Author Archives: Leicaphila

Resurrecting an Ebay IIIg

Before and After

One of the pleasures of buying old Leicas is that, if you ask, sometimes you’ll get the backstory from the seller about the camera you’re buying. Usually it’ll be regarding an old beater that’s been in a box in the closet for some time, often since the death of the original owner. The seller – a son, daughter, or heir – knows little to nothing about cameras but knows, in some sense, that dad’s old Leica is probably still worth enough to sell it on Ebay.

I recently picked up a IIIg with collapsible Summicron and 135mm Steinheil Munchen Culminar. From the pictures and the description buying the camera was a 50/50 proposition – it might be functional, it might not. The optics might be clear and trouble free, they might be fogged, full of fungus and worthless. Considering the potential risks, I threw in a last minute lowball bid and won.

Imagine my surprise when I received the camera and found it to be in exceptional condition: bright viewfinder, contrasty rangefinder, almost unmarked chrome body, shutter speeds fully functional to 1 second. Other than the vulcanite having dried and flaked off, the body itself almost looked new. The Summicron was immaculate: almost no marks on it, beautiful front coatings, no haze and almost no dust. It just needed a good cleaning. The Steinheil was full of fungus and went directly to the bin. No loss. Wasn’t interested in the lens to begin with.

I emailed the seller to thank him for the camera, told him I would keep it and use it with pleasure and asked him what he knew of its providence. He replied:

I’m glad to know you will take great care of my dad’s camera. He used it a lot when we went to the beach and mostly on vacations to the Caribbean, Hawaii, California, Puerto Rico, Europe, etc. That camera has literally been around the whole world as my parents were people who loved to travel. I mostly remember him setting up the focus, aperture and fiddling around for the longest time with it when taking a picture of my mom and me. My mom would get so mad because we would literally be standing and posing for 5 minutes waiting for him to get the perfect clear shot while listening to his portable radio play the theme song to Dr. Zhivago, the only song he liked to listen too!

Sadly, my dad suffered a major stroke in 1982, and never recovered from it. He passed away in 1984. So now that I think about it, the last time the camera was ever used was probably 1980 or ’81 when I graduated from H.S. When we went on local trips, they always used my mom’s cheesy Kodak. Only at the beach for some reason he liked to use that Leica.
So as I mentioned, it sat in a box on the shelf all these years. It never got wet, (outside of light rain which I believe is where the staining came from inside the carrying case). It was never abused.The black plastic outside of the camera must have become brittle while it was sitting around on the shelf. The broken pieces were lying inside the case as if they literally fell off as it was sitting. One or two small sections broke away as I was handling and inspecting it. I have never operated that camera a single time as my father wouldn’t let me touch it! My mother never knew how to work it. So I literally know nothing about it. I don’t know what battery power’s it and had no clue how to load the film. I was even afraid to clean it as I didn’t know how sensitive it is. I assume the black plastic on the camera can be replaced and if so you will have a mint 1950s or older camera in great condition. I wish you all the luck with it.

I love stories like this. Clearly, this camera meant something to his father, and it’s nice to know I can give it a second life and respect it in the same way his dad did. I looked up the serial number and found it had been made in the year of my birth, a further happy coincidence.

I’ve since sent of to Cameraleather.com for a tan griptac covering. Morgan sent it to me within the week and I recovered the camera with a minimum of fuss. This one is a keeper.

The Myth of the Necessary Leica CLA

Visit any photo forum that discusses Leica film cameras and you’ll hear it time and time again: the first thing you need to do when you buy a used Leica is to send it to someone for a “CLA” (clean, lubricate and adjust). In the religion that is Leica, this notion has reached the status of revealed truth, questioned rarely, if at all. Like many faith based claims, its built on received certainties and little else, certainly not the facts as they present themselves in practice.

The bottom line is this: given the operating tolerances of finely tuned mechanical Leicas, its better not to open up a sophisticated device like a Leica film camera without a legitimate reason to do so. “Legitimate reasons” might include hanging slow speeds, or stuck shutter, or a dim viewfinder. But, absent these, you’re throwing away your money while subjecting your camera to potential harm. Ham fisted attempts to clean and adjust are legion, and unless you’re sending it to Leica (read: extremely expensive) or a reputable third party tech like DAG, Sheri Krauter (read: slow and expensive) or Youxin Ye, you’re just as likely to receive your Leica in worse condition than before you sent it away.

I like to buy used Leicas on Ebay. If you know what you’re looking at, you can still score some serious deals, but invariably it will involve the old Leica with matching lens and case that has been sitting unused in a box in the closet since grandpa died in the late 70’s. The worse the accompanying pictures of the item, the better the potential deal. If most of the description involves the camera case and how beat up it is, or ignores the collapsible Summicron while spending inordinate time describing the accompanying dead Leicameter, you’re potentially in for good luck, because you’re clearly dealing with a seller who can’t discriminate between what’s valuable and whats not. You’d be surprised by how nicely an old beater with cracking vulcanite, covered in decades of accumulated dirt and brown gunk in the body crevices will clean up with some lemon juice and a griptic covering from cameraleather.com (assuming cameraleather.com sends it to you within the next 18 months, but that’s another story you can learn more about with a quick google).

Conventional wisdom holds that such a camera will need to be CLA’d immediately otherwise your new Leica will be worthless. In my experience that’s rarely the case. Even for cameras that have sat unused for decades a CLA is unnecessary, even if the slow shutter speeds may initially be a little funky ( and usually they’re not). Most cameras just need use; the shutter mechanism needs to be exercised regularly to loosen up the stiffened lubrication. Usually a few days and a couple of hundred cycles of the shutter and,voila!, the slow speeds are working fine, or at least close enough to be within the margin of error. For that matter, who really cares if the 1/2 sec is a wee bit off sometimes? When was the last time you shot under 1/15th of a second anyway? Probably never.

As for accompanying optics, a good careful cleaning with a Lens Pen ( my favorite photo accessory of all time) and your front and real elements should be clean and smudge free. Of course, the lens itself may need disassembly and cleaning if its fogged or has fungus, or if the heliocoils are bound up, but usually you can get a good enough eyeball view of the lens when listed by the seller to get a decent sense of whether the optics are good. As for scratches and internal dust, well, ya takes your chances, but almost all optics older than 20 years are going to look pretty bad when you shine a flashlight into them. Yet, remarkably, most of them still look fine to the naked eye (how we used to judge them back in the day) and take good photos undifferentiated from a like model in “mint” condition. Lenses are to be used, not to shine flashlights through. If the lens is to be used with film and wet printed, stop worrying. A little internal dust (commonplace on vintage lenses) or some cleaning marks or scratches on a front element won’t make a bit of difference except in your head. If you’re a 100% magnification pixel peeper type, well, move along. I suspect you’re not going to be interested in vintage optics anyway, and if you are, well, that comes along with the territory.

Actually Using An Old Leica to, You Know, Take Pictures

A sublimely beautiful Black Paint Leica IIIg. You can actually take pictures with it

Call me a poseur, or a hipster, but old screw mount Leicas are really fun. Not just setting them on a shelf and admiring them, or walking around the house while fondling their knurled knobs and beautifully machined parts (as I’m known to do), but actually taking them out and shooting film with them, just like they were meant to do. They’re so ‘retro’ that they’re not, and for those with a philosophical bent, this sort of meta-activity (activity meant to comment on the activity itself) can be immensely satisfying, not to mention the pathetic looks you’ll get from the iphone crowd or, better yet, the conspiratorial nods you’ll sometimes receive from a fellow traveller of advanced age. For me, however, the best part is passing paths with somebody sporting a digital Leica with “Swiss Anti-Fingerprint Coating,” often wearing a beret and taking pictures of people in coffee shops in the touristy parts of town, Billingham or Ono bag conspicuous by its immaculate appearance. These folks, when they notice you – and trust me, they’ll notice you, because for all gearheads the act of being out and about with a camera is all about seeing and being seen – often wear a look of morbid fascination, fixation admixed with potential danger, as if I was carrying a live grenade with the pin removed. I suspect they really want to inquire about it, but don’t quite know what it is or what to make of it, or, if it goes that far, how to use it.

I’m often asked, usually by the iphone crowd, “Does that thing work?” Hell yes it works, because it was built to work seemingly forever, because it’s a sublime fusion of simplicity and function, overbuilt to last for as long as you continue to service it. Keep it in use, and the most you’ll have to do is send it off to a reputable service tech like Youxin Ye every 30 years or so. I have no doubt that my grandkid’s grandkids, if they were of a mind (and could figure out how to load the thing) could be using it in another 100 years. Try that with your M240, or is it an M260 now?

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Of course, some of the earlier screw mount Leicas – the IA, for example – are so outdated that even a hopeless romantic like me finds them impractical to use. In 2000, leica offered the an 0-Series replica, fully functional and sold through Leica dealers, to celebrate the 75th birthday of the 35mm Leica camera. The camera is virtually identical to the 1923 Ur-Leica prototype #104 resident in the Leica Museum. No thanks. I like my nostalgia authentic. In my mind, using one of these is like going to Las Vegas and claiming you’ve seen the Eiffel Tower. If I’m going to use a screw mount Leica, I’m going to use the best, most technologically advanced screw mount Leica ever built – the Leica IIIg, not some cheesy historical replica dedicated to the Sultan Of Brunei [on a side note: how is it that Leica culture could be so schizophrenic as to give us both the sublime IIIg, M2/M3 and M4 and also the “Hello Kitty” M6?].Released in 1957, the IIIg is Leica’s last screw mount camera. Had it been released in 1950 or 1953, it would be have been far more influential in subsequent Leica lore, because it’s a superb camera that’s really fun to use. Leitz had introduced the Leica M3 four years earlier in 1953 as a clean sheet design with a new lens mount and the now iconic M styling. The M3 set a new standard for 35mm rangefinders that lasts to this day.

The IIIg was introduced as the logical last evolutionary step of the old Barnack design series, a last tip of the hat to more conservative Leicaphiles who still preferred the familiarity of the Barnack camera. Its new features were incremental – the same basic ergonomics of the IIIf with a redesigned top cover and a larger and improved viewfinder similar to the M3, including an extra frosted window for the projection of different frame lines into the viewfinder.

Leitz produced and offered the IIIg for only 3 years, 1957-60, years when the M3 was meeting with professional raves and impressive sales. Japanese manufacturers were also offering their updated alternatives to the M3; the IIIg not only had to compete against the better spec’d M3, Canon P and Nikon S3, but after 1958, the Leica M2, itself a runaway success much like the M3. Next to these now iconic cameras, the Leica IIIg was a technological dinosaur, lacking the combined VF/RF assemblies of the M3 and the Canon and Nikon that allowed for a single, much larger eyepiece for simultaneous focusing and composing.

The author’s incredibly cool Leica IIIg

The Leica IIIg was much like the screw mount Leicas that had been produced by Leitz since the 20’s, featuring only incremental changes from the previous Barnack Leica, the IIIf ‘Red Dial:” A larger .7 mag viewfinder with two sets of illuminated, parallax corrected framelines for the 50/90 focal lengths; Shutter speeds calibrated with a modern shutter speed progression – the 2/4/8/15/30/60…. ; Separate flash synch dial replaced with two flash settings at 1/50 and 1/25th on the shutter speed dial; A film reminder dial placed on the back of the body that exceeded ASA 100.

The IIIg is not as common as earlier Barnacks. Consequently, they sell for substantially more than a well cared for IIIc or IIIf, and most of them sit on collector’s shelves or circulate among us Leicaphiles in quixotic buy/sell attempts to finally satiate an obsessive compulsion to find The Perfect Leica.

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Above is a photo I took in a Paris street with my IIIg and a first generation collapsible Summicron. The photo isn’t going to win any photojournalism awards, I’m sure, but I really like it just the same. It reminds me of what I love about the city – an eclectic mix of the profane and the sacred, where the beautiful peeks out at you in the most unexpected places. It also seems appropriate that it was taken with an old Leica, the sort used by HCB for many if his iconic Parisian photos. What’s printed above is a simple scan of the negative with some minor fiddling in Photoshop. But I also have an 10×15 silver print of the same photo, printed by HCB’s own master printer George Fevre, one of my most treasured photographic possessions. How cool is that? My own Parisian “decisive moment,” captured with an iconic Leica film camera and printed by one of the World’s most masterful printers, the same guy who printed HCB’s stuff. That’s what you call “living the dream.”

Digital “Photography”: Based On A True Story

Which One Do You Prefer?

“Digital capture quietly but definitively severed the optical connection with reality, that physical relationship between the object photographed and the image that differentiated lens-made imagery and defined our understanding of photography for 160 years. The digital sensor replaced to optical record of light with a computational process that substitutes a calculated reconstruction using only one third of the available photons. That’s right, two thirds of the digital image is interpolated by the processor in the conversion from RAW to JPG or TIF. It’s reality but not as we know it… Veteran digital commentator Kevin Connor says, “The definition of computational photography is still evolving, but I like to think of it as a shift from using a camera as a picture-making device to using it as a data-collecting device.”

I ran across the above quote in an article in Time Magazine entitled “The Next Revolution in Photography Is Coming,” which, to put it charitably, is normally not the first place I look when I want cutting edge philosophical discussions, given its pedestrian readership usually located on the far end of any cultural curve. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting article, discussing things some of us, myself included, have been articulating since the inception of the digital age. Just a few years ago, saying essentially the same thing on a popular photo forum, I was roundly derided as a kook by the usual suspects. It’s not as if ignorance and lack of expansive thinking don’t have a consistent pedigree; if history teaches anything, it’s that the revolutionary implications of technological changes are never seen by the average guy until they’re impossible to ignore. Now, if Time is any indication, maybe it’s a message finally resonating with the generally educated public: the passage from analogue to digital “photography”, from a philosophical and practical perspective, is less an evolution than a revolution of the medium. What we’ve wrought, with our CMOS and CCD sensors that transform light into an insubstantial pattern of 1’s and 0’s, is not merely a difference of degree from traditional photography but rather a fundamental difference of kind. You can even make a claim that digital photography really isn’t ‘photography’ in the etymological sense of the word at all. As Mr. Connor suggests, its more accurately described as “data collecting.”

Until recently, photography worked like this: light reflected off people and things and would filter through a camera and physically transform a tangible thing, an emulsion of some sort. This emulsion was contained on, or in, some physical substrate, like tin, or glass, or celluloid or plastic. The photograph was a tangible thing, created by light and engraved with a material trace of something that existed in real time and space. That’s how “photography” got its name: “writing with light”.

Roland Barthes, the French linguist, literary theorist and philosopher, wrote a book about this indexical quality of photography called Camera Lucida. Its one of the seminal texts in the philosophy of photography, which means it’s often referred to while seldom being read, and even less so, understood. To summarize Barthes, what makes a photograph special is its uncanny indexical relationship with what we perceive “out there,” with what’s real. And its indexical nature is closely tied to its analogue processes. Analogue photography transcribes – “writes”- light as a physical texture on a physical substrate in an indexical relationship of thing to image (i.e. a sign that is linked to its object by an actual connection or real relation irrespective of interpretation). What’s important for Barthes’ purposes is that the analogue photograph was literally an emanation of a referent; from a real body, over there, proceeded radiations which ultimately touched the film in my camera, over here, and a new, physical thing, a tintype, or daguerreotype, or a film negative, was created, physically inscribed by the light that touched it.

Now photography is digital, and the evolution from film to digital is not merely about of the obsolescence of film as the standard photographic medium; rather, it’s the story of a deep ontological and phenomenological shift that is transforming the way we capture and store images that purport to copy the world. Where we used to have cameras that used light to etch a negative, we now have, in the words of Kevin Connor, digital data-collecting devices that don’t “write with light,” but rather which translate light into discrete number patterns which aren’t indexical and can be instantiated intangibly i.e. what is produced isn’t a ‘thing’ but only a pattern which contains the potential of something else, something else that requires the intercession of of third thing, computation.

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The First Photograph, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1827, Le Gras, France

In August, 2003, I was sitting in the garden outside of Joseph Niépce’s Burgundy estate, where, from the window of which, Niépce had taken history’s first photograph. I was enjoying a pleasant late Summer afternoon in the company of George Fèvre, one of the unsung masters of 20th Century photography. A personal friend of Henri Cartier-Bresson, George was the master printer at PICTO in Paris and was the guy who printed HCB’s negatives from the 1950’s until HCB’s death in 2004. If you’ve seen an HCB or Joseph Koudelka print on exhibit somewhere, in all likelihood George printed it.

George was an incredibly nice man, humble to a fault, full of fascinating stories about the foibles of the photographic masters and very thoughtful about the craft of photography.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, Behind the Gare St. Lazare (1932). Picto Labs, Paris. Hands: George Fèvre, Paris 5/11/87 © John Loengard

Up to that day I lived in the old familiar world of traditional photographic practices: aperture and shutter, exposure, film type, developer characteristics, contrast filters and paper grades, a world whose highest achievements George had helped promulgate. What better person to talk to about photography, and what better place to do it, where it all started.

Of course, I wanted to hear his stories, first person accounts of iconic photographers and their iconic prints, and George, always the gentleman, obliged without any sense of the significance of what he was remembering. To him, the specifics of how HCB or Koudelka worked, the quality of their negatives, and how George used them to create the stunning prints that made them famous were nothing special, all in a day’s work for him. What George was interested in talking about was Photoshop, something he had just discovered and of which he was fascinated. And he said something curious to me, something I always remembered and something I stored in memory for a better time to reflect on it.

What George said was this: Photoshop was amazing. Anyone could now do with a few keystrokes what he had laboriously done at such cost in the darkroom. It was going to open up the craft in ways heretofore unimagined. But it was no longer photography. There was something disquieting about the transformation. Photography’s tight bond with reality had been broken, its “indexical” nature, as Barthe would put it, had been severed, and it was this bond that gave photography its power. We were arriving at a post-photographic era, where image capture would become another form of graphic arts, its products cut free from ultimate claims to truth. There could be no claims to truthful reproduction because there was nothing written and no bedrock thing produced, just a numerical patter of 1’s and 0’s instantiated nowhere and capable of endless manipulation. The future would be the era of “visual imaging.”

Since that day, the cataract of digital innovation has not abated but intensified— we all know the litany because we are caught up in it on every side: 36 mp DSLRs with facial recognition and a bevy of simulations, camera phones, Lyto, Tumblr, Facebook — do I need to go on?

George Fèvre, Le Gras, France, August, 2003

The changes have brought their benefits: giving people the chance at uncensored expression, allowing us to easily capture and disseminate what we claim to be our experiences. Of course, there are also new problems of craft and aesthetic. Previous technologies have usually expanded technical mastery, but digital technology is contracting it. The eloquence of a single jewel like 5×7 contact print has turned into the un-nuanced vulgarity of 30 x 40 tack sharp Giclee prints taken with fully automated digitized devices and reworked in Photoshop so as destroy any indexical relationship with the real.

We are currently living through a profound cultural transformation at the hands of techno-visionaries with no real investment in photography as a practice. All the more ironic in that this has happened at a time when popular culture now bludgeons us with imagery: while photography is dead, images are everywhere. You see imaging on your way to work, while you’re at work, at lunch time, on your way home from work, when you go out in the evening. Your computerized news feed and email inbox is full of it. Even what you read has become an adjunct to the primacy of the image. The problem is that the images digital processes give us possess no intrinsic proof of their truth, its non-instantiated computated product endlessly malleable and thus cut free from ultimate claims to truth. And it’s this claim to truth that gives photography its uncanny ability to communicate with us, to make us reflect, or to aid us in remembrance, or to help us see anew.

Shooting Your iPhone The Leica Way

Couldn’t get into dentistry school? Portfolio crashed in the latest stock market bubble? Or just working at WalMart to get by….but still lusting after the authentic “Leica Experience?” Red Dot Camera, made by Lifelike app, Inc has a camera app for you. No more mortgaging the house to chase your photographic dreams: the Red Dot app turns your iphone into a Leica M, allowing you to use manual controls for your iPhone “the Leica way.”

The app is supposed to replicate a Leica camera and its simplicity of use, by putting all the manual controls next to the viewfinder where you can adjust them.

You can set your own ISO (30 to 1600), shutter speed and exposure without have to use the phone’s menus.

There is even a manual ring-like control that gives a focus lock preview window when focusing.

– See more at: http://www.techtree.com/content/news/9819/red-dot-camera-brings-leica-manual-controls-iphone.html#sthash.5KTV1szp.dpuf

Does Your Leica Need “Swiss Anti-Fingerprint Coating”?

Just when Leica looks like they’ve decided to be a serious camera company again, as opposed to serving up ridiculous “limited editions” for vulgar people with stupid money, something like this comes along and makes you mumble “WTF”? Hot on the heels of the “Lenny Kravitz” model, It comes with “Swiss Anti-Fingerprint Coating” and can be your’s for $74,500:

“This Leica M Set Edition “Leica 100” – Null Series is rarer than rare – part of an “unofficial” 25 pre-production cameras manufactured in addition to the “officially” released 101 sets. It represents a unique opportunity for collectors, investors and Leica enthusiasts alike to own one of Leica’s most celebrated special edition sets of the modern era. This was also the first special edition set to introduce a new lens: the Leica Summilux-M 28mm f/1.4 ASPH which is currently one of Leica’s most desirable optics. Beautiful to behold with its solid stainless steel construction and unique design, the Leica M Set Edition “Leica 100” is sure to be remembered as one of Leica’s iconic editions.

As part of their celebration of ‘100 Years of Leica Photography’, Leica Camera introduced the very exclusive Leica M Set Edition ‘Leica 100’ in 2014. This commemorative set includes the Leica M-A Edition ‘Leica 100’, Leica M Monochrom Edition ‘Leica 100’, Leica Summilux-M 28mm f/1.4 ASPH, Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH and Leica Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH all manufactured in stainless steel and presented in a special Rimowa case.

This set has never been used. The lenses have never been mounted to a body. For sale on consignment, we are able consider reasonable offers. Please note that as a pre-production set, small manufacturing variances are possible when compared to the 101 production sets.

Originally, 101 sets were made, with edition numbers from 1914-2014. However, an additional 25 “Null Series” sets were produced but not made available to the general public. These sets were given a number out of 25. This set for sale is number 24 of 25. The edition number appears on both camera bodies and each lens.

The cameras in this set celebrate Leica’s 100 years of photography, from the beginning with black and white film to the digital perfection of it. The metal parts on the outside of the cameras and the lenses are made of solid stainless steel which has a special Swiss anti-finger print coating. The camera cladding and carrying strap are made of premium calfskin leather.

It was the first time in Leica’s history that three Summilux-M lenses were offered in a set. The 28mm lens is a complete new lens design and made its debut as part of this set. The 28mm and 35mm lenses include a screw mount round metal lens hood made of solid stainless steel.

Each of the standard production cameras and lenses bear one of a series of consecutive serial numbers which represents one year in the Leica history starting from 4xxx1914 to 4xxx2014. The serial number of each product in one set ends with the same year. Additionally, each camera has a special engraving commemorating the 100th anniversary on the top cover. Please note that this Null Series set is separate from the original 101 produced, and is number 24 of 25.

The Rimowa case is only available as part of this set. It has a black anodized finish on the outside and special handmade leather finish on the inside which allows for the products to be stored in the best possible way.”

The Leica M-A

“Focusing on the founding principles of photography, the Leica M-A (Typ 127) is a 35mm film rangefinder camera characterized by its simplicity and unobtrusiveness. As a completely mechanical camera, no battery is required for operation and the only exposure control offered is a choice of shutter speed, up to 1/1000 sec. A large, bright 0.72x-magnification viewfinder pairs with a precise rangefinder mechanism to enable comparative manual focusing control with M-mount lenses, along with parallax-corrected compositional framing. The body features black-colored chromed brass top and bottom covers, as well as an all-metal body design, to offer both durability as well as an aesthetic, minimal appearance. Designed for intuitiveness and efficient operability, the precision afforded by the M-A serves to complement a straight-forward working method.” – B&H Photo Website

Leica recently released a ‘new’ film camera, the Leica M-A. While it’s ‘new,’ in the sense that it’s just starting to be produced and sold by Leica, it’s not ‘new’ in the sense that it’s offering any significant improvements on previous Leica M film cameras. From that perspective, it’s a technological step back from Leica’s last ‘new’ M, the electronic M7 introduced 13 years ago. The M-A is “retro” in the best sense of the term, sporting technology unchanged from the 1954 M3.

If Leica wants to keep film photography alive, why don’t they give us a truly ‘new’ film camera, new from the inside out, much like Nikon did with their superlative F6? Leica certainly has the technology, as the current digital M’s do, so, if you are really invested in maintaining yourself as a manufacturer of film cameras, why not give us an update on the traditional Leica M model, something with more than the standard fully manual, manual focus body with 1/1000s horizontal cloth shutter and 1/50s sync. speed?

The pessimists among us will argue that if the M-A is Leica’s best attempt to keep alive their analogue tradition, then one might take from this that it’s ultimately nothing more than an exercise in nostalgia: the best Leica can do in offering a film camera now is to emulate the past; further progress is no longer an option.

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Optimists will take note that Leica is a camera company that places a premium on tradition. They are the only camera company that attempts to consciously reference their tradition as a selling point. And the fact that Leica is even offering anything new for film photographers is in itself cause for optimism.

For that matter, why screw with a good thing? Some of us believe the mechanical M, ‘dated’ as it may be, remains the pinnacle of film camera design. The current cloth shutter is a marvel of simplicity, quiet, accurate enough, remaining accurate over time and easily repairable by most camera repair techs. It will continue to be repairable even if Leica stops servicing it (unlikely, given they’re still servicing M3’s built 60 years ago). And frankly, you don’t need any shutter speed over 1/1000th, which will effectively freeze even the fastest action. Could Leica have offered us a more technologically advanced shutter, something along the lines of the Hexar RF? Of course, but why? Just maybe they’re smart enough to leave well enough alone.

If it is important to you that your camera of choice be updated every few years, then maybe you aren’t a Leicaphile. Nothing wrong with that. Not all of us want the same thing from our photographic tools. If you want all the bells and whistles in a film body, by all means buy a used F5 on Ebay, an incredibly sophisticated camera that’s ridiculously cheap to buy. However, if you want a ‘new’ Leica, what they’ve been offering since 1954 pretty much represents the terminus of perfected mechanical camera design. When something works as well as a classic M there really is no real need to change it.

The Best AE M-Mount Film Camera Ever Made Wasn’t Made By Leica. It’s Made By Konica.

The Hexar RF, released by Konica to much ‘controversy’ amongst Leicaphiles in 1999, represents a path of technological sophistication in 35mm rangefinder camera design that Leica chose up to that time to avoid, either through inertia or, as then claimed, because of Leica’s traditional design philosophy which emphasized simplicity of design and practice as a guiding principle. The Hexar is the most advanced M-mount film camera ever produced, incorporating the then latest technologies found in high end Nikon and Canon professional reflex cameras. This at a time when Leica was happily producing the manual exposure, manual wind-on and rewind M6, essentially a camera with the same design as the then 45 year old M3. In 1999, if you wanted a rangefinder and your aim was operational savvy, as opposed to a fixation on mechanical purity, the Hexar was your obvious choice – a technologically sophisticated auto exposure camera that accommodated your Leica lenses.

To this day, the Hexar RF is the only M-mount rangefinder camera with automated film advance and rewind. It has the fastest shutter of all M-mount rangefinder film cameras, 1/4000 sec. It features an AE lock position on the shutter speed dial, a metered manual shutter mode besides the auto-exposure mode, DX code reading (later introduced by Leica with the M7), and an LCD panel that showed battery status as well as the frame counter. The Hexar viewfinder, while not quite as bright as the M6’s, accommodates the same 28-35-50-75-90-135mm frameline set of all Leicas from the M4-P onwards. With a magnification of 0.6x as opposed to the standard 0.72x of the M6 and M7, the Hexar made a compelling case for folks who typically shot wider angle optics in the traditional rangefinder fashion but wanted Leica to move into the 21st century. The Hexar was incendiary stuff for hard-core Leicaphiles, producing years of convoluted mental gymnastics from the faithful attempting to rationalize why the Hexar just wasn’t up to Leica snuff: to wit, It didn’t have the “tactile” feel and pleasure of a manual Leica; the electronic shutter was too loud and not good enough for “discreet” shooting; it was too battery dependent; and aesthetically, it looked too boxy, too much like an updated M5. In short, it hadn’t been sprinkled with the magic Leica Fairy dust.

All of that aside, what really killed the Hexar RF as a viable alternative to the M7 (which Leica brought out in 2002 partly as a response to the Hexar) was that–according to shadowy figures making nebulous claims never really backed up with hard facts–there existed a slight difference in film flange distance between the Hexar body and a Leica M, thereby making the Hexar incompatible with M-mount lenses not specifically made by Konica for the Hexar. Where this rumor started is lost in the mists of history, although some speculate it was first floated by Leica to discourage people purchasing the Hexar as an alternative to the M. Others have surmised that it was started by Konica as a way to sell their lenses (Konica produced a number of stellar M mount optics for use with the Hexar, a 28mm 2.8, a 50mm 2, and a 90mm 2.8 M-Hexanon) which, at that time, had the undeserved reputation as being inferior to Leica’s offerings (ironic, in that today the M-Hexanons are rightly considered to be the equal of Leica’s, with used prices to match).

Suffice it to say that the film flange issue was the product of photo forum hysteria and accompanying mass delusional behavior often associated with hard core camera partisans. The Hexar works great with Leica and Voigtlander M-mount optics, and the M-Hexanons work great on your M. I love the Hexar, which I’m known to shoot with the 28mm Hexanon, a great combo I often reach for when I need something quick and easy, or I’m going to be shooting multiple rolls of film and don’t feel like fiddling with a detachable back and taking the time to make sure the film is threaded properly, or i simply want the ease and convenience of AE (what we at the time facetiously disparaged as “dentist mode.”)

Prices for used Hexar Rf bodies are ridiculously cheap these days, making it one of the great bargains for an M-mount camera. Consider as well that most used bodies will have been sparingly used, in that Hexar bodies, coming as they did on the cusp of the digital transition, were never much subjected to long hard use.

Are You A “Pro?”

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

A few days ago my wife and I travelled to Indianapolis to watch the MotoGP races there. For those of you unfamiliar with MotoGP, its the motorcycling equivalent of Formula One racing. The fastest, most technologically advanced motorcycles in the world ridden by the most talented racers in the world. Its huge in Europe and Asia. Top riders, some of the highest paid athletes in the world, are rock stars in Europe. And yes, they’re athletes, as anyone who has hustled a 200 hp 350 lb cycle around a road course at speeds approaching 210 mph knows well.

I brought a Hexar RF with 28mm. I’m not interested in photographing motorcyclists on the track. I’d rather photograph the spectators doing what spectators do and watch the racers do what they do. During practice sessions I found a great spot in the infield close to turn 13 and watched the riders, knee and sometimes elbow down, railing through the corner. While there, I watched a clutch of pro photographers, all with the latest gear and bazooka sized lenses mounted on monopods, find their angle and burst fire their Canikons as the riders came through the turn.

There I was, a “photographer,” with my humble film camera enjoying a lived life, with photography as a personal pursuit that gave me pleasure, and there they were, “professional photographers” with the latest expensive kit, there presumably because they were being paid to be there doing what they do. And it got me thinking. Why do we fetishize this idea of being a “Pro”, as in “the Pro’s use camera X or sneer at camera Y”, or your camera is used by “Pro’s” while my camera is an “amateur” model? For that matter, how much skill does it take to photograph a sporting event? More precisely, does one need an aesthetic, a vision, or are a professional sports photographer’s skills more in the nature of technical expertise and experience? Could you train anyone to do it competently? And why does this matter?

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

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At two different periods of my life, upon entering university and then again in pursuing graduate work, I’ve gravitated to photography curricula, only to quickly realize that the pursuit of photography as a remunerative activity held absolutely no interest for me, certainly not if it meant photographing vain people in fashionable clothes, or wide-eyed brides or worse yet, boxes of widgets for consumption. I’d rather dig graves, which I can see might have some lasting societal benefit.

This is not to denigrate people who go into the profession of photography, whether it be for journalistic purposes, or as commercial or wedding photographers. I know their jobs demand skills I probably don’t possess, and it’s certainly not for me to look down on anyone who does a honest day’s work. It’s just that I don’t think they have any enhanced claim to a prestige or position of authority denied the amateur who loves the practice as an avocation. In many cases, they have less.

Controlled psychological studies show that doing things for their own sake — as opposed to things that are merely a means to achieve something else — makes for mindfulness and joy. In one recent experiment, college students were given puzzles to solve. Some of the students were paid, and others were not. The unpaid participants continued to work on the puzzles after the experiment was finished, whereas the paid participants abandoned the task as soon as the session was over. And the unpaid subjects reported enjoying the experience more.

Which is confirmation that the most rewarding experiences are often “useless,” in that they have no practical application beyond the experience itself. Aristotle makes this point in his Nicomachean Ethics; he admires learned men because “they know things that are remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless.” In my experience, the least practical things in life are the most important and enduring, primarily because their value derives from the doing itself. Photography is that way for me.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

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This is why I find the assumption that being a “Professional Photographer” gives you a privileged viewpoint, and why I find internet forums dedicated to photography, which almost universally buy into this deference, so puerile and oft-putting. Discussions of photography there inevitably turn into discussions about accreditation. The debate about the quality of your ideas devolves into a debate about whether or not you possess the right to speak about these issues, usually with an eye to your vocation.

As for internet photo forums, usually we’re among gearheads whose interest is in the technological aspects of photography. In this context, to some extent, the expert dynamic makes sense. Expertise is our common means of validation when it comes to technical matters. There’s a frustration in having to listen to someone spew nonsense about some technical issue you know a lot about.

However, beyond a certain rudimentary level, technical skill is largely irrelevant to photography as an aesthetic endeavor. You may use a big, expensive camera, and possess a vast array of technical knowledge, but that’s irrelevant to your creative ability. By and large, gearhead forums are full of strong opinions and really bad photography, and the really good stuff, the stuff produced by photographers with a vision, is found elsewhere. I see a lot of good work on Tumblr, posted anonymously and without reference to gear or tech speak and all the other things people who have nothing to say find to talk about.

We constantly need to remind ourselves to practice a healthy disrespect for self-appointed experts, or “Pros,” when we speak of creative efforts. Art isn’t just for those who have been educated to speak its language. “Expertise” can be an cudgel to make everyone talk about the same things in the same way. But there’s no one true way to view a piece of art; no one privileged perspective that will give you the ‘correct’ experience of Eugene Atget, Alfred Steiglitz, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Stephen Shore or Antoine D’Agata. A partial view may be as meaningful as a whole one, and being alienated by a work of art is as valid as obsessive interest. Sometimes “outsiders” are ignorant, but often they can have interesting things to say despite, or maybe even because of, their ignorance. The problem with demanding a certain kind of knowledge or a certain kind of expertise in criticism is that it can insist upon a certain kind of conversation, expertise used as an excuse to shut out of the conversation those who disagree with you.

There’s also a type of reverse snobbery at work here when we talk of Leica users. Today, few if any working professionals use digital Leicas, and for the few that do, it seems more an affectation than a considered choice based on need. Today Leica’s consumer demographic is the status conscious amateur, easily enough caricatured as the dentist who fancys himself HCB. But this is to do precisely what I’m arguing against in the foregoing polemic: making certain assumptions about someone because of the what they’re paid to do, or because of the tools they choose to use. The tools you use, or the expertise you put at their service, isn’t relevant. What you create with those tools and expertise is. If you want my respect, irrespective of how you earn your living, or whether you use a fancy camera or not, don’t assume I should know you have something to say; show me your work.

A Quick Ebay Tutorial on Leica M Cameras

Buying a Leica on Ebay can be a frustrating experience. Finding a “Minty” M can be hit or miss at best, and knowing the subtle differences between M models can be daunting. Ebay wants to make it easier on us, publishing a helpful “Product Description” for older models. Below are the actual Ebay product descriptions for Leica M film cameras:

Leica M2: Ideal for Sports Photography

“A compact rangefinder film camera, the Leica M2 (camera body only) lets you capture the beautiful moments of your life, even when you’re on the go. This Leica film camera has a manual focusing system that lets you capture sharp and bright pictures. With manual exposure control modes, this rangefinder film camera lets you take snaps just the way you want. Featuring shutter speeds from 1 sec to 1/1000th and B, this Leica film camera can click good quality images of moving subjects, making it ideal for sports photography. The Leica M2 (camera body only) also features a self-timer, to make sure you get in a few snaps of yourself!”

Leica M3: Leica’s First Camera With TTL Metering

“Compose your shots accurately with the Leica M3 camera, which combines a rangefinder and viewfinder in one. The large and bright viewfinder of this 35 mm rangefinder camera has a magnification of 0.91x, giving you a wide coverage of the scene. With shutter speeds from 1-1/1,000 seconds, this Leica film camera lets you clearly capture moving subjects. The Leica M3 35 mm rangefinder camera uses interchangeable lenses, providing the flexibility to shoot various scenes. Featuring TTL metering, which measures light using a built-in meter, this Leica film camera eliminates the need for a separate, hand-held meter.”

Leica M4: A Chameleon of a Camera

“The Leica M4 is a classic rangefinder film camera that exhibits the excellence in craftsmanship of the Leica M series. This Leica 35 mm film camera is equipped with a rangefinder, so the images you get are sharply focused. The body of the rangefinder film camera is made of metal casting, designed to perform well even in tough conditions. The Leica M4, being a chameleon of a camera, can be used for different kinds of photography. Additional reasons that make this classic Leica 35 mm film camera a must-buy are the fast film loading, quick rewinding, and the self-resetting film counter.”

Leica M5: A Sleek Point and Shoot Autofocus Camera

“The Leica M5 is a sleek point and shoot camera that captures excellent shots with every click. This 35mm film camera boasts tough construction with precision handling. The Leica M5 has fast shutter speed of 1/2 to 1/1000 sec that ensures quick and accurate shots. This autofocus camera is a mechanical camera with innovative and new features like a TTL meter, stylish and ergonomic square body, base plate fitted with rewind crank which together make this 35mm film camera user friendly. The Leica M5 has a view finder that displays the shutter speed and meter read. It also features a shutter speed dial that is present on the front of the camera. The shutter of this autofocus camera winds smoothly and silently.”

Leica M6: A Highly User-Friendly Device for Bright Images

“Enhance your photography skills with the Leica M6 camera, offering focused photography with manual operation. The 1 – 1/1000sec shutter speed, this Leica 35mm film camera can easily capture fast moving objects. The 0.72 and 0.85 viewfinder versions of this Leica rangefinder camera complement the 35mm frame line, so that you click bright images. The battery used in the Leica M6 camera only controls the internal light meter for capturing bright pictures. This Leica 35mm film camera has the TTL light metering mode that controls the amount of light emitted by the flash, producing consistent images in all light conditions. The mechanics used in this Leica rangefinder camera makes it’s a highly user-friendly device.”

Leica M7: Finally! Built-In Flash

“The Leica M7 0.85 is a stylish and compact 35 mm rangefinder film camera, that is ideal to carry anywhere. The fast, easy manual focus system of this Leica film camera allows you to focus the lens by hand. With a Leica camera flash sync of up to 1/50th of a second, this 35 mm rangefinder film camera allows you to capture high speed images. Additionally, this Leica film camera has an on/off switch that prevents your battery from draining when not in use. What’s more, you can even shoot in low-light conditions, thanks to the built-in flash of the Leica M7 0.85.”

To Summarize: if you’re shooting sports, the M2 is the way to go. If you want that vintage feel with TTL metering, the M3 (You’ll get the added bonus of “wide coverage” with the M3 finder). Need Autofocus? The M5 is for you. Built in flash? Get the M7. Which leave us with the M4 and M6, whose “improvements,” if any, seem to be more hype than substance.

The Unseen Real/Unreal Seen: Musings on Street Photography

Garry Winogrand, NYC, 1967

Photos simplify. Reality is that which is in a constant, never ending state of becoming or dissolving. Photography is a lie because it arbitrarily designates moments as finished, complete, comprehensible in themselves. But it can also uncover the hidden, the tentative and ephemeral, the subtle and evanescence invisible to accustomed seeing.

Are photographs “true,” or do they just as easily lie to us? This is a renewed discussion in light of the endless manipulative possibilities of digital photography, but in reality it has always been a problem inherent in the medium itself. Previously, when photographic images were less common, the power of the image was nearer the power of reality, and the naive belief in the inherent opacity of photographs was rarely questioned. Visual culture during the period of photograpy’s adolescence was not intended mainly as an aesthetic experience but rather to inform and educate. The underlying presumption was that photographs recorded what was “real.”

As the uses of photography became more varied with the beginnings of mass photography at the turn of the 20th Century, the nexus between the photograph and the reality it supposedly depicted became became problematic for a thoughtful few, while the general public remained happy to think of photographs as true depictions of what “really happened.”

Now camera phones and ease of digital dissemination have made photography ubiquitous. We photograph the minutia of our daily lives: what we eat, how we interact with friends, the nuanced ways we daily transform our selves. Certainly so In the case of “street photography,” which enjoys immense popularity these days. candid, unposed photos of people in public spaces have never been easier. Tumblr and other social media platforms are full of candid photos of people in public places. Unfortunately, most of it is banal and pointless, aspiring to nothing more than the memorialization of a given moment.

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Street photography has always inhabited an ambiguous position within the debate about the truth of photography. The premise of candid photography is to capture a a fleeting moment that stands for a larger truth. Street photographers would say that It is not about prettiness or decoration. A banal subject can make a beautiful photo. Common life, common things, glorification of the obscenity and filth of the street. The best aspires to a reality truer and deeper than anything immediately at hand, something more intense and deeper than the ordinariness daily life surrounds us with – what the Greeks called anagnorisis – when the mundane surface is stripped away and the essence is revealed.

Real “street photography,” in contrast to photos taken in public places, including on streets, is a relatively recent photographic movement and aesthetic, practiced first in the early 60’s by the American photographer Garry Winogrand. Winogrand, who came of age as the photographic heir to the candid documentary style of Robert Frank, redoubled Frank’s non-mannered, capricious approach and made it the means to how his photographs would present the reality that confronted his camera. His historical significance and uniqueness is to some degree because of his discovery of heretofore neglected subjects, but it is mostly about form: he made his photos an exercise in compositional serendipity, completely foreign to the prevailing mannered aesthetic. But there is also a deeper break with tradition; Winogrand’s genius and the true source of his originality was his ability to disappoint expectation: instead of the forms expected of the photographer as creative artist, Winogrand presented the starkness of ‘what we see’. The greatness of the photos was that they changed the nature of the form and what we now expect to see. I love Winogrand’s aesthetic and, like most photographers educated in the history of the visual arts, have been profoundly influenced by his way of seeing. I consider myself a “street photographer.” But I also acknowledge that what gives the best “street photography” its power, its skewed instantaneous perspective, is ultimately a result of its cavalier way with the facts. Like all good art, the best street photography is transitional, emergent, hung between what has passed and what doesn’t yet exist.

The puzzles posed by street photography are a result of this in-between moment. It is compelling in its ambiguity. Its what makes a Winogrand picture so interesting. Mystery is power, and the not-understood is more interesting than what is unambiguous and clear. But its also what makes good “street photography” a fiction, false to the reality of everyday life. It is the conceptual mistake that gives rise to philosophical parlour tricks like Zeno’s Paradox: the claim that a flying arrow is really always at rest, and at any moment of its flight it is at only one point in space, that is, motionless; its motion, however actual to the senses, is logically, metaphysically, unreal. Its also the mistake of photography, best exemplified and amplified by “street photography, ” both its seduction and its lie. Really good “street photography” is a cheap trick, a conjurers’ tool for the clever.The false philosophical assumption of the street photograph is that time and motion are discontinuous, composed of discrete points or parts, and that a view of a discrete part tells us a truth about the larger whole. Sometimes it may, but not necessarily. Sometimes, the woman standing in the street, laughing at a joke, is only that and nothing more.

Leica Liking and Other Matters of Faith

Michael Sweet is a Canadian writer and photographer. He lives in New York City.

I recently stumbled into a Facebook conversation about Leica and how great they are. How perfect the photographs from a Leica camera are etc. You know how this goes, right? We’ve all seen these rants. Well, here is a counter rant. Leica is a good camera, perhaps even a really good camera, but certainly nothing like it’s mythologized status.

After my recent article, Street Photography Has No Clothes, I figured I might as well tackle another controversial issue in the world of photography, and street photography more particularly – “Leica liking” and the mythology that surrounds it. So here goes, for better or for worse. Mostly worse, I expect. Keep in mind that writers present a point of view, an opinion, and good writers do this unapologetically. It doesn’t, however, mean that my opinion is not open to debate.

Leica is a luxury brand (and arguably a camera company) which manufactures very good, but certainly not perfect or “best in existence” cameras. What they are truly good at, these days, is cashing in on the Leica myth – that if you own a Leica you have arrived as a photographer. This works nicely these days with everyone aspiring to be some form of “photographer”.

Leica Was The Best – In The Analog Era

Leica was the best. It was. In the analog era, Leica had it nailed because they figured out how to make a camera body (a mechanical thing in those days) that would not wear out. Try it. You can’t wear out a Leica M if you try. This was a huge plus in the era of the Nikon F, which one could easily wear out with heavy use. So Leica made a name (a history, a myth) for itself by building a great camera body and adding (let us not forget) amazing glass. Now, considering how many people, especially street photographers, shoot these analog cameras, one would be hard pressed to tell the resulting photographs apart – Nikon F versus Leica M. I mean how much definition do you really get when you zone focus and push Tri-X two stops! Besides, who’s making gallery-sized prints of street photography anyway?

Furthermore, this analog-era argument for Leica superiority doesn’t hold up anymore, despite Leica’s best efforts to keep it alive. How well-built do you really need your digital camera? Won’t it out date itself in five years (ten at the very most) anyway? But those lenses you say, don’t forget those great Leica lenses. Okay, Leica makes great lenses, pop one on a Sony and save yourself five grand. And, get using the lens in a way that you can actually tell the difference. If I made a website where you could go and look at photographs made with Leica glass and photographs made with say Sony glass, you’d be scratching your head to tell the difference. Especially given how the vast majority of users use these lenses. Okay, maybe you could tell the difference, because I don’t want to get into an argument with you, but most people could not. Someone should set up this experiment and give it a go.

I digress. Back to the story here. So in this Facebook chat someone is trying to convince me that Leica cameras represent photographic perfection. They make better photographs than a Canon or a Fuji, or an Olympus or a Sony. Hard argument at the best of times. I offered a little resistance and then the conversation changed to: Well, I can make comparable photographs with my Sony or Nikon, but ask me which camera inspires me to shoot, which camera I love to hold and use – it’s hands down Leica. Fair enough. You like the feel of a Leica. I can buy that, they are still very well made cameras which provide a luxury tactile experience. It doesn’t hurt to also know in the back of your mind that your holding onto 10K.

The “I Like A Leica Argument”

I don’t mind the “I like a Leica” argument. Everyone is entitled to like what they want and to spend their money as they see fit. But get the argument straight. Stop trying to sell Leica as the best performing camera ever made because you look silly. No one believes you, not even Leica. I know what’s going on in your mind, I’ve been there. When I began in photography I dreamed of owning a Leica. I lived and breathed Leica – all the greats had one, or so I thought at the time. Finally, after many years, I got one…then another and another. I’ve owned four or five now, both digital and analog. M6, M9, X, X2, and some re-branded Panasonic models. All have been less than impressive for me, personally. They are big, heavy, draw attention and are expensive. Do they take good photographs, likely, when used properly by a competent user. Are they the best cameras on earth? Not a chance. Most expensive, maybe. Most luxurious, likely. Once again, we see praise or hate being dished up in the photography world not based on facts and objective opinion, but rather passion, emotion, and “mob mentality”.

Leica provides an experience and a name and a legacy. This is what people are buying into. It’s like a nice watch. My Rolex is beautiful and feels nice and tells the world I have money and appreciate fine watches. Does it tell time better than my Swatch? No. In fact, well, you know the rest. If I were to go around trying to convince people that I were a better time keeper because I’m wearing a Rolex I’d be laughed out of the room. So what’s the difference? Yes, I know, just opened a door for the Leica likers to try every possible tactic they can to tear this argument to shreds. Go at it.

Before you write and tell me to “bugger off”, or that I am “jealous of better photographers than me” and a bunch of other stuff your mother raised you not to say out loud, think it over. Do you really believe, in the truest place within yourself, that you are making superior photographs because you are using a Leica… or is there just some small part of you that is longing to own a piece of that great legend that is Leica? Oh, and if you’d be so kind as to attack the argument, rather than me, as this is not, I repeat, NOT, aimed at any individual …. it’s aimed at a phenomenon… a “thing” I see out in the world of photography. Please, do not take this rant personally.

Leica Is Better Than Sony, But Not Really

So, was there a time when the “Leica is better” argument could have held water? Yes, but it doesn’t hold up well anymore. Leica runs a marketing machine to beat out the others, who make perfectly equivalent digital cameras. Often better cameras. For example, the Leica X didn’t impress me at all. Slow, fussy, and your choice of a $500 ugly hump of a viewfinder or a $300 useless brightline finder. Same or better photographs from a Sony RX100 and far superior user experience with nearly 2G in savings. How technically “perfect” does an image need to be, anyway? Where, or rather when, should I focus shift away from technical perfection and gear to content and composition?

Not convinced? Go out into the Leica wilderness and see some of these arguments for yourself. It’s great comedy. You can easily find someone with a re-branded Panasonic telling you not only that it takes better pictures than any other camera, but also not knowing that they are holding a Panasonic and not a Leica. It’s great stuff. Then there are those that have the cheapest German made Leica they could get their hands on telling us how great the camera is because it’s not a Panasonic. Seriously?

This post will get both positive and negative reactions, which helps prove my point. If I were arguing the difference between say, a Ricoh GR and a Sony RX100, this article would die a quick death. But where Leica is concerned there is fire. It’s almost taboo to critique a Leica product and this alone should raise a few eyebrows.

Leica As Religion

Leica likers cannot be reasoned with. They run on faith, an almost religious faith. It’s like trying to rationalize the non-existence of god to a Christian. And, I guess that’s okay. I just wish a few more photographers out there would fess up and admit that we buy a Leica because they are an expensive, cool, luxury status symbol that you have finally arrived in the world of photography, or that you simply have money to burn – like my Rolex (which I don’t own, for the record) – or that you are trying to get just a little closer to Winogrand’s ghost. It’s okay to buy into an idea, a culture, we all do it. But if you’re going to lay out 10 large for a camera, just know what you’re really buying, and it ain’t better photographs. What some people seem to have missed is that the great photographers were great photographers, and they happened to use a Leica. Not that the great photographers were great photographers because they used a Leica.

Here’s how the Facebook conversation ended:

Person 1: So, are you saying I should buy a Leica? That it will make me look cool?

Person 2: Yes. No.

Me: No. Yes.

Leicaflex Half Frame

Enough is Enough

“At the moment the writer realizes he has no ideas he has become an artist.” – Gilbert Sorrentino

I thought of the above quote when thinking of writing a piece for this website. Frankly, I’ve been in a fallow period and simply not very motivated to write about Leica film cameras and the arcane minutia us leicaphiles obsess over. Maybe, after all these years, I’ve become an “Artist.”

It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve been involved in the visual arts for 45 years, as a painter and photographer and a documentarian. I’ve never made much money doing it (it’s not my vocation but rather a lifelong avocation) although I’ve been professionally trained and know my way around a gallery or two, both as a “Fine Art” photographer (yech!) and as a painter.

Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas, 30×40, 2015

As this website attests, I’m mostly just a camera freak, a fondling gearhead, bottom of the photographic food chain, not much better than the guy on Rangefinder Forum discussing which bag goes best with his M240. Guilty as charged: I love old mechanical cameras, with a preference for Leicas because, frankly, they’re the best mechanical cameras ever built. But I also love my Nikon rangefinders (I’m completely enamored with my black paint S3 Olympic) and a brace of Nikon F’s I currently own. And, as someone firmly grounded in the film era, without the need to keep current technologically, I do realize my photographic concerns and critiques are anachronistic in the extreme, the product of having the luxury to discourse about what constitutes a meaningful interaction with one’s photographic tools without the burdens of deadlines requiring 80 finished prints for a wedding client, or a set of photos to illustrate a newspaper article.

But…there’s something about the incredible technological advances in image capture that just doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s grounded in the uncomfortable recognition that photographic realities have passed me by, and I’ve become the functional equivalent of the grumpy old guy yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. But maybe it’s something more than that. Maybe it’s it that the skill and vision traditionally required of a photographer seem to have been subsumed in the race of technology, which itself is redefining both the skills required to succeed in the profession and the ways we measure what constitutes photographic excellence.

The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story about Robert Frank, who, if you’ve ever read much of what I’ve written, you’ll know I think is one of the three or four most brilliant and creative photographers of the last 100 years. Great article, although I made the mistake of reading the reader’s comments on the Time’s web version a few days after it was published. Typical of the comments was one from a photographer, no doubt who had come of age recently, who, to paraphrase, said that he was a professional photographer, and while he wasn’t familiar with Frank there certainly wasn’t anything he saw in the accompanying photographs that would make him want to learn any more about him. To him, Frank’s photographs were amateurish, crude. Sigh. In my less charitable moments I’m tempted to call that man what he is – an idiot.

Maybe photography has become too easy. Any idiot can do it, and any idiot can mistake what he does – exposed and framed right, razor sharp from corner to corner – with being “good.” Ease of use has created a generation of photographers who can produce tack sharp, technically perfect photographs, and invariably they’ve confused their technical expertise with having something to say. Very rarely these days do I see photographers with something to say. The best photography has always been a black art, an alchemy that turns matter to spirit. Technology has nothing to do with it.

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I recently ‘inherited’ a Nikon D2x, a full bells and whistles pro digital tool that sold new, with backlog, for $5000 9 years ago. Curiosity getting the best of me, I did a google search to see what was being said about the camera today. Current opinion is that the camera is a relic, unfit for any serious use because of its dated sensor that craps out over 800 ISO, in spite the fact that 10 years ago it was being lauded as an exceptional image maker. It’s the same dismissive attitude one sees toward the M8 or M9 today.

Of course, back in the film era, when we didn’t have the technological advantages digital provides, good photographers, photographers with a vision, found a way to produce stunning work. If you needed a large print (11×14 or above) you used either a low ASA fine grain film or a 2 1/4 negative. You needed sufficient light for proper exposure, so using a larger negative with higher ASA film remained the preferred alternative. Somehow we managed, some of us with less effort than others. We referred to it as “skill.” You had the choice of using a faster film or a faster lens to achieve good results in low light. I don’t really remember using any film faster than ASA 400. Lenses went down to f1.2, f1.4 but were expensive and true technical quality was fleeting. Somehow great photographers managed to produce some remarkable images during that time and photojournalism flourished.Then came digital and all changed. Technological mastery replaced skill and vision and it became necessary to have the latest camera body to make an acceptable photograph.

I am having a tough time seeing the transition from film to digital as all progress. Is it easier, more convenient? Yes, certainly. Does its use facilitate better photographs? It certainly hasn’t made my photographs better, and I can make a case that it’s made the process much less satisfying as well. In spite of all the ‘progress’ the photographs I see look more generic and uninspired than ever. As for me, I’ve not missed a single image I wished to capture because of a deficiency of the obsolete camera I’m known to use. I have, however, missed a few because of my lack of a vision. Do photographers today understand that difference?

What’s So Special About the Leica M System?

A thoughtful article on the Leica M system, reprinted from thephotofundamentalist.com

This is a good question, in light of the rapid development of mirrorless cameras and the incredible advancements in technology that have given rise to cameras like the Sony A7R, A7R II, Olympus OM-D E-M5 II and others in recent times. Amazing technical performance is becoming less and less expensive, with cameras like the Ricoh GR showing how much performance can be delivered in a compact $600 package. So, why is it that the Leica M retains such a following and why am I bothering to write this? Well, its primarily aimed at those who have limited experience of the very expensive Leica M system and who have probably dismissed the concept out of hand…

Lets start with perceptions: Leica is a polarising word: for some it means ‘luxury’, while for others it is synonymous with ‘rich git with more money than sense and who is personally responsible for world poverty by oppressing the struggling masses’. A slight exaggeration, but you get the idea…. On top of this, Leica has an illustrious heritage, including production of some of the most game-changing 35mm portable cameras and the natural consequence of that: some of the most iconic images of the 20th century have been produced with said cameras. Detractors assert that current users are inhaling the vapours of former glories, while devotees are likely to reply with ‘there is still no other camera like a Leica M’. Considering the huge cost of digital Leicas, are there any sensible reasons to engage in a system that is so incredibly expensive, where in the case of the soon to be replaced Leica M Type 240, there are competitors that have left it well behind with regard to sensor resolution, Dynamic Range, high ISO, Live View and weight?

So where does the truth lie? I know that you know that there is no definitive answer to such a silly question, but I can at least outline my personal thoughts on the Leica M system as a practical proposition amidst a growing ocean of mirrorless cameras. I do think Leica Ms are perhaps less compelling than in the past, but they are far from on the extinction list. In fact I’ll venture that they may even outlast DSLRs…

Illustrating this article are images from my ‘Russians and Royals’ and ‘Afghan Heroin: Not For Export’ projects that were shot on Leica M film cameras from 2008 to 2010. These are digital snaps of prints so some may appear a bit fuzzier than they should. Here’s a review of the Mk I M9-based Monochrom (including images).

So what’s my Leica story?

I began with film Ms and still own several bodies and a good range of lenses, all of which got well-used in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2010. I subsequently bought a Leica Monochrom (M9M), as this was the only camera able to lure me away from film for B&W digital and there can be no higher accolade than that. However, with all the recent camera developments, I would be lying if I said that I had not thought of selling up: Sensor corrosion (permanent solution en route). Expensive repairs. Rangefinder calibration. Lens-Body calibration…. and the list of potential snags goes on further still, not to mention the large amount of money tied up in glass particularly.

But I haven’t sold up (though I may thin out my lenses to pay for the 645Z) and there are solid reasons why not, despite my best efforts to strong arm myself into doing so! My reasons are shared by many, but constantly under attack by those who would like to think us brand-crazed snobs who have no idea of the ‘advantages’ of other camera systems. But the critics are invariably focusing on measurable, technical parameters, as if they solely govern such decisions and lead directly to better photography. Were they to, nobody would ever have bought a Holga and I would never have shot this project.

So, after much waffle, here is my list of what is special about the Leica M and why I still love mine.

Rangefinder: These cameras utilise a rangefinder design, which means that the viewing window is independent of the lens. By not looking through the lens at open aperture (as tends to be the case with most other types of camera), everything is sharp. There are no fuzzy backgrounds. There are no people behind the subject whom you cannot see, but who may impact the final image. You see everything that is there and you see the relationships between those elements. Although may people love the tremendous performance of M-mount lenses at wider apertures, I would argue that most of the best images throughout history, that have been shot on a Leica M, have been shot at middling apertures to render most elements in the scene either sharp, or at least similarly (almost) sharp. By seeing everything clearly in the viewfinder, you are already half way there – you can spot in an instant how the ‘bigger picture’ has changed and fire the shutter and the right moment. With a SLR, you might not even notice, because you see the scene with the lens at its widest aperture and this can force your eye to concentrate on whatever is crisp in the viewfinder. On top of this M cameras have frame lines, which in many cases you can see outside of, allowing the photographer to better understand how elements will enter and interact within the frame. This all aids anticipation and good timing.

Traditional Manual Focus Lens Designs. While this may sound like a disadvantage, for certain applications it is a huge benefit for others. It makes it easy to leave the lens focused at a useful distance and leave depth of field to take care of the rest. In combination with the point above, you now have a camera where everything is clear through the viewfinder, where you feel connected beautifully to what is actually going on, which you can fire at whim knowing precisely where you are focused. You do not have to worry about autofocus deciding to grab the wrong subject. You do not have to even think about recomposition (assuming the subject falls within the depth of field afforded by the aperture). You can just shoot the instant elements ‘align’ within your beautiful clear window. While this can be achieved easily with any manual focus lens, many modern DLSRs lack decent screens for focusing manual lenses and many mirrorless cameras lack lenses that can quickly be set to a given distance. Many lack distance scales on the lenses altogether, or as so skewed towards AF usage that they are all but useless for manual focus (and feel nasty in the process).Oddly, the only camera I feel possibly outdoes the Leica M in this regard is a compact, the Ricoh GR, because it combines normal AF usage with a snap focus option, where the camera will fire at a pre-designated focus distance with one swift full press of the shutter button. This allows you the best of both worlds, albeit via a non-manual interface.

One can also now ponder the importance of perfect sharpness. Many famous ‘Leica M’ photos are not famous because everything is sharp. They are famous because something magical – a moment – was caught perfectly. Now you know how the rangefinder design can contribute to this.

Simplicity, Intuitiveness and Connectedness: This area is where Leica Ms score off the charts, IMO: they are very simple cameras – even the digital ones. They may lack features found on some other (cheaper) cameras, but this simplicity prevents distraction. It simplifies what you can do and places greater emphasis on the photographer, which in turn helps the photographer to build a level of concentration that helps in entering ‘the zone’ – that place where intense focus and concentration gives rise to intuition and a sense of connectedness. You are connected to your own thoughts and to your subject (which you can see clearly for reasons described above). Of course, other cameras do not prevent this, but it is my opinion that simple cameras make it easier. There are fewer buttons, lights, beeps, options, menus and everything else. You spend less time as camera operator and this can only benefit the creative process. Camera operation becomes intuitive and there just aren’t any demands made of the user to force you out of ‘the zone’. When you think how few features and settings are actually required for strong street, documentary and reportage imagery, it all starts to make sense. After all, the Leica M is not typical studio fashion photographer workhorse material and nobody is claiming it is.

Learning Curve: Once you are used to using a rangefinder, there is nothing to learn. Sure, having use of aperture, shutter speed, focal length and depth of field down to a tee is important in my view, but once you have that sorted, there is almost nothing else to think about. Less thinking, fewer options to ponder, fewer menus to get lost in = more creativity. I will also say that I think Leica has been pretty clever about how they simplify their menus on the digital models. A Type 246 Monochrom is not much different to a M8.2 or M4, which means that from one generation to the next, there is so very little to learn.

It’s a Machine: It is a hunk of metal, mostly. It feels good to hold. Most users say they enjoy using them immensely. If you enjoy using them, you will use them and that means more photographs get taken. More fun is had. It’s a good thing all round. This seems to be something that the anti-Leica brigade fixate upon: people who enjoy using Leicas become ‘fondlers’ and, while it is true that there are many shiny camera loving collectors out there, only good things stem from feeling motivated to get your hands on your camera (the same could be said of most things, including your partner in life!)… but there is another aspect to it: Leica Ms, even digital ones, feel like like an interaction with an electronic gizmo than many other cameras. In a world where everything has buttons, screens, apps and less manual interface than ever before, this can feel remarkably important. If you work on a computer all day and own a Leica, you may know what I mean. Even if your images end up on a computer, there is some respite in between.

The Whole Package: When you add all of this up, whether it is 24MP or 30MP, or has 13.5 or 14.1 stops of DR becomes fairly trivial. What we can say is that Leica has managed to incorporate a sensor into their current M240 that is head and shoulders above the one gracing the EOS 5D III – Canon’s flagship. Leica’s sensors are certainly not at the top, but they are not far enough from the top to matter a bunch in light of the other benefits the overall camera package possesses for certain applications.

This leads me to application: Criticism of the Leica M naturally leads to comparison, but a lot of the time the M is compared to cameras that are completely and utterly different. It becomes an apples to oranges comparison and with any item, we rarely get the best of everything available in the market in one camera. Being a Leica means probably not having Sony or Canon level resources available and this shows in the firmware glitches, lock ups etc, not to mention the comparative performance of the sensor. But a camera is a lot more than a sensor. It is a tool that, with a lens attached, allows light to be shone on that sensor.

The lenses are Optically Spectacular. I am not going to labour this, because there is nothing more to say. They are stunning, but its not the reason why I continue to own Leica M equipment. After all, before lenses get to do their job, we have to have carried the camera to the point of exposure, composed the image and timed the shutter’s release. This is what Leica Ms do so well for street, documentary and reportage that rely so heavily on ‘complete scenes’ where timing and spacial sensitivity need to be so crucially aligned. What I enjoy most about the optics is not that they are so good, but the fact that you can happily stop concerning yourself with optical factors. I know Leica shooters can be some of the most obsessive nuance-splitting lunatics in the camera averse, but the truth is they’re only doing this because they can. They’re doing it because everything is already so good that the usual topics simply aren’t feasible.

Ironically, Leica’s older and less perfect lenses may be their strongest suit. How many other camera bodies can you plonk an uncoated 1930s lens on and shoot it alongside a modern super sharp aspherical? Now, before you say ‘Sony FE!’, remember that lenses wider than 50mm rarely play nicely on the A7 or A7R, so its not as simple as that. Besides, no matter what anyone says, native lenses are normally the most seamless and enjoyable user experience and having access to so many wonderful Leica lenses, where the distance scales won’t lie and the rangefinder can still be used to the full, well, its wonderful (but a Sony A7 will probably give your 50mm Noctilux f1.0 a new lease of life).

Refuse The Technology Arms Race: If you’re already considering an M, you probably know enough about cameras to know it is technically not the best camera on Earth. You know that Sony sensors have more dynamic range and that Sony, Canon and Nikon now all produce cameras with more resolution in their A7R, A7RII and 5DS and D800/810 models. This in itself can be a hugely powerful force for the betterment of your photography, by forcing a person to concentrate more on how a great photo is made, rather than the sensor and gizmo trickery that made it. It helps remove the owner from the ‘arms race’ on the day of purchase and therefore not to chase the next best thing. This would be typical defensive language and hard to justify were we talking about a camera that had direct competitors, but it exists alongside the uniqueness of what the Leica M is.

Heritage: The Double edged Sword: A great criticism is that Leica M lovers are ‘high on nostalgia’ and ‘stuck in the past’. Certainly the latter can be an obstacle to interesting new work, but the former is hardly a problem. That connection reminds every Leica user that mortal men and women made some of the most recognisable images in history on similar cameras. Instead of looking over one’s shoulder at the next person who has more megapixels, a person looking into the past and being reminded of how little technology the masters had at their disposal is more likely to be humbled and empowered. It’s a sage reminder of the contribution we need to make to that next photograph and how the camera facilitates our work, rather than makes it. After all, I doubt 2015’s finest 35mm Kodak Tri-X can resolve more than a 6MP camera on a good day….

The Ownership Prospect: Leica M cameras are hugely expensive, but used lenses tend to appreciate rather than depreciate in value. Yes they are expensive to buy, but there are so many used ones around that one can see that initial investment as money tied up for a while in a useable form and certainly not lost. They contain no electronics, so don’t tend to go wrong. A clean every decade or two at the cost of $80 or so is about all that may be required. Bodies lose money, sure, but there seems to be much less of an urge to change and upgrade them (for me at least) at the sort of frequency one sees elsewhere. Its funny how someone still using their D700 for serious work is regarded as a bit ‘left behind’ by their peers, but the person using a ten year old M8 gets barely a second thought from Leica users. There is a different culture borne of a different philosophy that is a product of a different relationship between the camera, the owner and the photograph. Now that Leica has a few full-frame models under their belts, used bodies can be acquired for not entirely unreasonable sums. Yes, they will be behind the curve technologically speaking, compared to what can be bought today for the same money, but if that is your first thought then a Leica M is unlikely to be anywhere on your shopping list in the first place.

At the end of the day, the Leica M is not for everyone, but no other manufacturer has managed to assimilate and aggregate the qualities I have listed above sufficiently to lure Leica M devotees away. I’m not stuck on the brand for the sake of it and would be gone in a flash if another manufacturer could give me the same qualities in a much less expensive package. To date no other manufacturer has succeeded.

Leica themselves are probably the greatest threat to the M system, with the new Leica Q and the rumoured interchangeable version some expect to be released in 12-18 months. The Q offers wonderful manual focus options for zone focusing, along with the benefits of super quick AF and mirrorless features, all wrapped up in a tactile Leica package. But it doesn’t have a big clear glass window to look through and it is clearly an ‘electronics heavy’ tool.

No, it looks like the Leica M will remain here for some time. Not everyone wants to look at a computer screen inside their viewfinder, no matter how crisp and fast the refresh is. The fact that the Leica M does not superimpose anything on reality, or filter the viewers experience in any meaningful way will likely keep the platform alive for a long time to come. No matter what other technology is possible with other camera lines in the near future, one won’t be able to escape the fact that its only ever the end result that counts. Here, the Leica M has been delivering stunning images for 60 years and don’t see that changing any time soon.

Leica Photography Online

Full online scans of Leica Photography Magazine can now be found at LeicaPhotographyArchive. Add the scans to your Google Drive and then download them. Nice.

Elliott Erwitt’s M3

You’ll Be a Better Photographer if You Use a Leica

“The essence of communication is intention.” Werner Erhard

Let’s face it: Leica cameras are ridiculously expensive and technologically crude. They lack common features found on cameras a fraction of their cost. They can be finicky and incredibly expensive to maintain and repair. Their digital offerings, when not plagued by manufacturing defects, have been years behind the curve in an industry where technical obsolescence is measured in months, not years.

I’ve owned a few digital M’s along the way, but exercising the rational part of my brain, sold them and have since settled on a Nikon D800E for exacting work and a couple of Ricoh GXRs for easy digital capture. Both the Nikon and the Ricoh produce stunning files, and, if there exists in the digital era certain cameras that approach the minimalist perfection exemplified by the Leica M in the film era, the Ricoh GXR is surely one of them. The folks at Ricoh hit it out of the park with the GXR and it’s A12 M mount, but also its 28mm and 50mm AF modules mating a dedicated sensor to impeccable optics. I remain completely blown away by how good my photos are from the GXR. As for the D800E, well, we’re easily talking resolution and dynamic range found in medium format 6×9 cameras. That’s crazy.

And along the way I’ve followed, admittedly with a certain amount of schadenfreude, the debacle that is the delaminating CCD sensor of the M9, ME and MM. As I understand it, Leica still sells the MM and ME with a sensor they know, at some point, is going to need replacing, for no other reason than its defective by design. Yet, people are still queueing up to buy them, knowing all of the above. And, I must admit, in moments of weakness, I’m tempted to plunk down five grand and pony up for a Monochrom, outdated, delaminating CCD sensor be damned. When all is said and done, I must admit, that’s one cool camera.

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It used to be that a ‘serious’ photographer had to do things and master techniques that required specialized knowledge and training. Any art school graduate who’s been made to read Leslie Stroebel’s Basic Photographic Materials and Processes as a foundation of their studies in photography learned that a serious interest in photography required an understanding of its technical aspects, aspects that required considerations of mathematics, physics, chemistry, psychology and physiology. Armed with the skills such knowledge provided, we could easily differentiate ourselves from the dilettantes who took snapshots and dropped their rolls off to be developed at the corner drugstore. We were serious about the craft of photography, and we versed ourselves in its chemical and physical underpinnings and the means to manipulate its variables to produce something unique, a product of our specific vision. And it was this knowledge that was a prerequisite of our photographs being qualitatively better than the snapshots of the dilettante, even if, in practice, there was little about the photographs themselves that might have distinguished one from the other. Our photographs had intentionality.

Digital photography is radically democratized. Everybody can do it, and do it well without any real understanding of the mechanisms involved. My niece, who knows nothing about photography as a craft, routinely produces stunningly beautiful photographs with her iphone, photos with more power and aesthetic character than 99% of those uploaded in endless procession by “serious” photographers on enthusiast sites like Rangerfinder Forum or Photo.net. She has an “eye.” Digital image-making (I hesitate to refer to it as photography) is essentially idiot-proof; point the device, press the button, send out the result for other’s perusal. If you’ve got an “eye,” chances are your results will be good, often better than the best creations made during the film era by serious photographers with advanced knowledge and painstakingly acquired technical expertise.

If we profess to value the dissemination of visual reality, this is good, an advance, because we as photographers are freed from the encumbrances of the technological constraints that stand between us and the creation of our vision. Now all of us can document our lives and the lives of others around us without first hurdling the technical bar existent in analogue days. Photography need no longer be a craft, a practice that requires something other than a common aptitude. Anyone can do it, and do it well.

But there’s a catch. The tools we use, and the manner in which they allow us to use them for our creative purposes, have an authority in the process, because they function to structure our attention in a certain way. The design of the tool conditions the nature of our involvement in our creative practices, an “ecology of attention,’ in the words of philosopher and social theorist Matthew Crawford, that may be more, or less, adapted to the skills needed to meaningfully involve the craftsman in his creative actions. Tools do matter. I would suggest that, in spite of the tired cliche that “it’s not the camera,”, your skills are dependent, in a real sense, on the camera.

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Maybe this helps lead us to an explanation of why some of us consciously reject the ease of modern photography, preferring instead to treat our photography as a craft that requires a certain intentionality. Many of us believe that the values that Leica has heretofore embodied – simplicity grounded in the assumption that the photographer understands the process and is best able to choose the appropriate variables, aesthetics driven by functional concerns, a need for the transparency of the camera in the process because it is ultimately only a tool in service of our particular vision – are necessary aspects in what we define as “photography.” We’ve learned and practiced a craft we define as “photography” that requires knowledge, skill, intentionality, and we see these aspects eroded to the point of irrelevancy with the remarkable inovations of the digital age.

So, we chose to “do it the hard way,” even though its now no longer necessary as a technological necessity. Granted, an evocative photograph is an evocative photograph irrespective of the means of its capture, but many of us still find a great satisfaction in the process of photography, a process that requires specialized knowledge and tools that allow us to translate that knowledge into a photograph that embodies our intention. And for these purposes, there exists no better camera than a Leica M. It’s minimalism of design and function creates the perfect tool with which to exercise intentionality in the practice of our craft. We get to do the thinking and make the appropriate choices. To do so it requires of us a sophisticated knowledge of basic photographic principles. We ‘take’ the photographs, not the camera.

Do we get ‘extra points’ for difficulty? No. A good photo is a good photo, whether I take it with my unmetered M4 and chose a film and developer to enhance the effects I’m looking for, or whether my niece pushes a button a her iphone. We both may create beautiful photos, but I’ll do so as a ‘photographer’ who understands and values the process, while her motivations, concerns and interests in what she’s doing may never have reached the level of mindfulness. To my mind there’s a huge difference between us, not merely a difference of degree but a qualitative difference in who we are and how what we do defines us. “Snobbish” ? Possibly. True? Most definitely.

And that’s why I’m intrigued by the Monochrom. It looks, feels, and operates like a traditional analogue camera. No ‘modes,” no image stabilization, no wifi, no mindless automation. You get to choose. Is it hopelessly crude from a technological standpoint? Yes. But if you’re looking at it with those technological parameters as decisive factors, you simply don’t understand how the function of photography is a guiding interest for a remaining few. Insofar as a digital camera is capable of recreating the minimalist design and function of a traditional analogue camera, its the best current option for carrying forward the practice of mindfulness in the photographic process, a practice many of still desire in an age of the mindless ubiquity of iphones and social media.

Leitz, Zeiss, Nikon and The Genesis of High-Speed 35mm Photography

When Oskar Barnack built the first 35mm film camera, the “Ur-Leica” in 1923, he fitted it with a 5cm f/3.5 Elmax Anastigmat. When the Leica I went into full production a two years later, Leitz fitted it with the same lens but modified it with two as opposed to three cemented elements, and renamed it the “Elmar.” The f/3.5 Elmar is a very sharp lens, even opened up, and helped establish Leica’s reputation for fine optics. There are claims that Leitz had the capabilities to produce an f/2 50mm at this time, but chose not to to insure they offered the finest quality optics for their fledgling 35mm camera system.

For years Leica trailed Zeiss, the acknowledged leader in optical design, in producing high-speed lenses. Already in 1928, Zeiss had released the 50/1.5 Sonnar, a 7-element modified triple with only 6 air-glass surfaces (in an era of uncoated lenses, each uncoated surface reduced light transmission by about 15%, which was why fast lenses were so difficult to produce before the advent of lens coating). In the late 30’s Zeiss introduced vacuum fluoro-coating to the Sonnar, creating the Sonnar T. Starting in 1930, Leitz offered as an alternative to the Elmar it’s first “high-speed” 50, a 5cm f/2.5 Hektor. Shortly thereafter, in 1933, Leitz introduced a 5cm f/2 Summar, a modified Zeiss Planar design which they subsequently improved upon and reintroduced in 1939 as the Summitar. Max Berek, who designed most of the lenses for Leica in the 1930’s, explained that the reason Leitz had not used their own design for their original high-speed 50 was they had wanted to be certain their original offerings met a high standard so as to insure the success of the Leica 35mm camera, and they did not then have the optical expertise to design a clean sheet high speed lens and so chose to borrow Zeiss’s proven Planar design.

Leica produced their first high-speed 50mm in 1936 with the introduction of the Leitz Xenon, an uncoated seven element double Gauss type with ten surfaces (the rear element was split in two). While there is some evidence to support Leica’s claim that the Xenon was a Leitz creation, for patent reasons Leitz sublicensed the design from Schneider, who had themselves licensed the patent design from Taylor, Taylor Hobson (TTH) in Great Britain, agreeing to use Zeiss’s “Xenon” designation for the lens. In the 1949, Leitz began fluoro-coating the Xenon and renamed it the Summarit (however the US Patent still had a few years to run, so you’ll find some early Summarits still carrying the US Patent number). Lens coating, developed in Germany during the war, made a tremendous improvement on the uncoated Xenon, increasing contrast and reducing flare. After the war, Leitz also offered a service to coat existing pre-war lenses, but would not coat the front element because their coating was not sufficiently robust to resist damage with normal cleaning.

While some claim that it was the introduction of fluoro-coating that revolutionized Leitz optics, in reality it was Leitz’s post-war decision to open their own glass research facility in order to reduce their dependence on third parties. But Zeiss remained the leader in high-speed lens design and production into the 60s. While Leitz was busy playing catch-up to Zeiss’s recognized high-speed technical dominance, Japanese camera makers – Nikon and Canon – each started offering versions of the 50/1.5 Sonnar, the 50/1.5 Nikkor, and the 50/1.5 Canon. In 1951 Nikon recomputed the 50/1.5 into the 50/1.4 and set in motion the beginnings of a tectonic shift in public perception and professional acceptance of Japanese optics, a design and manufacturing contest between the German and Japanese producers that continues to this day.

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David Douglas Duncan introduced the world to high quality Japanese lenses. Duncan used a Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.5 and Nikkor-QC 13.5cm F4 on his Leica IIIc for most of his photographs taken in Korea. Other photographers took note of the quality of Duncan’s images and word spread about the quality of the Nikkor lenses.

In their December 10, 1950 edition, the New York Times noted the emergence of Nikkor optics amongst professional photographers: “The first postwar camera to attract serious attention in America has caused a sensation among magazine and press photographers following the report by Life magazine photographers in Korea that a Japanese 35mm camera and its lenses had proven superior to the German cameras they had been using. The lenses, which include a full range of focal lengths, give a higher accuracy rating than lenses available for German miniatures.” The article quoted “camera expert” Mitch Bogdanovitch that the Nikkor lenses “are of excellent color correction and perform better at full apertures than do Zeiss lenses.” The President of Carl Zeiss, Inc. USA, subsequently threatened to stop advertising in The Times. The Times ultimately allowed Zeiss to run a statement that the “Zeiss lenses being tested were not true Zeiss lenses.” This was most likely accurate. After World War II, much of the Zeiss machinery that was used to produce precision optics was shipped back to Russia as war reparations. Wholesale lots of optics, optical glass, lens parts, and fixtures were shipped to Russia where they were completed at the KMZ factory. ZK used Zeiss parts for their 5cm F1.5 Sonnars and 5cm F1.5 Jupiter-3’s through the early 1950s.

The iconic Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.5 remains one of the most obscure of the vintage Nikkors. Nikon originally developed the 5cm F1.5 for use on the Hansa Canon. Two batches of lenses were produced, the “905” batch in May 1949 and the “907” batch in July 1949. After the war, when Nikon needed a super-speed lens to compete with Zeiss and Leitz, Nikon used the 5cm F1.5 as the basis for their now venerable 50mm f1,4. Fewer than 800 1.5 Nikkors were made, about 300 in Leica mount and 500 in S-Mount, before Nikon replaced the F1.5 with the Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.4 the following year.

The Nikkor-SC 5cm F1.5 is a Sonnar with seven elements in three groups, although a unique formulation. The Nikkor is made to the Leica 51.6mm focal length standard, and is constructed using different optical glass than the Zeiss optic. The focus mount is an all-brass rigid mount, finished in chrome, and has a close-focus of 18”. It is the first Nikkor lens to feature the close-focus capability, followed by the 5cm F1.4 and rigid-mount 5cm F2. The optical surfaces are all hard-coated. The aperture mechanism does not employ click-stops, while the subsequent F1.4 and rigid F2 lenses of 1950 feature click-stops.

“True” Zeiss lenses in Leica mount were manufactured during the war in small numbers. The 5cm F1.5 Sonnar “T” made during the war used a “recomputed” optical formula that improved performance compared with the pre-war lenses. The wartime Leica mount Zeiss lenses are not as well made as the Nikkor lenses used by Duncan in Korea. The choice of available materials for the fixtures and focus mount was poor, with lighter, less robust metal alloys used. The design of the Zeiss focus mount for the Leica camera was not well thought out; as an example a set screw through the focus ring serves as the focus stop. Zeiss lenses of the period that saw heavy use often fell out of RF calibration, with the sleeves and helical loosening-up, making the lens unusable.

In post WW2 Germany, Zeiss produced their lenses with what remained behind. Post-war Leica mount “Carl Zeiss Jena” Sonnars can be found that are not in the “official records”, and often have a “one-off” quality about them. These lenses were probably machined using mostly hand-made tools, sometimes were missing parts, and had sub-standard finish on the optics and mechanical fixtures. These lenses were used with many post-war Leica cameras, many bought by serviceman in Occupied Germany. A post-war era Zeiss lens in perfect condition would probably not have withstood the combat conditions faced by Korean era war photographers.

Nikon optimized their post-war rangefinder optics for wide-open use, and the 5cm F1.5 is no exception. Zeiss optimized their lenses for stopped down use and perform best at F2.8. Leitz optimized their lenses for mid-aperture usage, as does Leica even today. Zeiss did not start optimizing their Sonnars for wide-open use until recently.

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The 50 f1.4 Nikkor S is the lens most responsible for making Nikon’s reputation in the early 1950s. It was a leap ahead of Zeiss, and certainly, Leitz, in high-speed lens quality. Nikon introduced the Nikkor S-C 5cm f/1.4 in 1951 at a List price of approximately $1,700 in today’s money. First versions were marked “NIKKOR-S C” to denote that the lens was coated. The “C” was dropped in 1957. In 1962, Nikon introduced a longer version with different optics, engraved “50mm” instead of “5cm”, referred to as the Olympic version. Nikon again re-made the larger 50mm lens in 2000 as part of the S3 Millennial set.

Ive always been impressed by the old Nikkor LTM lenses. The 50 f2 and the 35 f1.8 are particularly good vintage users. The 50 has a beautiful classic look, sharp and contrary even wide open. They are plentiful today because so many of them were made for use with amateur cameras (Tower, Nicca). And they are inexpensive – excellent examples can be found for between 200-300$. The 35mm 1.8 LTM is another story, carrying prices of 1700-2500$ depending on the condition. Both of these vintage Nikkors have aged better than similar offerings from Leitz given their harder front coatings.

There also exist a number of Nikkors in Nikon S mount, that heretofore were limited in use to the Nikon S rangefinder series. A beautiful camera, no doubt, but it has its limitations – specifically a rangefinder patch that’s very hard to read except with high contrast edges. The Nikkor S lenses themselves are uniformly excellent.

In 2000, Nikon made the decision to reproduce the S3 with an updated version of the Nikkor 50 1.4 (the “Millennial”). In 2005, they reproduced the SP coupled with an updated Nikkor 35 1.8. Almost all were snapped up by collectors assuming that the prices would appreciate with time. For whatever reason, prices of new, unused kits have currently depreciated by 75%, with early speculators selling S3 kits they bought for $6000 for less than $2000. I recently bought a brand new chrome S3 kit from Japan for $1550.

Throw into the mix the 50 Millennial and the 35 SP remakes with modern multi-coating and the rangefinder Nikkors make an excellent alternative to the uber-expensive Leica offerings.

The irony of the S3 Millenial is that its starting to become popular again because of the lens, not the camera. You can chalk that up to the Amedeo Adaptor. Now, thanks to an enterprising gentleman in Argentina who produces a Nikon S to Leica M adaptor as a labor of love, you can use your S mount lenses on your Leica M, rangefinder coupled, with his Amedeo adaptor. And the adaptor is nothing like the plethora of cheap Chinese adaptors recently appeared on the market allowing use of various lens mounts on mirrorless cameras. The first thing you notice about the Amedeo adaptor is how well-made and tightly toleranced it is. It looks and feels like something that should have the Leica name attached to it. Its focus throw is smooth and firm, and it locks into the M mount with a pronounced click. Extremely nice.

Which leaves us Leicaphiles with wonderful new options for the use of Nikkor S lenses on our M’s. For less than 2k you can buy an unused S3 body with 50 1.4 attached, buy an Amedeo adaptor for $275 and have a 50 1.4 prime lens for your M every bit as sharp and well built as the $5000 Summilux Aspherical. You’ll also have a new Nikon S3 body you can slap a new VC 50 2.5 S on (approx $250-300) and use as a second rig. The S3, itself a worthy competitor to the M3, is, in my opinion, worth the $2000 price alone, as you’re getting the functional equivalent of a brand new M3 throw in “free of charge” when you buy the set for the Millennial Nikkor 50 1.4. And, having not had to spread for the $5000 Summilux, you’ll have almost $3000 in change left over.

Amedeo Adaptor

Construction of the Leica Camera

Leicaphilia

Philia (/ˈfɪljə/ or /ˈfɪliə/) is one of the four ancient Greek words for love.

Author Archives: Leicaphila

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