as a species. The earliest divergence of the species that would evolve into modern humans began with an evolutionary reconfiguration of the hand allowing sophisticated tool use. This is, literally, what sets us apart as humans and defines us. Some would argue that rationality came along as a byproduct of the use of tools, as sort of a evolutionary development of the neural software necessary for tool use. This evolutionary heritage has obvious implications for our lives as creators. Humans have an innate need to physically master things as part of the creative process. The physicality of the process is a large part of the need it serves. The musician with the violin, the painter applying an impasto of paint, part of the need creative processes meet is necessarily physical. A large part. Creativity doesn’t just meet emotional or intellectual needs. It should meet physical needs as well.

From earliest humanity, creating something has necessarily required a tactile interaction with materials and substances along with a deep intelligence that could not be learned without material manipulation and embodied experiences and an understanding of the cause and effect relationship that exists between our actions and their consequences. In photographic practice, this meant first understanding the mechanics of the camera, an understanding of cause and effect with respect to the aperture, shutter speed, the clunk of the shutter, the movement of the film thru the camera, the nuances of the chemical development process, the laborious printing until we finally got the one print that conformed to what we saw in our mind’s eye. Now, the skill required of photographers is the ability to manipulate surfaces without any real understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved, where the machine is smart so that the human can remain stupid.

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A few years ago I saw a Walker Evans exhibit at the Getty in Los Angeles. Small, simple 5×7 contact prints of work he had done in Havana in the 50’s. Something about the photos themselves, their physicality, the jewel like beauty of the photograph as a physical thing, how each print embodied an irreducible idiosyncrasy, moved me profoundly; beautiful photos that could not only be seen, but also touched, read, received and manipulated. It seemed as if they could only be fully appreciated by means of this physical relationship, and in that relationship they would always remain partly elusive. It was what made the work so beautiful to see.

Even the most detailed digital rendering, viewed virtually, is able to preserve only a vestige of the physical photograph’s real, dynamic nature, a handmade object Like Walker’s contact prints, irreducible to any single dimension. The are, rather, visual wallpaper, endlessly replicated, and so numerous now as to render us numb to whatever physicality they might possess. For better or worse, they are no longer analogue, palpable, singular in its object like a traditional work of art.

It has become unfashionable these days to speak of the problematic consequences of the digital revolution. All the more reason to do so. I am not a Luddite, or just an old guy asserting the tyranny of the traditional status quo. I am noting that the path we choose often determines our goal, and the goals digital capture holds out to us as photographers are becoming radically divergent from photography’s traditional aims. What is being lost in the new digital paradigm is the physical experience of photography, the activity that has traditionally constituted photography, the physical making of one unique and idiosyncratic thing as part of the creative process. Do you feel as if you’ve created something when reviewing an image on a screen? Yes, you can print a digitally produced photograph, but how many of you actually do?

Digital technology is propelling us further and further away from the idiosyncratic and tangible unique creation. Now we have a movement of electrons and the inscription of 1s and 0s housed somewhere ethereal, producing an endlessly replicated synthetic universe viewed through a screen. We are losing the sense of the photograph as a unique physical thing. There is lived-in feel of a beloved photograph that you’ve taken, developed, printed, matted and framed and that you’ve had hanging on a wall somewhere forever. You have a connection to that one photo – how it was taken, how you developed it, how you chose to print it, how you framed it. All tangible qualities, something more than a jpg nested on a hard drive with a few thousand others, or displayed as a screensaver on a smartphone.

The Responsibilities Of Film Photography

Me and my Dad, 1970.

Call me a contrarian, but I’ve always seen things in a slightly skewed perspective from the average guy. Having lived on both sides of the cultural divide, first blue-collar, and then the recipient of an extended education, I know puffery and outright bullshit when I see it. I’m much more proud of my state school diploma than I am of my Ivy league degree, feeling I worked a helluva lot harder to earn the former than the latter, see no reason for a Rolex when I can wear my Seiko 5, and much prefer the indigenous culture of Mississippi to the derivative New York City culture where I was raised. Given a choice, I’ll choose a $12 Rebel Yell bourbon over the $150 bottle of Port Charlotte Islay single malt that sits untouched on my sideboard. A Modernist, I find Joyce and Pynchon unreadable when compared to the profound simplicity of Primo Levi. In short, I’ve seen both sides of the life, and prefer the simple values of the unpretentious to the vanity and prejudices of the fashionable.

I remain a “film guy”. Lately, I’ve been giving an inordinate amount of consideration as to why that might be. Part of the reason, certainly, is that I’m getting to that age where I’m thinking about what I’ll leave to the next generation. For me, photography has always been about documentation, capturing life lived both small and large, recording who I am and what I want life to be, and for this, I want something tangible, something I can put in a box that’ll be found and hopefully passed on to posterity. I don’t trust digital 1’s and 0’s to be there to do that, and I suspect we are being sold a bill of goods in our headlong embrace of the virtual future, not really thinking through its ramifications for the transmission of culture across generations.

But maybe it goes a bit beyond that. I’ve come think that there might be something about the practice of film photography that makes it so important for me as well. It takes patience, and that patience is, in a small way, a commitment to the future as much as it is a connection to the past. The craft of photography. Another word we’ve lost sight of.

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My Dad Being a Goofball, 1971.

Photography is and always has been a technologically driven medium. In order to stand out from the pack, photographers seek the unique, and technology usually provides the quickest perceived means to that end. The irony, of course, is that the majority of photographers attempt to differentiate themselves by pursuing the same technological advances, ending up right back where they started — creating work that’s indistinguishable from everybody else attempting to do the same. And so technology cranks the wheel again.

Unfortunately, each new advance in camera technology widens the gap between how a camera operates and how I actually need it to operate. To a modern photographer on the technological treadmill, it seems to me the simplicity of traditional film photography should be liberating: no more straddling the bleeding edge; no more learning and re-learning the latest computer techniques; no more money thrown at the next big trend, only to see it quickly fade into cliché. But it’s a tough sell, usually poo-pooed by digital technocrats as being the death rattles of a dead technology.

For some of us it’s as simple as appreciating the beauty of the mechanical works of art that create our photography. Photographic tools, like the Leica and Nikon RFs of the 50s, can be functional art in themselves.. In them, the tactile aspect is still supreme and there is something to mastering a technology without the neurotic need to constantly upgrade in an elusive search for better results. But of equal or even greater value for many of us is the deliberation required by analogue processes, a deliberation at odds with the requirements of current photographic usage, a mindedness and focus not required, and increasingly becoming lost, in the transition to digital.

Which all helps explain why my shelves are stocked mostly with mid–20th century mechanical film cameras. It’s because no other class of camera has ever satisfied my photographic tendencies, aesthetics and desires nearly as perfectly as the 35mm mechanical rangefinder.

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Le Pure Cafe, rue Jean Mace, Paris

One of the benefits of living in Paris is the food. The best of it is found, not in the latest trendy Michelin-starred haunts of status seekers and haute bourgeois or in tired standbys found in guide books, but in the local cafes you’ll find on virtually every corner of the city. Almost invariably, the meals you’ll find there are inexpensive, simply presented, and incredibly good. Unlike an American meal, where we too often equate quantity of choice with quality, somebody has taken the time and effort to prepare and present one or two dishes simply and elegantly, with the means and in a manner that allows you to savor the experience of enjoying it. One of my favorites is Le Pure Cafe, in the 11th on rue Jean Mace, right around the corner from Le Belle Equipe, where medieval-minded lunatics recently slaughtered 20 people for the sin of enjoying life.

What does this have to do with photography, you ask? To paraphrase Elliott Erwitt, photography should be taken seriously and treated as an avocation, and the analogy to cooking comes to mind: Taking photos digitally and editing them on a computer is like cooking a TV diner in a microwave in your flat. Easy, efficient, fast. if so, then the film process is the simple yet elegant meal, cooked with attention to every step in the process, served to you in Le Pure Cafe. Film process – how pleasant and elegant it is to use as a craft — is its enduring strength, much the way the Parisian cafe meal can never be compared to a “lunch” at McDonalds.

My Brother In Law Being a Goofball, 2013

Film photography is now a niche with no aspirations to popular appeal, aimed squarely at discerning users who savor the craftsmanship required of it, while the convenience of digital has made it the tool of choice for those who desire the shortcuts of quick and easy. The act of film photography is the act of tending to an increasingly moribund craft, tied to a set of values, of practices, a kind of thought process that I believe is worth preserving. For me, A traditional all mechanical camera, be it rangefinder or SLR, loaded with a roll of HP5, a 50 or 35 on it, is the most simple and most enjoyable form of photography. Just look at the light, the shapes, the evolving situations, expressions.

With that comes responsibility. Let’s hope we film aficionados, the people who occupy that niche, are able through our efforts to keep film alive for future generations. Technological change is too often not cumulative but rather a “Faustian bargain” in which something is sacrificed in order for something new to be gained. Will we sacrifice what is of real value in the photographic experience for the new we’ve gained?

The Leica M262. Now with More Leica Fairy Dust

Internet camera reviews are funny things. They’re usually either uncritical raves – “best camera ever!” – emotionally based, without much factual basis, or they’re just plain incoherent. And then there are the Leica reviews.

Leica has just released the M262, what looks to be a nice attempt on Leica’s part to offer a digital M with the simplicity of their iconic M film rangefinders. No fancy live view, EVF, movie mode etc. Just a 24mp digital rangefinder with the M form factor. Were I shopping for a digital camera (I’m not) I’d give it a look.

No fault of Leica, but the reviews have been the usual nonsense. This from clapway.com, under the heading “Entry Level Leica M Is Better than 10 G7x’s“:

When you think of Leica cameras, you possibly consider its price, then possibly adhered to by its high quality. Without a doubt, Leica cameras and lenses can take some pretty stunning photos (quality-wise, structure is an entirely different story), however, its price tag has consistently been an obstacle to entry for numerous a photographer.

I’m not sure what that all means, but then again, I’m not sure I should expect much from a website called Clapway.

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I’d expect more from WIRED, however. This from their website:

IT’S HARD TO think of a $5,195 price tag on a camera as “cheap.” But in the realm of Leica products, that cost places the new Leica M (Typ 262) at the entry-level end of the company’s pricing spectrum. Leica made this new model for people with bank who just want a damn good, relatively easy-to-use rangefinder camera with a full-frame sensor. Forget all the other frills…..

The camera’s features have been pared down on purpose, and not just to make it (relatively) more affordable. Anyone who has shot with a Leica rangefinder knows that the experience is unique; it’s slower and a lot more manual of a process to get the exposure and focus precisely the way you want.

So far, so good. But then, this:

But when you get that perfect shot, it looks distinctly incredible—the famed “Leica look”—and makes you want to shoot more and more.

Oh boy. Trust me: no one, I mean nobody, absent peeking at the EXIF data, will be able to differentiate a shot from this camera from, say, a shot from a nikon d610. Its not as if the Leica sensor has been infused with some ethereal something that creates the Leica look (although I would argue that the M8 CCD sensor, with its extended IR sensitivity, does come close to giving you a unique look.)

That somebody vetted by WIRED could fall for this nonsense shows, in addition to the author’s weak capacity for independent judgment, the seductive power of a branded narrative in service of parting people from money. Otherwise rational people, in denial or ignorance of the facts, are always vulnerable to those who tell them what they want to hear. And usually, people tell you what you want to hear because they’re trying to sell you something, or trying to justify the exorbitant price they’re asking. I get that. But when supposedly objective reviewers start spouting this nonsense, I can only shake my head.

So we now have a new digital generation prattle on and on about the Leica look, now transmuted to the cameras themselves. Exactly what this “look” is is all quite mysterious. Depending on who you ask at any given moment, it might mean anything from low contrast images showing pronounced astigmatism and chromatic aberration to contrasty, tack sharp photos. Whatever it is, of course, it is a function of a camera’s optics, not the camera itself, so it’s particularly curious when these characteristics somehow get ascribed to cameras and not lenses.

But then, back to this:

With this new M model, Leica strips the shooting experience down to its bare essentials.

Yup , thats it. Why couldn’t you have stopped there?

Confessions of a Leica Fondler

Yes, I am a camera fondler. I’ll admit it. After all of the pretentious high-brow screeds about the superiority of film to digital you’ve read me post to this site; after all the barely concealed distaste for the basement bound losers and retired consumer drones who compulsively troll internets forums with their gross inanities, when push comes to shove, when I’m completely honest with myself, the biggest reason I dislike digital is this: digital cameras are boring, inconsequential utilitarian, soulless, artificial hunks of plastic incoherence. You can’t fondle them. Or, to be more precise, they give you no reason to. Fondle a Sony A7 with one of those Zeiss Tuit monstrosities? I think not.

Right now, as I type this into my computer, an obscenely elegant Leica IIIg with attached Leicavit and Carl Zeiss Jena 5cm 1.5 Sonnar, sits within arm’s reach, for no other reason than so I can occasionally pick it up and fondle it. It doesn’t even have film in it (ever tried to load a Barnack Leica?). It’s just there for emotional support. Next to it sits a Nikon SP with a W-Nikkor 3.5cm 1.8 and a external finder, also with no film, although I did take it out this morning and ran a roll of HP5 through it [and no, I didn’t take it to the cafe to take pictures of smiling people and their pets; that’s for fondlers who are also dilettantes. I’m not one if those. I took pictures of serious stuff]. The SP is there in case I can’t reach the IIIg, I suppose.

I’ve been this way since I was 12, when my seventh grade teacher, Mr. Smith, a slightly creepy middle aged guy who for some reason took a keen interest in me, pulled me aside in a vaguely forced conspiratorial manner to show me his…..Nikon F. Holy shit. You’d have thought he showed me a stack of Playboys. I was gobsmacked. Something about that Nikon F spoke to something deep within me, something in my loins, some inchoate desire I didn’t even know I possessed, and I knew then that my future would be as a photographer.

Yours Truly, at 13, with my first “real” camera, but already dreaming of a Leica. 1971. I was already ahead of the curve, taking selfies in mirrors, probably before even Vivian Maier. I was always a cool kid, ideas all my own.

That chance encounter with Mr. Smith’s Nikon set me on the road for my lifetime’s journey with film photography. Cameras lusted after, many bought with hard earned money, darkrooms built, tens of thousands of negatives sleeved and filed away. Discovering, some time in the early 70’s, an even more rarified object of desire, the Leica rangefinder – considered an esoteric, vintage throwback even then – and in particular, the new M5, a radical step forward for Leitz, and, based on how it looked in the pages of Modern Photography, now having supplanted the Nikon F as the ultimate object of my desire. I knew the hardcore Leica users didn’t accept it – too big, too boxy, too sophisticated, too expensive – but I didn’t care; this was my fantasy, not theirs.

Atlanta, GA, 1970, overexposed Tri-X, and an Argus/Cosina SLR. The first photo I’d ever taken where, when I saw it in a contact sheet I said, “Yup, that’s good – I don’t care what anybody else says.” I was 12. I entered it in a middle school photo contest. It didn’t win; it didn’t even place. A very nice shot of a horse in a field with a sunset won.

My first cameras were bought for me by my parents. Parsimonious hard working blue collar folks, they saw no need to spoil me with what I wanted; instead I got the consumer grade Mamiya/Sekor, or the Argus Cosina SLR, or a Minolta SRT. But I wanted the M5, or at the least, a Nikon F. So one day, having saved my after-school money, I walked to the local camera store and bought a beat up black Nikon F with a chrome FTN finder and a chrome bottomed back plate, everything all beat to hell. But it worked, and I loved it, and used a Vivitar 35mm 2.8 on it because I couldn’t afford the Nikkors. Had that camera for years, shot the hell out of it, used it till it was falling apart and then sold it to some naive chap on Ebay maybe 15 years ago. Bet its still working.

In 1977, one year out of high school, I finally scrimped and saved enough to buy my first Leica, a spanking new M5 from Cambridge Camera in New York City. It had been sitting in inventory for 3 years, an orphan. Nobody wanted an M5. But, it was my dream camera, and they were selling at a steep discount, and that’s what I wanted, damn it, an M5. I’ll remember that day till the day I die: the drive into NYC through the Lincoln Tunnel, walk to the camera store, the purchase from the slightly bemused salesman (finally, a sucker who wants an M5!) the walk back to the car with the M5 and 50mm Summicron in my hands, feeling like Robert Frank.

I still have that M5. It’s the one camera I will never sell. Bought an M6 as soon as they were introduced. Subsequently sold it to a guy in Paris in 2003 who neglected to tell me that it was a collectible, one of the earliest serial numbered M6’s he had ever seen. No matter; never much liked the camera anyway. It seemed emblematic of the beginnings of Leica’s shift from professional tools to collectors’ trinkets. In the meantime I was stocking my shelf with real Leicas – M2’s, M3’s, M4’s, a few more M5’s, a Barnack here and there. Along the way I also discovered the Nikon S rangefinders, late to the party no doubt, but fell equally in love with them. They are great cameras, every bit the equal of the Leica rangefinders, and a whole nother rabbit hole to jump into, but that’s a story for another day.

What my shelves look like

So the question I ask myself is this: to what end do I collect all of these cameras? Well, I use all of them, of course. Sitting on the shelf above me must be 150 undeveloped rolls of b&w film, all shot within the year, all waiting for a marathon week of developing and scanning. But it’s more than just that. There’s something that still moves me when I handle them and when I use them. It brings me back to those days when I was 12, and just discovering the joys of photography. It’s not often you can say something has given you so much satisfaction over such a long period of time. And it’s harmless, as I remind my wife when she asks why I’m spending more money on another old leica when I’ve got a ton of them already. Would you rather I be buying and racing Ducati motorcycles, as I once did, and have the broken bones, and depleted bank accounts that go along with it? No, but isn’t 20+ cameras enough, she asks? Would you rather I be spending it on hookers and cocaine, I respond? And, of course, good woman she is, she rolls her eyes, throws up her hands, and walks away, knowing how happy she’s just made me.

The Only Way to Colour is With Film

By Greg Krycinski for Leicaphilia. Greg is a London based photographer and writer who writes an interesting blog about creativity at www.ditchitall.com/ . Greg is a “film guy.”

Right, let me start with two confessions I need to make and upon these you can decide whether you’d like to read what I have to say or not.

Firstly, my beginnings are in digital. I’m guilty of HDR, saturating to hell and other, horrible things. But I guess this is exactly the reason why I spent so much time in recent months shooting exclusively in monochrome. From one extreme to another. Somehow, without loving the cheesy and poor images at the beginning, I would never get to the other end of the spectrum (as stated here in Film Photography and the Revival of the Imperfect, HP5 pushed to 1600 at 1/8th sec handheld images). Lack of colour, lack of any clarity or sharpness, lack of technical excellence, yet so much emotion, like this image by Daido Moriyama for example.

Daido Moriyama

That’s where my second confession comes. I’ve been photographing in black and white almost religiously lately and I am a huge advocate of monochrome for many different reasons. However, I’ve recently cheated and loaded my almost 40 years old Nikon with a roll of Portra 400. I fell. In. Love.

Enza village floods with school children around 4PM every day. The yellow hats and red rucksacks just want to be photographed.

I was always of the opinion that loading a camera with a new roll of film is like the beginning of a new chapter in a book. Part of the mystery solved, new clues, new turn of events, new start so to speak. Well, loading a roll of Portra after numerous monochrome emulsions over the past months felt like a completely new book. Change of scenery, characters, period of time and even change of the genre altogether. Like after Stephen King’s oeuvre I suddenly found myself reading a Tolkien novel. It’s new, it’s refreshing, it’s exciting.

In certain ways, colour is nothing more than simply a compositional tool, not much different from your rule of thirds or diagonal lines. Despite this, it seems to me that when you get into the colour mindset after plenty of time spent with monochromes, it simply becomes a subject in itself and it somehow makes colour photography that much more purposeful. It is certainly more difficult to break away from the documentary side of photography and venture into abstract or fine art than black and white (at least to me it is).

My take on abstract in colour. Carps (“koi” in Japanese) are distinguished additions to any Japanese pond.

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”Greg Anderson

I am a huge advocate for black and white and, saying that, I believe that digital cannot match the final results to film. When it comes to colour, well, that is even more the case. The saturation, hues and the colour palette is just that little step ahead, even the results from a one hour photo lab. I’m afraid that the scans shown here will not demonstrate what I am trying to convey as to appreciate the things I’ve mentioned you should really be looking at prints. I am aware that digital is convenient, and gives better (sharper, cleaner or whatever better means in current climate of obsession with quality) and faster results, results being the key word here. But photography should not be about the final results, it should be more about the process of getting there, in which film is the winding B road, challenging and extremely exciting, whereas digital is the fast but boring motorway, designed only to get you from A to B.

Anyway, I’m back with Tri-X in my beater Nikon. It somehow feels “back at home” and it certainly suits the gloomy London, where I find myself at the moment, at least for now.

Who Are You Trying To Fool?

by Vaussore de Villeneuve, for Leicaphilia. [Vaussore de Villeneuve is the nom de plume of a working Parisian photojournalist. While it’s a screed, I think an ample dose of irreverence is needed when talking about Leica, so I thought I’d pass it on.]

You, the guy with the latest Leica. Whats with the $8000 camera and $5000 lens? Do you expect people to take you seriously because of what you’ve got hanging around your neck? Newsflash: When I see you stumbling out of the tourist bus with your shiny new Leica, the first thing I think is that you’re compensating for what you know, deep down, is a weak capacity for individual judgment and a compulsive need for approval, because serious working photographers don’t use Leicas anymore, and anyone who actually has a decent understanding of the realities on the ground knows that. And even if we wanted to, we couldn’t afford to, the collapse of photojournalism being what it is. Twenty years ago a PJ could make enough money to survive, and maybe even sport an M and a few lenses. Not now. Not even close, especially when a Leica body and a few lenses will cost the equivalent of a year’s PJ wages.

So you are, by definition, a poser, by the very fact that you’re trying to blindly emulate a way of doing photography that doesn’t exist anymore. The guys who are doing excellent work – the heirs of the greats who often used Leica film cameras – don’t give a damn about the camera they use. And they certainly aren’t impressed by the camera you use to practice your “street photography.” They’re too busy doing hard work in difficult conditions and they’re more than likely using some innocuous camera to do it, maybe even their iPhone, because they usually live paycheck to paycheck and couldn’t even begin to think about buying the latest Leica even if they wanted to. And whatever they’re using, they’re not carrying it in a designer bag. They can’t afford a designer bag.

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I happen to live in a place where people often equate self-worth with the luxury they can afford. The culture here is predicated on ostentatious displays of wealth, with a constant eye to self-identity through the possession of things. The de rigueur BMW and the Rolex. I hear the stories: people who want giant bookcases, not to display the books they’ve read, but the books they’ll buy by the yard to fill them out. A 30 year old aspiring plutocrat who wants 500 art books, but presently owns none, who wants his guests to think that art is an interest of his. I know an interior designer who designed this huge, specialty bookcase for a guy like this. He asked her to purchase books that would “look good” on the shelf. She went to a site called “Books by the Foot” where you can buy books by color, size, topic, and purchased books for him based on size and color, totally random books that would never be read but whose sole criterion was to look good. She left some of the shelf empty so the guy could fill it with his own books, but he told her to just fill the bookcases out with Books By The Foot. He didn’t own any books.

That bookcase serves as a mask for this man. Its his status marker, a means to impress upon others a certain narrative about himself, his supposed discrimination and refinement. In actuality he can’t define any interests or tastes of his own other than the interest of being thought a certain way by others. And so with you, the new Leica consumer. Your Leica is your mask. And it’s a shame, because Leica used to be a quality camera brand whose cameras were understated, elegant, simple and practical. And some of their digital models still are, although that’s not why you’ve fixated on them now. You buy them as markers of your supposed discrimination and taste. At some point in the last 25 years, people like you hijacked the brand for your own puerile purposes, initiating the transformation of Leica from a photographic tool to a cross between an investment and fashion accessory, a situation that accelerates with each passing year. Its left us traditional Leica users, holding our beat up M3’s and M4’s, cameras that have functioned for us as craftsman’s tools, orphaned and inconsequential to Leica when faced with your tasteless money.

Do me a favor: stop sullying an iconic brand with your status anxieties. You’ve ruined the pleasure I take in using my well-worn Leica, because now, when I’m out and about with my M4, a camera I’ve used for almost 50 years, one nobody used to pay attention to because they thought it was just an old camera, a camera that was sent back to Leica for rebuild after I dropped it into the Niger while falling out of a sawdagart in Biafra 40 years ago, people now accost me, mouth agape, asking about it. Is that a Leica? Cool! How much does it cost? My uncle is really into photography and has one. Does your’s have The Leica Glow? You know it’s bad when the 17 year old behind the counter at the boulangerie asks if it really takes good pictures like they say.

Really, all you’re doing is showing off to the low hanging fruit, the untutored but well-meaning chaps who will make certain assumptions about you because of the supposedly cool camera you use. The people who know better – well, they know better. When you’ve bought into a world where products define the people who use them, your identity becomes inseparable from the perception of the goods you use to identify yourself. People will make certain assumptions about you as the user. That cuts both ways, however. What you don’t seem to understand is this: the great unwashed might be impressed, but someone in the know, someone serious about making images, as opposed to the equipment they use to do it, well, what they think when they see you with your $8000 digital Leica with the conspicuous red dot, taking pictures at the book fair, is this: loser.

Three Tough Leicas

Three Leicas on display at the Ginza Leica store in Tokyo. From right to left: a Leica II that deflected a bullet and saved the photographer’s life. The middle camera is a Leica II with lenses found in the Hindenburg wreckage. To the left is an SL2 MOT with Motor and 35 mm Summicron that fell 25,000 foot (7600 m) from a Phantom II fighter jet. Battered but in one piece, and deemed repairable by Leica.

Is The Leica M8 Still Worth It? It Depends.

I love Leica film cameras. And as much as I love Leica film cameras, I remain profoundly ambivalent about Leica digital cameras. God knows I’ve tried to like them. I own an M8, my second, bought shortly after I sold my first and regretted it. It’s an interesting digital camera, unlike the bloated plastic and magnesium monsters offered by Nikon and Canon (full disclosure: I own and use a Nikon D3s for much if my low-light work, and yes, it produces stunning files). But the traditional M’s restrained simplicity seems to have crossed over in the digital models to an ostentatious austerity, attention to necessary details having evolved into the excessively fussy.

The digital M’s even look inauthentic in some undefined way, maybe in the way a self-consciously “retro” edition looks in relation to the real thing. If it were just the aesthetics of the cameras themselves, I could overlook it, but it’s the experience the digital versions provide that’s unsettling for me. Every time I use my M8 it feels odd in some way, like a simulation of the “real” experience I enjoy when using a film M. The cameras themselves might share a similarity of form, but that’s where the similarities end.

However, although the respective experiences themselves are dissimilar, the view from the viewfinder is similar, the simplicity of aperture and shutter operation is identical, the rounded form in my hand feels familiar from a lifetime of film M usage. The economy of means possessed by the film cameras is still there in the M8. And isn’t that traditionally why photographers have loved and used Leicas; why they’ve always paid a premium for them, the simplified elegance of the photographic act they allow?

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So, I own, and happily use, an M8. It’s not an M4, but its close enough that it feels familiar. Which then leads to the question: is it digital M’s I dislike, or it it digital photography?

Frankly, I’m not interested in a camera’s DXO score. It either produces decent digital files, or it doesn’t, and that’s not the function of some number cooked up via an arcane technical formula but rather what your prints look like. The M8 produces really nice prints, period. Even in 2015. Does it produce the stunning low light files my Nikon D3s does? No, but I don’t expect it to, just like in the film era I never expected my M5 to do the same things as my Hasselblad. Different tools for different needs. When I need a digital equivalent of my Film M, the M8 still fits the bill nicely – discreet and unobtrusive – and insofar as a digital device can replicate the Leica film experience, the M8 does it.

A classic film M is a masterpiece of mechanical engineering. Admittedly, the digital M is a mechanical-electronic mongrel, subject to issues that traditional M film cameras are not. That being said, like film M’s, the M8 is stripped of all pretense and electronic hoopla inasmuch as a digital camera can be. It’s an all-manual camera except that it allows aperture priority exposure if you desire. It takes your M-mount lenses and gives you all the controls – aperture, shutter speed – in exactly the same way as your 50 year old M4 does. It’s basically a digital M7. The camera is unobtrusive (no loud motordrive or mirror housing, although the “thwaack” of the shutter is loud and sounds like the breach of a long gun), and the rangefinder focusing is the same as the traditional M’s, making it maybe the best digital option for precise focusing, especially in low light.

As for its capabilities, for people like me who shoot b&w exclusively, it still produces outstanding digital files capable of a tonality the equal of any other digital camera I know, including the Monochrom. It’s a function of the M8’s extra sensitivity to the IR spectrum, something that’s a handicap to folks wanting to use the M8 for color photography but, stripped of its color, produces really nice B&W files that appeal to me as a film shooter. Its 10 megapixels resolution is, to my mind, a good compromise between files large enough for practical needs and the bloated overkill of current high resolution models. Frankly, who cares if you can read the tattoo on the arm of some dude three streets over. If that’s your idea of the technology you need to advance your creative pursuits, then we don’t have much further to discuss.

Yes, it’s a 9 year old camera now, but, as the kids say, it is what it is. interestingly enough, however, it’s still as good a camera as it was the day it was introduced, in spite of the fact that technology has moved on. Much of current digital technology – impressive as it is – seems to me to be in the category of ‘solutions in search of a problem’, capabilities and features you never knew you needed until camera companies told you you did. If you’re a Leicaphile – If you want a digital camera with the charms of a traditional film M – technological issues are low on your scale of priorities. You’re looking for 50’s era simplicity – rangefinder focusing, manual focus optics, manual exposure – in a digital platform. In that respect, the M8 still delivers. It allows you to use your M-mount optics, and the CCD sensor, while ancient by today’s standards, still delivers unique black and white files that give printed results as good as anything you’ll produce with a film M. And the tactile experience is about as similar to the classic mechanical film camera experience as you’ll find in a digital platform, including a generous portion of the frustrating little anomalies us Leica users have always accepted as a necessary price of admission to the Leica Experience.

A Totally Free Leicaphilia Street Photography Seminar

Let me preface this by saying …I like Eric Kim (http://erickimphotography.com/blog/). He’s the guy who writes a photography blog with heavy emphasis on street photography and using Leica cameras. He’s earnest, enthusiastic, a decent writer, a better than decent photographer, and he’s stuck his neck out there and is living the life instead of simply sitting in front of his computer pontificating about things he really has no business pontificating about. He admits his ignorance when necessary, and in spite of it, has many interesting things to say and says them in an interesting way.

But man, is he a Babe In The Woods or what? It seems like every other day he’s singing the praises of some “new” photographer he’s discovered or been introduced to, historical figures like William Eggleston, Garry Winogrand, Josef Koudelka, towering figures in 20th century photography who should be known and understood by anyone with more than a passing interest in the craft. Given he’s apparently still in his twenties, I suppose that’s understandable. We as lovers of the craft of photography don’t come fully formed from the womb. We learn this stuff as we go along, and the older we are the more time we’ve had to pull it all together and see photography in its broad historical contours. But, I admit, sometimes his earnestness and naive enthusiasm, coupled with the obvious holes in his knowledge, make me chuckle. If I’m honest with myself, however, its the chuckle of a jaded and slightly bitter aging guy who thinks he knows everything and believes that photography ended with Josef Koudelka and his M4 and that it’s all been downhill from there. So feel free to pat me on the back the way you’d do that slightly crazy uncle of yours who insists on buying a big Lincoln sedan because he likes a “plush ride” and believes Americans still make the best cars in the world. But hear me out for a minute.

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A few years ago, Mr. Kim apparently had his Road to Damascus moment, and since that time has been forcefully advocating for using film cameras, Leica film cameras, for street photography. Apparently, after having cut his teeth photographically wholly in the digital age, a friend tossed him an M6 and a roll of HP5 and he caught the film bug. From that time forward, film photography became for Mr. Kim the best.thing.ever. Nothing wrong with that (I too am a dyed-in-the-wool film guy and use it as my preferred medium).

But I think it’s completely wrong if we’re talking about the relative merits of film vs. digital as the preferred medium for street photography. If ever digital had an advantage over film capture its when shooting on the street, because the sad reality of the street enterprize is that it’s almost all down to chance – shoot everything and find the jewels later. Set your camera to 1600 ISO, use aperture priority metering, set the f stop to f8 or f11, use a manual focusing lens and scale focus, walk the streets and point your camera at interesting things and shoot. You don’t even need to bring the camera to your eye; better to be watching the street drama as it unfolds, with your own two eyes. Easy peazy. Load the 100 photos you’ve taken that afternoon into Lightroom and find the two or three that resonate with you. Work on them until they’re polished raw. Voila!, you’re a street photographer.

Think Winogrand, not HCB. HCB wasn’t a street photographer. He was a artistically trained photographer searching for aesthetic form over content, in spite of all the philosophical claptrap about decisive moments. He actively composed. That’s not street photography. Street photography is Winogrand and the point and pray approach (if you don’t think Winogrand employed the point and pray approach, take a look at his contact sheets, and explain to me how he ended up with 50,000 rolls of undeveloped film in duffel bags at his death). Trust me, if you commit yourself to the quixotic attempt to do that with a film camera, you too will end up with duffel bags of undeveloped film when you die. The difference between you and Winogrand is that your heirs will likely throw the bag into the bin straightaway within days of spreading your ashes.

So, I’ve got to shake my head when I see Mr. Kim is giving “street photography seminars” rocking his M4, apparently with the blessing of Leica no less. I guess if you’re insecure enough, or dumb enough, to think that walking around for two days with Eric Kim and a bunch of shutterbug chiropractors taking pictures of dogs leased to cafe chairs is going to be a significant learning experience for you, knock yourself out. Its your money. Frankly you have every right to burn a pile of it in your backyard firepit if that’s what makes you happy, assuming of course that its yours. Who am I to tell you how to spend it. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that paying a bunch of money for the privilege of a day or two chasing after Mr, Kim, or anybody else for that matter, with or without a Leica film camera, is going to teach you anything of significance or up your rate of keepers.

Heres what will: Expand your intellectual and aesthetic horizons.

– Read. Read all sorts of things that ostensibly have nothing to do with photography. Read about Albrecht Durer, Vincent van Gogh and Jackson Pollock. Read Will Durant’s 11 volume Story of Civilization. Read Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet. Read Rimbaud. Read Miles Davis’ autobiography. Read Lucretius’ On The Nature of Things. But, whatever you do, stay away from the drivel that passes for academic analysis of photography (Yes, Todd Papageorge, I’m looking at you).

– Look. Really look at things, without the preconceptions bred into you by habit, laziness and ennui. Go to museums and look at paintings. Look at pictures. Lots of them. Buy expensive photo books by obscure photographers. But avoid the amateurish crap readily available on the net and on photo forums in particular, unless of course you simply want to develop the aesthetic of the great unwashed masses, the herd. Ignore the herd and their dumbed down banalities.

-Listen. Take an audio course on Nietzsche, or on The History of the Vikings, or a class on String Theory Made Simple. Get to know Howlin Wolf, or John Coltrane, or Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. If you’re really daring, listen to some John Cage, or maybe some old scratchy Louis Armstrong.

In short, become a man of the world with broad interests in serious things.

The reason you want to do these seemingly unrelated things to improve your street photography is this: street photography is, essentially, an intellectual endeavor within an aesthetic context. Street photography, as opposed to photos of people on the street, is about those in-between moments that pose a puzzle, that evoke a memory or bring to mind a connection to something else that makes you think. The deeper the cultural and aesthetic well you can draw from when viewing photographs, the more evocative they will be for you as a viewer, and, in your work itself you’ll be better able to identify those products of serendipity that might actually speak to something more than the topical. Being broadly educated in addition to being astute and knowledgable photographically creates a synergistic effect that will show in your work. It’ll enable you to better recognize whatever it is that makes this photo, of this something in the public sphere, resonate for you and hopefully for other likeminded viewers. Just remember, the seduction of the best photography resides not in the photo but in the head of the viewer.

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So, with all of that in mind, here’s what I think you should know to be a street photographer: by all means, use a digital camera so you can shoot a lot. Throw a wide net by using a wide lens; I personally love to shoot with a Ricoh GXR with Leica M-Mount sensor and a 21mm f4 VC that, given the APS-C crop factor, gives you a real focal length of 32mm. If you insist on a Leica, use a digital M and avoid the prosumer models with their shutter lag and AF. Jack the ISO up to 1600, set the camera to aperture priority and f8, and set the focus short of infinity but long enough that the hyperfocal ability of the lens at f8 effectively keeps everything from up close to infinity in focus. (If you don’t know how to do this, read up on what those f stop scales adjacent to your lenses aperture ring on your camera lenses are for). Now go out and shoot. Point and pray and be proud of it, and secretly look down your nose at the bumbling dilettantes who require sharpness and exactitude and are banging their heads over missed shots due to shutter lag and lazy autofocus. They don’t get it. You do. You’ve learned to embrace serendipity, for it’s the heart and soul of street photography.

Its when you get back to your digital darkroom that the real work begins. Out of those hundred shots you’ve taken, you might just find one or two that might hint at something more than the topical. That’s where your broad palette of learning comes in. But be critical in what you ultimately show. Ask yourself: does this say something to me? Or am I trying to impress others? Throw away every picture you like simply because you think it will impress others. And for God’s sake, don’t think you need to pay Eric Kim a bunch of money to establish your bona fides. And remember: digital photography is what’s made this all possible.

(All photographs shot by me in an afternoon walking the streets of Edinburgh. All Point and Pray. All with a Ricoh GXR and a 21mm VC. All of them speak to me in some way. Hopefully they do to some of you too. For those of you who don’t like them, too bad. I do, and that’s all that matters)

Buying A Leica M? A Guide for Users Not Fondlers

Want Chrome? Buy an M2/3/4. Black versions are stupid expensive, plus, in spite of what Lenny Kravitz says, they usually look like shit. An iconic M should be chrome.

Want Black? Buy an M5 or M6. Ironically, chrome versions of the M5 and M6 will run you more because they are rarer. Both the M5 and M6 black versions are black chrome, unlike the M2/3/4, which are black paint (with the exception of some later black chrome M4s), and don’t suffer from “brassing”, which is the single dumbest affectation heretofor conjured up by Leica fanatics.

Want to avoid the herd? Buy an M5. It has a meter, and it’s a better camera than the metered M6. Better ergos, better meter, cheaper, shows you’re serious about your Leicas and don’t give a damn what Leica snobs think.

Want one iconic M body? Buy the M4. Best Leica M ever. It’s better than the M3 because it accommodates a 35mm lens without an external finder, and it’s better than an M2 because it’s easier to load and has a better film rewind. I might argue that the M5 is an even better camera, but, admittedly, the styling of the M5 is not “iconic.”

Want to be like every other dentist who’s got bitten by the Leica bug? Buy an M6.

Avoid the M4-2 and the M4-P. The original “Dentist Leicas.” Leitz produced them as cost-cutting versions of the M4 after the M5 failed to sell in sufficient numbers. These days, they’re as expensive as a comparable condition M4. Buy the M4. It’s a better camera, has better fit and finish, has an ingraved top plate while the M4-2 and P have a cheesy Leica logo painted on the top plate. As if the forgoing isn’t enough, the M4-P comes with a hideous red dot affixed to its front.

Avoid the M7. It really isn’t an M. Seriously. It replaced the sublime sound and feel of the traditional M shutter with the metalic clacking of its battery driven electronic shutter. How incredibly gauche. If you really think you need Aperture Priority Automation and a pocket full of battery power (you don’t), get a Hexar RF for a fourth of the price, because the Hexar is the better camera, and frankly, you’re not a real leicaphile to begin with.

Don’t worry about cosmetics. Ironically, most beat up users function much better than “Minty” collectors grade because they’ve been used and kept in spec via use. Nothing is cooler than a Leica that shows that it’s been well-used instead of sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Forget about a CLA’d camera. Just buy one that works; get it CLA’d if and when you need it. Stop worrying if your 1/8th shutter speed sounds slightly off. Only collectors and fondlers give a shit about irrelevant things like that. Just use the damn thing and enjoy it.

Look for bright viewfinders with bright rangefinder patches.

Make sure the shutter curtains aren’t whacked.

To Summarize: If you want a non-metered M, buy an M4, chrome or black chrome as you prefer. If you want a metered M, buy a black chrome M5. If you absolutely need AE (you don’t) to use with M mount optics, don’t buy an M7; buy a Hexar RF and use the money you’ve saved to buy 400 rolls of HP5. Whatever you buy, don’t buy something that looks like its been sitting on a collector’s shelf. It’s probably not going to work as well as your basic beater that’s been used, and you’re going to overpay for the privilege of doing so. In my mind, you simply can’t get any better than a beat up, well used chrome M4. In addition to the pleasure of owning and using an iconic photographic tool, you’ll get some serious street cred from real Leicaphiles as opposed to the status conscious wannabees toting their latest digital Leica swag.

Another Leica Cat Picture

Henri Cartier Bresson, taken with a Leica III.

Paul Bocuse With His Leica

Film Photography and the Revival of the Imperfect

Artists use the tools that serve their purposes, and those tools evolve with evolving technology, and as the technology changes, often the artist’s purpose subtly changes as well. The history of painting, as an example, is in part a history of the changing chemical composition of paint allowing new and different painting styles. Artistic innovations that have a technological component take nothing away from the genius of those that use new technologies for creative ends. But new abilities made possible by technologies can distort creativity by making the creative end subservient to the means by which it is produced. They can become, in Thoreau’s words, “improved means to an unimproved end.”

If you are a painter, you can paint with oil paint, acrylics or watercolor. It’s essentially the same process using different materials, the end results varying to the extent that different paint mediums allow more easily for different modes of painterly expression. For most of photographic history, by contrast, photographs were only made from photographic film strips that ran through a camera, were chemically processed and made into prints that were published, hung on or projected onto walls, or pasted into scrapbooks. Over the past decade the transformation to digital processes has changed how photos are produced, distributed and consumed, and has given rise to the common idea that film is now “dead,” with no further application to the visual arts than as a quaint antique throwback.

Given the ubiquity of digital photography and the standard photographic tropes that have come to predominate in its wake, its easy to forget that photography using film is still available as a viable option and still works as it always has. Film isn’t dead. There is nothing inevitable or necessary about the end of film, no matter how seductive the digital technologies and gadgets that have transformed photography. There’s a false determinism that shapes discussions about traditional film photography and obscures the fact that film photography has been eclipsed not because digital is inherently “better,” but because it’s easier. Some of us prefer the slow road, and we need not apologize or defend in the face of the ignorance of the digital masses.

There’s another factor at work in this transformation, one that I find the most insidious from a cultural perspective: it is the quixotic desire of digital users for a false perfection, the need to idealize photographic representations and distort what we experience as the real. It is a compulsion for the perfect view, clinically produced, with the imperfections of the real surmounted and dissolved. Everything turned to the aesthetic of the commercial and the false reality of advertisement. It’s partly in the nature of digital mediums – easy, quick and immediate manipulations- but is also the result of a cultural shift brought about by a contrived reality drummed into us on billboards, in our printed materials, and on television by consumer capitalism, where everything has a sales value and everything for sale must be perfect.

I find the use of film to be a welcome antidote to this cultural airbrushing of reality. What I love about film photography are its imperfections – the formalism of black and white, the serendipity of the grain, the inexactitude of vintage optics, the contrast and blur of HP5 pushed to 1600 iso and handheld at 1/8th of a second. Choosing to use film, subjecting oneself to the confines of its imperfections, is a reaffirmation of traditional photography’s unevenness, an embrace of its variability and an acknowledgement that, if we are to approach perfection, we may only do so via the imperfect. “The grandeur of the Old Masters,” as Delacroix put it, “does not consist in the absence of faults.” Seduced by the exactitude of digital photography, current photographic tastes threaten to banish clumsiness, serendipity, human flaws and necessary imperfections forever, falsely idealizing the quotidian and threatening a schizophrenic disjunction between what really is and how we represent it to others. Our response should be a return to the imperfect, rediscovering the blemishes and waywardness of life, and the real perfection that lies therein.

Love, Hate, and How I Ended Up With a Zorki

I love the work of the older shooters who used Leicas. Capa, Cartier-Bresson, giants who used what has always been a top of the line camera to make their images. And yet, I really do not like modern photography taken with Leica cameras. I dislike it as passionately as I love the older work. Perhaps more so.

My problem was twofold. First, the look totally changed. For me, the newer images look more sterile, less human, and less desirable. One of the reasons I don’t actually like using digital is it makes the world look like a car commercial. You know the ones: shiny new car rolls down pristine clean streets with perfect green verges on them. Kind of a “City of Tomorrow” vibe to it. There’s nothing wrong with that, except it doesn’t reflect the world as I see it. I thought I was alone in this issue until I read this article on Leicaphilia and realized I was not the only one who had noticed.

The other problem was the outright wankery of Leica users. I’ve never seen a more arrogant and condescending group in my entire life, and I spend a fair amount of time around lawyers. While I could afford a Leica rig, I didn’t want to be associated with that sort of behavior. There may be nice guys using Leicas out there. I just have never met them in person nor dealt with them online.

I still wanted to try a rangefinder other than my tiny Olympus XAs. I love those cameras, but something with interchangeable lenses was desirable. What I really wanted was to be able to create work similar to what I fell in love with. I explored my options and decided to get a Soviet rangefinder. All of the Soviet era range finders are copies of Leicas to some degree or other. I settled on a Zorki-4K. Bright viewfinder, nice and classic looking. It has the standard oddities of Soviet design. You must cock the shutter before changing the speeds or it will seize up. The film advance is a bit peculiar and sounds like a coffee grinder. However, the build quality is actually quite good. I don’t know if it is just my example or not, but it’s nice. The Zorki uses the Leica Thread Mount (M39) which has some very nice lenses available. The Soviet ones are cheaper than the Leica ones, but they give the look I was wanting.

Of course, since it’s my first real range finder, I’m still getting used to the focus and framing, but it gets easier on a daily basis. Other Zorki users have been helpful and forthcoming about problems and how to fix them.

This is the solution I was hoping for, and the beginning of a nice, long relationship.

Andrew MacGregor. Reprinted with permission of Mr. MacGregor. You can find the original post at shootfilmridesteel.com