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On Wednesday, in "Open Mike" (as I always say, "the often off-topic editorial page of TOP"), I'm going to be writing about an old 1945 noir cult-classic called Detour, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. There are going to be spoilers in the essay, so in case you don't already know the movie I wanted to give you a heads up in case you might want to go watch it for yourself before reading what I have to say.
Few people will care about this, and fewer still will go watch an old movie as "homework," so to speak—but as I also always say, not every post here is for everyone. Wednesday's essay might appeal to only a few readers, but those who engage with it could enjoy the discussion. Detour is a fascinating noir, an important movie in the genre, with unexpected depths (which is what accounts for its otherwise surprising endurance)—but only if you interpret it a certain way. On the surface it's just an ordinary '40s B-movie potboiler with an improbable plot.
It's available on Amazon Prime, which is free to Prime members, or for free to anyone on YouTube. The rights holders neglected to renew the copyright of the movie, and it entered the public domain long ago, so poor copies circulated for years, and some of the many full movies on YouTube might be derived from those. Amazon's stream is from the 4K restoration done in 2018. A DVD and Blu-Ray version of the rehabilitated movie has been available from the Criterion Collection since last year.
That's all about that—for now.
Mike
(Old movie poster from John Hazelton)
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Richard Alan Fox: "Thank you for the heads up regarding movie spoiler in your column. A first for me in not savoring each word but taking a detour to Amazon and downloading the movie and then back to Comments to type this thank you. Tonight I watch movie then I read your column."
Kenneth Wajda: "Looking forward to it. I know the film. Richard Linklater, the filmmaker, even named his production company after it."
Gordon Lewis: "By coincidence, I watched Detour last weekend. It's a stark counterpoint to the types of movies that get produced these days. We're talking gritty black-and-white images shot on film, unlikeable characters, and a one-way ride to the bottom floor. Those who dream to 'Make America Great Again' definitely didn't have this film in mind. This is more for the type who like their drinks straight, no chaser."
Dana Thomas: "you nailed this one Mr. Mike. A perfect example of how to make an excellent film on a low budget. It is included in the National Film Registry. I have watched it many times and it is one of my favorite black-and-white flicks. Good idea to look up other excellent films by Edgar Ulmer. Thanks as ever for your keen sense of quality!"
...Otherwise known as Henri Cartier-Bresson's birthday.
(By the way, my favorite book of the many books of the great French photographer's work [there are many worthy titles however] is Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer published by Bulfinch in 1992. It was in print forever, until just a few years ago. Unfortunately—and unusually for a mere retrospective—the value is going up on the used market; there should be a lot of used copies floating around, but you'll have to scour the usual suspects (Amazon, Abebooks, Biblio, etc., or used bookstores) to find one. Expect to pay around $100 for an excellent copy. Still worth it—it's an essential title in my opinion, and a very enjoyable and instructive book to spend time with. I've done so a lot.)
A couple of suggestions for Street Photography Day during the 2020 Blues: 1.) take a street photograph while distancing; 2.) find a street photograph by someone else you really like online, something you've never seen before (here's mine, by Ferry Noothout); and—how's this?—3.) take a picture of your street!
A picture of a street is not a street photograph. But this isn't a normal year, God knows. A picture of a street for Street Photography Day seems abnormally related to the genre in a way that is somehow right in its wrongness—its twistedness reflecting these twisty times. And it's safe.
My street, about a mile from where I live. GX8 and 12–35mm ƒ/2.8, Nov. 2, 2018.
I'll just point out that while street photography is exceptionally common (the term is a common catch-all for random camera-pointing), good street photography is rare. So if you're going to go looking for a great undiscovered street photograph, you could be looking for a while. Like the hunt for the photos themselves, though, the payoff can be worth the frustration. Almost all the great masters of the genre make it look easy, but, in my experience at least, it is not easy.
There's one more option, I think: 4.) you could decide you're not a street photographer at all and you're not going to waste time, energy and mindshare trying to be something you're not. When trying to find direction, it helps to know who you are, but it also helps to know who you aren't.
Mike
NOTE: To add a photograph to the Comments, it has to be uploaded to the Web such that it has a URL, and it has to be 470 pixels wide (any more and it will get cut off). Then you can use this code in the Comment box, replacing the dummy URL with the URL of your picture:
That's complicated, but it's a workaround—TypePad isn't really set up to accommodate images in the Comments section. And by the way, thanks to all the commenters who've ever added images to their comments! I always enjoy them, and they really add to the conversation.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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If you'll go to the previous post (just below this one), you'll find quite a lot of comments, and quite a lot of Featured Comments. I thought I'd add my own pick, from up here in the bully pulpit.
Oddly enough, I think the camera I miss the most is a Leica R4s with a Leitz-era 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron-R and 90mm Summicron-R (I'm hazy on the variants of the latter, now, but the one I used had the narrow focusing ring). I used them a little more than 20 years ago now. Michael Hintlian, who is a fine and accomplished photographer himself, loaned me the two lenses when I was Editor of Photo Techniques. After trying to buy a camera body from eBay—one described as "mint," which arrived not only dirty and dinged but broken*—I bought a worn but functioning R4s from Josh Hawkins at Oak Park Camera. Later, I bought that 35mm lens from Michael; then he wanted it back because he missed it, so I sold it back to him. I really should have kept it, but I'm just not the type to refuse to sell a guy's lens back to him if I know he wants it back.
I wonder how much work and time it would take to rummage through the boxes in the barn to find some pictures taken with that camera and lens. I know I have lots, but finding them could be tough. We'll see.
The lens was designed by Walther Mandler at Elcan, Ernst Leitz Canada. It was way, way overbuilt mechanically. Rather brilliant optically, although a friend dismissed it as "just another super-sharp, soulless lens." I liked it, though. Although it did have some quirks, it seemed to mesh with Tri-X 400 really well, at least to my eye. (That "Tri-X" is no longer made, by the way—the film you buy under that name today is the new Tri-X 400, which is "improved" and not the same film. But then, Kodak made many small, unannounced improvements to Tri-X over many years, and no one ever really knows which exact version of the film someone else is talking about when they say "Tri-X.")
For a long time I've been in the habit of looking at R7's on eBay. That's the most recent variant of the R4–R7 lineage of which the R4s was a part. The R4s was a simplified, supposedly "budget" version of the R4. It was still expensive when new, though, and at various times they've sold for more on the used market than the R4 because people seem to put a premium on their greater simplicity. I know I did.
(The same variant—the cheaper, simplified version—of the R5 was called the R-E. One of my students when I taught had a brand new R5 which had just come out at the time—his outfit cost a rather humiliatingly large percentage of my annual salary at the time.)
R7's are very cheap now and it would be easy to buy one. The R lenses, however, can be adapted, so they're still expensive. That's probably a good thing—keeps me from buying in. One complication is that I don't actually like 35mm Summicron-R's...something I know because I tried to buy one to replace the one I sold back to Michael. I didn't like it as well. The new one was a "Leica" branded one, and I suspected the coatings were different by then. What I liked was Michael's lens. That particular 35mm Summicron-R, I mean. And there's no going home again on that.
(Just a word of advice that's of fairly limited relevance in the digital age: when you find a lens you particularly like, particularly if it's a zoom, you should consider your affection to be just for that particular lens, not the make and model generically. There's just enough sample variation in lenses (particularly zooms, but primes too, sometimes) such that the last little measure of ineffable magic—for your own definition of "magic"—is likely to be a property of the particular specific lens you tried rather than of every single sample of that same model. See Roger Cicala for plenty of lowdown on that.)
Let's put it this way: If my ship were to come in (which won't happen because I don't have a ship at sea, to stretch the analogy), I'd get a couple of R7's and those two Summicron-R's and shoot Tri-X for the rest of my life, getting someone else to develop, proof, and workprint the pictures. (Because that's what it would take to make film just as easy as digital—ha!)
I'd make the final prints myself, in the basement of the house I would of course build because, you know, that ship and all**.
However, back here in what I conceive of as my provisional, temporary situation, known to all others as "my real life," I don't use film. So the whole exercise is simple nostalgia. I've come to believe that my pining for that old camera probably derives from the simple fact that I just wasn't done with it at the time I had to give it up, such that I'm left with a permanent lingering sense of unfinished business—a lack of closure
if you get my drift
That's all it is. Probably. Subject to further experiment, possibly...I'll keep scanning the horizon from the widow's walk***.
Saturday post this week
Happy Street Photography Day tomorrow! I'll be back in the morning this week with some thoughts about that.
Mike
*And the seller had the cojones to explain to me that "mint" was only the fifth-highest description in his condition hierarchy, the slimy weasel. Behind "Mint+," "LN–," "LN," and "LN in box," I think it was. Scurvy bilge-rat.
**Hundreds of years ago, European investors would buy shares in the speculative voyage of a ship, whether its mission was trade, whaling, plundering gold from the New World, predatory privateering on the open sea, or whatever. If the ship was successful in its mission, then, when it returned from the voyage—which could take multiple years—the investors would reap a rich payoff according to how many shares they were due. Certainly, from such investors, "I'll pay you when my ship comes in" must have been common to hear. And, with communication in a primitive state, no one on shore knew how the voyage had gone until the ship returned. Our familiar expression today no doubt derives from the fact that if a voyage was wildly successful, an investor could potentially grow rich on the proceeds of even a single voyage...when his ship came in!
***When a ship in the age of sail was lost at sea, it would simply fail to return. Wealthy seafaring men often equipped their coastal houses with rooftop cupolas or platforms, the better to see to a farther horizon. Many is the time a captain would not come back, and his wife would climb to the rooftop walk to scan the sea for the ship that was never coming home, often far past the period of any reasonable expectation. Hence the term "widow's walk" for these lookouts.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Carl Siracusa: "Back in the day I owned a Leica R7, with the 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, for a couple of years. Liked it a lot at first—the only R camera (when introduced) with auto-exposure, big viewfinder, spot metering, and it just felt right in my hands. Then the foam material that Leica used to line the mirror box started to crackle and disintegrate, requiring an expensive repair that I was told might not last. (Later found out this was a common problem with R7's.) And the shutter lag finally became just too annoying for the kind of street photography I like to do. By then the lens had become very desirable, so I ended up selling both for much more than I paid for them. I do miss it though!"
Mike replies: That's one pitfall of being Leica. If you're going to present yourself as being a cut above, then when you fall on your face it's extra embarrassing. Leicas are just cameras, and, like all cameras, they have problems sometimes. But it's annoying when you've paid extra for a camera that is supposedly "at the limits of the technically feasible" or whatever their tagline used to be, and something simple up and goes SNAFU. You might just deal with it if it happened on a mass market, affordable brand, but when the same thing happens to a Leica it's irritating. The 35mm Summicron-M I had—bought new—started flaking paint chips off its aperture blades, which then got deposited on an inner lens surface right in the optical path. I had it cleaned once, but when it happened again I just sold the whole shebang. On an ordinary lens it might have seemed like a tolerable problem, but on a fancy name lens that cost several times what a Nikkor did, it felt like betrayal. (Earlier, my Nikon 35mm ƒ/2 had a problem with oil on the aperture blades, a known defect. Maybe I just have bad luck.)
Some of the R cameras of that era had a particularly embarrassing problem—the bottom plates weren't sealed, and when you set the cameras down on any moisture the liquid would wick up into the body and wreak havoc with the electronics. Leica's workaround was to produce a little plastic tray to keep the bottom of the camera up and off any liquid. But it took away the tripod mount and made the battery less accessible. Here's a picture from eBay that shows the plastic tray detached from the bottom of the camera:
This wasn't so bad in itself, but it wasn't something buyers should have had to put up with on a camera that claimed to have unusually good engineering.
Thomas Mc Cann: "On reading your eulogy many years ago I bought a Minolta 7D and was as entranced with it as you were. Eventually I moved to Nikon but often regretted letting it go.Years later in a camera store I saw a 7D secondhand for sale and asked to see it. Profound disappointment. It just didn't hold up. Distance lends enchantment."
Mike replies: Yes, and exogenous factors can enhance our experiences, too. When I was shooting with the Leica R, I felt extremely proud to be using the legendary Leica brand—even if most of the public didn't know the R4s from an AE-1. That feeling of status and stature, even if wasn't imaginary back then (which it might have been), wouldn't lend any shine today. Today it would be just another old film camera, a curiosity.
John Krill: "I don't miss any of the cameras I used in the past. None. Nada. Zip. Not even the M3. We all know what brand the M3 is, don't we? I fully enjoy my current go-to cameras. For film it is the Contax G1 with the standard lens, the 45mm ƒ/2. For digital it is the Fujifilm X-Pro2. Can't ask for a better pair of cameras, period. So why should I miss the old stuff?"
Considering all the cameras that have ever passed through your hands, all the ones that have been and gone, is there any single one you would like to have back the most?
Just curious.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon
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Featured Comments from:
Ash Crill: "I'd like to have the camera that first inspired me to learn photography—my original Fuji X100 from 2011."
Ricardo Silva Cordeiro (partial comment): "The original X100. Such a landmark on both the digital camera scene and on my personal work. I replaced it with the (latest at the time) X100F to then realize that it didn’t made sense to have it when I already had an X-Pro2. Even if I like the X-Pro2 more and it makes more sense on a rational level, there is really something about the form factor and fixed lens of the X100 line that is appealing. Thinking back maybe I should have kept the original X100, as a collection item that I would also use at times, and as an object with sentimental value."
Kye Wood: "Fujifilm X100. The original model. Like any relationship that ends, there may be times of nostalgia following your parting. But you moved on for a reason. To look back with regret is to miss the chance to enjoy what you have now."
Sherwood McLernon: "Never had any regrets (I still have them all)."
01af: "I still own all cameras I ever owned—so, no."
Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "I never owned one, but I rented a Mamiya 6 a few times, and I kick myself for not buying one when they were reasonable. Literally everyone I know that owned one, are kicking themselves today for getting rid of it. 120 roll film, in a tiny eye-level rangefinder format, fantastic!"
John: "Knowing I wouldn’t use them, because they’re film cameras, the cameras I miss are the Mamiya 6 with all three lenses, the Contax G2 with the 21mm, 28mm, 45mm and 90mm lenses and the Contax 645. All of these still fetch hefty prices."
Paul: "I totally regret selling my Leica M6 and my 35mm Summicron lens which I bought when I was twenty six years old. Never managed to adapt wholly to any other camera since. Saddest point is I doubt I will be able to afford another one in the foreseeable future."
Carsten Bockermann replies to Paul: "Exactly the same here (yes, I was also 26 when I bought my first Leica)."
Phil Martin: "I do still have most of my cameras but sold on my Rolleiflex 3.5T, near mint with grey leatherette, to a student in one of my evening classes, as I didn't think I'd use it again. I probably wouldn't have, but the CD player I bought with the proceeds has long died with little care but I still miss that camera."
JohnW: "Of the 24 different cameras I’ve owned the only one I miss is my Rolleiflex 3.5T with the 75mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens. With Agfa CT18 the images were so three-dimensional you wanted to reach in and touch things. Astonishing lens. Alas, it got stolen in a B&E [breaking and entering, i.e., burglary —Ed.] many years ago for which the insurance company paid me eight times what it cost me new; that’s how expensive they had become. Oddly enough, both prices were exactly the equivalent of a month’s salary."
Ron Lacy: "The Nikon D700 is still the camera I wish I had never sold. The 'baby D3.' Full frame sensor, nice size, beautiful images, and the 'wow' factor. It wowed me from the first image to the last. I enjoyed photography more when I had that camera. Why? Not really sure, but if I had one camera to own again, it would be the D700."
[A different] Mike: "Nikon D700. Needed to sell it in the moment, but have missed it almost every day since then."
albert erickson: "Since you asked about regrets, I have one, a Nikon D700. It was my favorite camera and I traded it for a D800. The D800 was a great camera with much better dynamic range and higher ISO ability, but it never grew on me as the D700 did. I have thought about buying another one but I still own way too many cameras, and have yet to grow more hands to use all of them."
Dogman: "I still have the camera of my fondest memories.
"It's a black plain prism Nikon F2. It was the first new Nikon I ever bought. I had a couple of Nikon F's at the time but I had bought both of them used.
"The camera came in the UPS truck within a few days of my deciding to be a photographer and quitting my day job. I got my first real photography job that paid almost enough to live on—as long as I lived on beans and rice and cheap beer. Eventually I was hired by a daily newspaper where I worked for over 15 years. And during those 15 years I was using that Nikon F2 daily. That camera took more use and abuse than anything should have.
"At one point it fell out of my hand and smashed onto the floor. I sent it off for repairs but it was returned as being unrepairable. I took it to my insurance agent and she approved it as a total loss. But I asked if I could buy it back from the insurance company for sentimental reasons. It was approved and I paid $50 and took it home again where it languished for a couple of years. Then one day I had a wild idea and sent it off to Nikon Professional Services along with another camera. Surprisingly, NPS repaired the camera completely, and I started using it again for work. When I eventually quit that job, I sold off most of my camera gear except for that beat up F2 and another Nikon with a few lenses. I used it for several years after that.
"It's packed away and I don't use it anymore but I have fond memories of using that camera on some memorable assignments."
Roger: "The Nikon F2 I bought from Art Kramer back when the CompuServe Photography Forum was a thing."
Dan Khong: "That would be the Canonet (1963). My father's friend in Japan gifted it to him. He passed it to me. Then I sold it because SLRs were—by the late 1960s—cooler to own and shoot with. Years later, I still think of it."
JimF: "Yashica D which I bought new as a 6th grader with my newspaper money. It was mint when I sold it around 1990. Wish I hadn’t. Every one I see now even at an unreasonable price looks trashed."
Vijay: "Konica Hexar AF. Lightweight, great lens, great feel in the hand."
Stephen Cowdery: "The 1952 Exakta 66. It was horrible: Clunky, heavy, with a film advance that refused to give even spacing. It even smelled funny. I loved it, especially the 80mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar lens. The body finally gave up the ghost but I had the lenses adapted to a Mamiya 645."
Scott Innes: "Minolta SRT-101 with a Rokkor 50mm ƒ/1.4. Was a sweet backup, even post-Y2K, that was always loaded with B&W."
Eric Rose: "Nikon F2, hands down my favourite 35mm camera.
"Above that would be my Hasselblad system. I sold it to a friend and moaned about how much I missed it for several years. Another of my friends either got tired of me moaning or felt sorry for me and contacted our mutual friend. It seems he never used the 'Blad system and was willing to sell it. So my buddy bought if off him and gave it to me as a present. Now there's a friend!! We just did a three-day trip together to some sand dunes in Saskatchewan and I probably got some of my best shots of the trip with that very system."
Svein-Frode: "The Sony F717. Apart from the dated image quality, it's hands down the best and most enjoyable camera I've ever owned. So many useful features and great ergonomics. Still to this day, nothing comes close."
Mike replies: I had the previous model, the F-707, and I agree it was just fantastic good fun to use. I loved mine. If there were a modern version of that series, not crudded up with all the unecessary modern marketing features, I would put a very high priority on getting one.
Jeff Markus: "My first real camera was a pre-war Rollei, circa 1937–38, beat to hell, but I loved it. Stolen by my landlord over a damage deposit dispute. Worse yet, in the box with the camera was the film from my latest shoot, not yet processed, which I considered to be by far my most successful effort yet.
"I had gone to San Francisco to participate in and photograph a massive anti-war demonstration, and had sought out the best vantage point to get the story in one shot. The march came uphill to a T intersection, then made a right turn, and from there I saw a wide swath of many tens of thousands of marchers completely covering a broad boulevard and the adjacent sidewalks, a huge sea of people filling all the space between the buildings as far into the distance as I could see. After getting those shots I looked around to see what was interesting nearby. Well, there was Wavy Gravy, and he's always been a fun guy. And General Hershey Bar, with the toy soldiers, tanks and artillery pieces on his epaulettes, and a large fighter jet on the front of his hat.
"After the march there was going to be a concert in Golden Gate Park, at the polo grounds. I left the march early and went over there so that I could stake out a good position in front of the stage. When I arrived the place seemed deserted, save for a few people in a short grandstand behind the stage. I wandered over there and found a lot more people milling about behind the grandstand. Ran into Graham Nash, who gave my Rollei the once over, and then let me do some shots of him. Buffy Sainte-Marie leaned down from the stands above and I did some shots of her, then she asked to read my palm. Graham said there were some people I should meet, and took me over to a group with Stills, Crosby, John Sebastian, and some others. By this time I was feeling completely overwhelmed, so stood off to the side and discretely did a few group shots. Wandered around getting pictures of other interesting looking people until my film ran out.
"I shot six or seven rolls that day, three times more than I had ever done before. I was into a flow, the very first time that had ever happened to me, and it was magical.
"The music was not going to happen for another couple of hours, so I took off to find some food. Came back and the concert had begun. Must admit that my original decision to come to SF had been to see CSN&Y, specifically to see Neil Young, as I'd been a fan since the Buffalo Springfield days, and had never seen him play live. Neil never showed up, and it was several more years until I was able to shoot him performing, with Crazy Horse at the Marshall Tavern, just south of Point Reyes.
"So losing that Rollie, and my film, was quite traumatic, but over the years I've managed to gather four more of them, along with maybe seventy or so other cameras of all shapes and sizes. My ex-wife used to complain that while I bought a lot of cameras, I never sold any. Well that's not quite true. I sold off a Rajah 4x5 field camera, just a floppy mess that I wasn't able to tighten up enough to make usable."
Henning Wüst: "Believe it or not: still missing my first 'true' digital camera, the Nikon D1X."
Michael S.: "I regret having sold my Contax T2 for buying the T3 when it came out. The T3 is certainly a better camera, but the previous model had a completely different and unique feeling. But what I really miss is the historical context of that era: the easiness to find film, the cheapness of buying it and the convenience of developing it wherever. Don’t get me wrong, digital is way far better in most of aspects, but for whatever reason it doesn’t make me love cameras. But probably it’s just me...."
Juan Buhler: "My Pentax MX with K24mm ƒ/3.5 and Leica M6 with Summicron 50mm, in my bag with a few rolls of Tri-X. But I still own those exact same bodies and lenses. What I actually miss is being in my early 30s, late summer in Paris, taking Peter Turnley’s very first workshop, rushing to drop the film in time to get contact sheets to edit with Peter the next morning. I’ll go out on a limb and say that most of us miss how cameras made us feel, or what we were doing with them at the time. I’m perfectly fine with my modern Sony or Fujifilm bodies right now; they produce way better images. I keep the old cameras only out of nostalgia, pretty much."
Ed. note: Juan Buhler, whom you have met before here, worked at Pixar and has been one of the very best street photographers in the world during the first two decades of this millennium. He has for some reason not been discovered by the gatekeepers of the photographic establishment, who are not paying attention.
David Elesh: "In 1956, I bought a used Leica IIIf for $65, a lot of money for a high school sophomore. It had a self-timer, but it did not work. I didn't care. I loved making images with it. In 1962, my brother borrowed it to take with him for his junior year in Paris. Upon landing in Belgium, he traded it away for what was purported to be a 14th century map of Europe. He later traded the map for two unsigned prints, one ostensibly by Modigliani and the other ostensibly by Picasso. When he returned home, he gave me the prints. Despite several efforts, we were never able to confirm that either was actually by the artist. I still have the Picasso on a wall, but I would much rather have my beloved Leica."
Rob L.: "My biggest regret in the Canon 7Sz I helped a friend sell, golly that was a great weird camera. Second is selling my D7000 for a D600; full-frame was never worth the hassle, with the exception of the Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4."
Edward Taylor: "My favorite camera of all time was the Canon F-1. I worked with it as a photojournalist for years. It was a great professional camera and beautiful to look at. Interestingly, I almost never hear mention of it. Lots of pros used it at the time, but it just seems to have fallen out of consciousness. I still have a brand new one that has never been used. It was my backup. But, my main F-1 never broke or let me down, even though it turned brass-colored with years of use."
Michael Houghton: "The camera I shouldn't have sold is the Voigtländer Bessa R, but I'm not sure I really want it back that much; for my purposes my old Zorkis are fine. However: I owned and gave away an Exakta 1A. I don't regret gifting it at all, but I might buy myself another. Simply because it's the most admirably bonkers, adorable little chubster of a camera, with an absurdly optimistic, surprisingly functional, nutjob-mad shutter mechanism."
Don't forget that August 22, a mere three days from now, is Street Photography Day.
I started Street Photography Day in 2012 under the mistaken impression that somebody else had already started it and I was just joining in. Since then, it has really caught on: hundreds of people have observed it*. It takes place on the birthday of the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was born on August 22 in 1908. He would have been 112 this Saturday. He made it most of the way—he died at age 95.
The idea is that on his birthday, every photographer tries to take one good "street" photo. No matter if you're a formal portraitist, a dedicated National Parks landscape photographer, a vlogger, a still-life photographer...try to get out of your house, get out of your comfort zone, get down to the street, and find a picture in the street genre.
This year's theme (of course): the socially distanced street photo. This year, I would say, empty streets are fair game. Usually they wouldn't be, engagement with the denizens of the streets being an essential characteristic of the category.
Don't forget Gordon wrote a book on the subject. Or that Bystander: A History of Street Photography by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck has been reprinted.
Paragons
If you think it would be more appropriate to not play the game this year, I understand. An alternative game would be to go find a street photograph you really like, a picture you think is quintessential street.
Here are two of my all-time favorites:
Photo by Eugene Richards
Photo of photo by Martin Parr
The first one by Eugene Richards is Grandmother, Brooklyn, NY, 1993. You can see a larger version and more pictures from the great book Americans We at his website. Some people have claimed this was a setup, but it wasn't—he was just interacting with the people, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. I mean, what else?
Eugene Richards said the following about it: "On this particular day, I had a job at Gleason’s gym in Dumbo. I walked up the street and saw them. I was tired and know I'm going to say can I photograph you when there's a bunch of kids here and they’re going to say no. Then I’m going to feel worse than I already do. So I went right past it. I went up to the subway and thought it was so beautiful. I thought for Christ's sake, turned around and came back down the hill. By that time, the grandmother was on the way to the wading pool. I asked if I could photograph [her] and then the little girl took a bucket of water and threw it at me. We had a good laugh and that was it. I photographed 20 or 30 frames because it was just so cool. Everybody knows what water does, but I never actually thought that it would come out in the picture, but you could see it. It was really hot, it was like 95. Afterwards, I took off my shirt—everything was soaked anyway—and got in the hydrant. It was really nice."
The second one is my illicit snap of Martin Parr's framed print, from a dimly-lit show at the Art Institute of Chicago. The print was big, as I would define big, like two and a half or three feet high. (You weren't supposed to take pictures at the show. I hope there is no Museum detective squad working on cold cases.)
I actually managed to contact Martin Parr directly about it. He confirmed to me that it wasn't actually a "found" or candid photograph, but rather a setup for a commissioned advertising assignment. To most people, that disqualifies it as "street." And rightly so—street is an attitude, not a subject, not a look. But I decided to go ahead and keep liking it anyway. It's a beautiful photograph. If it's fiction, it's fiction of the best sort, meaning that it draws me in to its world and gets me to "suspend disbelief."
Martin Parr is one of the great photographers of his generation (and mine—he's five years older). I haven't gotten to see much of his work, though. I couldn't get used to it at first, decades ago. All that...color, all over everywhere.
Here's a very short interview with Martin Parr that gives you a sense of his opinions, and of how he speaks.
Please hit me
If you dismissed the Parr example as not being of the genre, here's a recent find that stuck with me—which might be a different kind of lie. This was in one of those clickbait collections that are trying to get you to keep paging through them so you'll look at more ads. They're sort of a guilty pleasure with me because I like to scrounge the world for photos. I have no idea if the caption is true or invented post hoc, but it's essential to the picture, and it's perfect.
The explanation was: "This guy was on a trip to Walmart when he noticed that the 'P' at the beginning of the word pharmacy was about to fall off. So, he did what any smart Walmart patron would do. He stood below the P for the next few hours, praying that it would fall and hit him so that he could sue Walmart."
I love this. It's one vision of America in a nutshell, sort of funny and appalling and dubious all in equal measure. Whatever else you might say about us, we are not afraid of showing ourselves in a bad light. It's confidence, of a sort.
Go long
Out here in the country, you can wait quite a long time for a car to go by. I've taken many walks up the hill when I've seen more animals than people. So I'll probably voyage to our local metroplex of 5,500 souls, where heavy traffic means a horse and buggy with ten cars piled up behind it. The streets should be teeming with photo opportunities. Especially on a Saturday!
You're supposed to get up close for street photography, but...COVID. I'll take my long lens.
Mike
(Thanks to Jan Kwarnmark)
*I'm being sarcastic. It hasn't caught on. I'm the only one who ever mentions it. But I'm sticking with it. It'll be famous someday!
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My younger brother Scott, who is a wise man, has always had a good record with me where book recommendations are concerned. Knowing I like nonfiction, he turned me on to things like The Beak of the Finch (which later won the Pulitzer), The Botany of Desire (great on its own, and, as a bonus, it led me to one of my all-time favorites, The Omnivore's Dilemma by the same author), The Sports Gene, and Disrupted.
In fact, as I page back through my Kindle history, it's like a catalog of friends whose recommendations I value...TOP readers included (although I tend to lump all of those "finds" together as having come from discussions here, because I don't always remember who brought up what book).
Scott is first among equals.
This morning I read articles on the iPad about the energy shortages in California and a new study showing that the Greenland ice sheet has destabilized past the point of no return—it's likely to do nothing from now on except continue adding to sea level rise. And the thing that popped into my head was something I read in Scott's latest book recommendation: that my iPad, which I was using to read those articles at that very moment, is powered by fossil fuel! Something the author, whose name is Hope, says most people forget.
The book is called The Story of More, a bland title it took me a while to set in my head. Hope Jahren, the "lab girl" who wrote it (that's her own term for herself, and it's the title of her first book), points out that when she assigns her classes to document all the times during the day when they use electricity, some of them simply give up—there are too many instances to write them all down. For most people, she reminds us, our phones, tablets, and laptops can be coal-fired devices! You're reading these words right now while most probably liberating just a tiny bit of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Global warming (and global weirding, a term for increasingly chaotic and unpredictable weather) is a subject that, some time ago, I decided not to read about any more. Why? Because it's terrifying—far more frightening than any horror flick, any nightmare, any demagogue. I normally have a lot of intellectual courage; I'm not afraid to look at any question in the eye and decide for myself, even ones that have social stigma or are heavily loaded. I read the Bible for myself and I read Marx for myself. I'm not scared of demon words or of going straight to the works of those I most disagree with. But the Sixth Extinction and the helplessness of climate destruction? Too damn scary for me.
So if you're a denier, I'm down with that. Oh boy, do I sympathize. If there were ever a subject to bury your head in the sand over, this is the one. I mean, we gotta get through the day, and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and so forth. On the other hand, when I was six, the world had the same relationship to nuclear Armageddon, and we've somehow managed to go on living under that Sword of Damocles, dangling, as it has my whole life, from its single strand of horsehair above our heads.
Hope Jahren. Photo by Erica Morrow.
So it was with trepidation that I took Scotty's advice to read The Story of More (got that title yet?). But hey, it's a short book, and she gives it to you straight and sweet, almost breezily, crafting a clearheaded vision of the changing world over 18 short plainspoken chapters that wrenches old worldviews into a new order. Author Jahren (you pronounce the "J"), so aptly named, is much given to variations of phrases that all mean "yes but no" or "no but yes," and, true to form, at the end of the book she appends (literally—it's the Appendix) an extra 20 pages of, yep, hope. She admits that she can't see how we're going to get out of this mess we're in. Yet, at the same time, she's hopeful.
It's what I needed on the subject.
If you're ready and willing (a big "if") to have the big mess put in perspective for you, I can pass along Scotty's recommendation—The Story of More is a fine, wise little book looking down from overhead on a big, scary topic.
I'm fond of saying that human beings are extraordinarily clever and very unwise; but part of that is that we are extraordinarily clever. Hope, capital H—and hope, small h—counsels: never underestimate the human race. We can't foresee the future. But just because we can't right at this moment imagine a solution to our extinction doesn't mean a solution isn't out there.
One thing's for sure, though: from now on (really for the past 50 years, we just didn't accept it), the true story of humanity is how, and whether, our species can continue to live and thrive on a finite planet.
An excellent primer about how the frantic, never-ending race for more has put us in a pickle. Recommended, to those who can stand the subject. Gratitude, as ever, to Scott.
Mike
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Charlie Ewers: "I was so impressed by this book that I specified it as one of the two texts for my Intro to Sustainability class in Environmental Studies. (The other text is Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken.)"
Schralp: "I have not read the book yet (but plan to do so; many a good recommendation I have gleaned from your blog). However, with regard to reading this on an iPad; how does the solar powered recharging of this device through production of electricity compare with the cost of printing, distributing and recycling printed materials?I feel certain you would not suggest that we stop reading...."
Mike replies: You know, I've always assumed that digital photography pollutes less than chemical photography, and that an e-book consumes fewer resources than a paper book. But is that really true? I'd love to see someone who really knows their stuff discuss resource and pollution issues with regard to photography. I'd be interested.
[This is the third and last of our three articles about the Panasonic GX9/12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 kit. The first one is "Panasonic GX9 and 12-60mm f/3.5-5.6 Review, Part I," and the second is "Panasonic GX9 Review." Plus, I've posted pictures from the camera in several other posts, for instance this one and this one. Bear in mind the blogging platform I use softens (and darkens, which drives me crazy) the pictures somewhat. The kit I used came to me new as a loaner courtesy of my friend Izzy at B&H Photo. If you buy one because of these articles, please consider buying yours from Izzy. —Ed.]
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I wrote previously about my knee-jerk negative reaction when I received this camera. It wasn't what I wanted it to be.
As soon as I set aside my prejudices, though, it was only about three days before I took to the GX9 like a duck to water. For about the next ten or twelve days I would grab the thing every day, sling it on, and head on out to the back roads to snap happily away at this 'n' that and the other thing. Just poking around the countryside.
Whither Micro 4/3?
Does Micro 4/3 have a future? Probably, but times are a little stormy for the format at the moment. It's next in line for the juggernaut that is the smartphone camera (shudder!) to steamroll over and obliterate. Olympus has quit the field, leaving its camera division to who knows what fate (I'm in the pessimist camp on that), and Panasonic has a new girlfriend in FF mirrorless, and is lately all starry-eyed and distracted over that. Sometimes I wonder just how much longer Panasonic (which is actually a great company) will find cameras an appealing market in which to be.
The camera market seems to be splitting into camera phones on the one hand and FF-sensor engineering marvels on the other, plus a jumble of niche products. It's a bit ironic that, concurrently, 4/3 has arguably fully matured and come into its own as an excellent compromise. The sensors are better than they ever were, and have gotten good enough that you can use them for dang near anything (Jose Luis Gonzalez's camera portraits that I featured the other day were shot on Micro 4/3). Yet the size and weight of the cameras and lenses really do make for a big plus over most bulky FF camera and lenses-on-steroids combos.
The 4/3 sensor size is less of a compromise now than it has ever been, if you're just into taking pictures rather than making microscopic comparisons between cameras in order to declare a gold-medal winner.
Here's an example of a slight limitation of the small sensor. Shooting with camera-determined autoexposure, the sunlit bit at the top of the tree trunk in the background is too overexposed to recover completely. So you do have to be a little more careful with exposures than you would have to be with a high-DR FF sensor.
And, as with phone cameras, there are DR limitations. In this shot a very bright evening sun is either in the frame or just out of it (I don't recall exactly), and with a lot of HDR I could just get the slight striations in the sky in the upper right, which is enough sky for this small JPEG. No telling if it would be enough in a print or a larger JPEG. Exposing for the sky here, on the other hand, resulted in the dark areas being too dark to bring up in post.
But this is all just par for the course in getting to know your sensor.
Getting to know your sensor and getting to know your lens are the two basics when familiarizing yourself with a new camera. And zooms are tougher to get to know than primes by a long shot. Where do you get field curvature, where do you get distortion, where do you get vignetting...it just takes a while to sort it all out, but once you do, you're aware of when issues are going to pop up, so you can either compensate for them while shooting or else you know you're covered and you won't have any problems. The picture above was wide and wide open, so I could start to get a read on worst-case vignetting. I ended up darkening the light upper-left-hand corner, because I needed more vignetting! I almost never mind vignetting. Darkening the edges of a print was a standard protocol when I printed in silver. It almost always helps and almost never hurts. And of course you can almost perfectly correct it in Photoshop if you want to, these days.
Mo's field (you remember Moses!)
Overall I liked this little camera and lens. It punches above its weight, you might say, its weight being one of the great things about it. Just not painful to carry. You can take it with you.
Grip it
Speaking of carrying, a little more about the aftermarket handgrip I used with the camera (I took pictures of it on the camera but I'll be darned if I can find them. Oh well, there are some on the eBay page linked below). It was 3-D printed by a 36-year-old electrical engineer from Czech Republic named Viacheslav Pronin. He bought source files from a guy named Alex from Switzerland for a GX85, and modified the files for the GX9. His customers suggested the Arca Swiss mount. The grip is made of PETG, a glycol-modified version of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), usually used to make water bottles. The handle is hollow, which accounts for its lightness. On my gram scale which I use to measure my white tea, it weighs in at 54.4g (1.92 oz.). It takes just over six hours to print. You can buy one from Viacheslav Pronin on eBay for $22 (shipping is free). A nice touch is that although it attaches to the camera by the tripod mount, it provides a new tripod mount in the grip so you're not deprived of it. Full disclosure, Viacheslav sent me one for free, although that doesn't do me any good because I didn't keep the camera.
With the Pronin grip, the GX9 is just handy. Even the zoom is petite. And speaking of the zoom, let me eat just a little crow: Panasonic isn't being stupid trying to encourage people to try this lens. It's a really nice little zoom, quite sharp and with a very useful range.
Sorted
Once I'd gotten past my initial funk I noticed that several things about the camera had been changed since the GX7. The on-off switch is in a new spot, and I found it an improvement—it falls naturally under the right thumb and it quickly grew very comfortable to use. Plus, the camera has sprouted an exposure compensation ring, good for me because that's the way I shoot, using the exposure comp frequently. That goes way, way back for me, to the Contax 139Q I went through art school with. The Contax had a prominent exposure compensation ring quirkily marked "1/4, 1/2, X1, 2, 4." (A "stop" means either half as much light or twice as much light as the next stop up or down.) There's nothing good or bad about it, it's just how I get the job done. And in just a few days, that control on the GX9, too, became easy and natural to adjust.
Although the GX7 and GX9 are more or less identical in size and shape and weight, my subjective impression is that there have been a number of incremental technical improvements that together take the whole experience up another notch, mirroring the aggregate of all the small improvements in ergonomics. Not just the 20-MP vs. the earlier 16-MP sensor. I attached a strap, but just as often carried the camera swinging from one hand or the other, and it never felt burdensome or weighty carrying it that way. [CORRECTION: Augh! I knew there was something I forgot. I meant to add a few sentences about the GX8's much-discussed shutter-shock problem and the fact that it is said to have been entirely fixed in the GX9. Please see Helmut the Austrian's Featured Comment below. —Mike the distractable Ed.]
It's been a long time since I used the GX7, so this is only an impression from memory, and you should read as much subjectivism into it as you want to. However, I felt during my time with this camera that all the small changes have made for a big improvement. As similar as it is, almost everything seems better. The controls, the viewfinder, the IS, the speed, the viewing screen, the battery life—I would guess all these things are at least a little better on the GX9.
Are there downsides? Yes, absolutely, but they're just imperfections rather than outright negatives or deal-breakers. Namely: the viewfinder is nice, but it's not a patch on the superior viewfinder of the GX8. The Pronin grip is an all-but-essential improvement, but it can't entirely hide the fact that the camera isn't an ergonomically excellent design out of the box. It's small and a bit finicky. But I got used to it. And the shutter sound is laggy, which made me uncomfortable at first—it mimics the sound of a slow shutter speed, which made me feel insecure at times, like I wasn't shooting at a high enough shutter speed to stop action or hand-shake. But that goes away too. Biggest downside: I personally would get a proper travel charger and an extra battery for it (I charged direct to camera while I had this one), and that adds significantly to the cost. But hey, it only stings once.
It's not perfect, in other words. But you'll forgive that. It's a camera, and you just have to get used to it.
The overriding impression I took away from the experience is that this kit is both useful and fun. I got quite attached to it while it was here. I just don't grab my more businesslike X-H1 with nearly the same let's-go-have-fun-with-photography feeling. I really enjoyed the time I spent with the Panasonic GX9. No, it's not a GX8 II, and yes, I still want a GX8 II. But I'm glad I came to my senses and gave it a chance.
Recommended? You bet. Override your prejudices and your analytical misgivings, if you have any, and just take the little thing out for a walk. You'll make friends before you know it.
Have a nice weekend! See you on Sunday.
Mike
(Thanks to Izzy and B&H Photo)
UPDATE Saturday morning: I have a mea culpa to make...
I really should make a serious effort to finish camera reviews while the camera is still here. With this camera, hugh crawford had questions about the shutter sound and jseliger had questions about the autofocus, and I don't have the camera here any more to examine or compare. Also, waiting until the camera departs before finishing the review makes it more difficult to finish writing the reviews somehow. Which tends to make me procrastinate, and for me procrastination is deadly.
In the future I'll make a sincere effort to change my policy and work to finish the review while the camera is still on the desk.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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jseliger: "The missing word in the post is 'autofocus,' which has been Panasonic's weak point for a while. If you're shooting things where autofocus isn't very important, then obviously it doesn't matter, but Panasonic's autofocus has fallen far behind Fuji, Sony, or Canon."
Olybacker: "The way the world is at present, and the way the camera manufacturing world is at present, I cannot help but wonder whether the next 'shocking development' from the mainstream and mass-market camera makers will be a new film camera. Who will be first?"
Helmut the Austrian (partial comment): "Regarding the shutter: maybe, the mechanical sound is not so awesome, but this system seems to be an answer to various discussions and complaints about shutter shock not only in the GX8. Imaging-Resource says: 'The GX9 sports a brand-new shutter drive mechanism which is in most respects a significant upgrade, but which does have a couple of potential drawbacks. Based around an electromagnetic drive, it's said to have only one-tenth the shutter shock of the previous system, helping photographers to maximize per-pixel sharpness. It's also noticeably quieter than the old mechanism. But one downside is that it now tops out at a fastest shutter speed of 1/4,000 second, where the GX8 could shoot at 1/8,000 second.' Greetings from Austria / EU, with many thanks for your interesting blog."
New black Leica M-A unmetered film camera.
Curiously, in stock at B&H Photo as of this writing.
There's a meme going around the photosphere that "Leica cannot keep up with the demand for film cameras." Here's an example. It's because of comments made by various Leica bigwigs lately.
I have no doubt that everything those gentlemen said was true, but we need more data. I mean, it could be that they have two guys assembling 36 cameras a month and now they're getting 44 orders a month. It doesn’t precisely mean either that demand for film cameras is surging generally or that Leica is selling film cameras hand over fist. I mean, it could mean that, but we need a little more drill-down for adequate interpretation.
Big grain of salt, is all I'm saying.
Change of sub-topic but not subject
...Here's a related question: if you were getting a film Leica—and let's say you could afford anything—what would you get? Brand new? Leica currently makes two film cameras, the M-A (meterless, so no battery) and MP (metered, so one or two button batteries that last a year plus). Curiously given the "can't meet demand" theme, B&H has the silver MP in stock and the black M-A in stock). Or vintage?
I'd go used, but I'd be torn. The plain everyday M6, which was an M4-P with a built-in, coupled but non-autoexposure light meter, is the most practical Leica and the most common on the used market (I'd search out a Leitz example). But I think I'd hold out for a really good M4 (all of those were Leitz) and have it serviced. Repair ace Sherry Krauter told me long ago that the M4 was the best-built Leica, as well as the only one that didn't improve, degrade, or fluctuate over its production lifetime: all built to the same high standard from first to last. Although Leicaphiles will dispute this every which way, it's good enough for me. I shot with an M4 for a year and it was a luminous experience, one of many in photography I'm grateful to have had.
Mike
(Thanks to Steve R.)
[CORRECTIONS galore: I somehow managed to make a high density of mistakes in this, for such a short post. The picture was originally labeled as an MP, which is wrong; fixed now. Also, the M6 meter is not uncoupled as I first said; it's coupled, just not auto-exposure. Also fixed now. Thanks to Pieter K. and Carl W. for taking care of dotty Uncle Mike, who obviously isn't taking his pills. —Ed.]
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Featured Comments from:
Chris Nicholls: "As the happy owner of an M6 (with 0.58 viewfinder to suit my spectacles) and an M4, I'll confirm that you can't go wrong with either of those."
Dan Khong: "My best Leica is nicknamed the Hexar RF. It has aperture priority auto exposure and motor drive. Miles ahead of the pack."
David Saxe: "Over the past 30 years, I have owned every Leica M series film camera except the M5. If I were to buy a pure nostalgia/retro film camera it would be the M3. It had brighter viewfinder and with only three framelines it didn't need to nest them inside each other. Also like any other film Leica, it allowed me to use my favorite lens—the Dual Range Summicron."
Nigli: "I have a friend who has a Leica. Her father took a photo of Che Geuvera with it. I want that one."
Bruce Appelbaum: "Five years ago I bought a Leica M7 starter kit that included the 50mm Summicron lens. I paid about $5,800 for the whole thing, which was a great price—Leica had dropped prices because they said the dollar was very strong.
"The nearest thing to the Leica were a couple of Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder cameras. The Voigt cameras went out of production and the remaining stock of 4A, 4M, 3A, and 3M versions closed out at less than $1,000 for the body only. I cannot recall which other Leica bodies were available in 2015, but none of them was offered with the lens. The two cameras in stock are now about $5,200 each and the same lens that came with my M7 is now $2,600. Sales tax not included in any of these numbers.
"Do I like the M7? Yep. Using it has improved my photography by limiting me to a prime lens and a 36-exposure roll of film. No exposure bracketing to run through high dynamic range software, and I have to move my ass, not a zoom ring, to frame the photo.
"My issues: it seems like film prices go up a lot every time I need to stock up, and since I do my own B&W negative developing, chemicals are more expensive, and Kodak no longer sells one-liter packs of D-76.
"P.S. I have a very understanding wife who allowed me to splurge for a camera and lens what could have been a nice down payment on a car."
Larry Canaday: "So...I still have the M4 I got in Germany in 1969. For about five years it (with two Summicrons) was my only 35mm and accounted for well more than half my photographic income. I'll get some Tri-X and let you know the results."
BDR: "It’s funny this should have come up today, as I just bought a brand new silver Leica MP yesterday. The prices of used Leicas with meters have gone up so much over the last few years, that purchasing new suddenly seemed more reasonable."
Mike replies: I dearly hope you bought it through my links. Someone buying a Leica through my links is the holy grail.
Rob L: "I'd stick with my M6—meters are helpful, and I know what the one in my M6, at least, is telling me when I shoot TMY or HP5+. I do agree, the M4, or M4-P, is likely more solid, but heck, the film rewind knob on mine took a nasty hit in the late '90s and I just kept dealing with the slight grinding on turning until the brass smoothed out, and it's still fine, so how much more do I need? What still strikes me is how elegant the M6 remains. a simple indicator of exposure if you wish to pay attention, two controls to adjust exposure, one for focus. You may get things wrong but it's hard to be confused."
Mike replies: That's a great line, "You may get things wrong but it's hard to be confused." My memory is getting less sticky these days but I hope I remember that.
David Lee: "I was into Leica for quite a long time. Now I don’t know what to do with them. When I daydream, I say to myself that I will buy an M10 and sell the M6’s and just keep the lenses. Then reality bites and I realize that I am not getting an M10 and I will not shoot film anymore. We need someone to come up with a digital back door that fits any M body. That’s me daydreaming again."
schralp: "Sorry, this reminds me that when it comes to Leica, the emperor has no clothes. Seriously, $5,200 for a box with a shutter that spools film by and allows viewing through another window? And, a couple hundred more if you want a meter to guide your decision making. I certainly hope you’re right; that is to say, there was a demand for 44 and they only made 36."
Speed: "Why would anyone want to use a film camera today? ...Wonders someone with a manual-transmission car. OK. I get it."
Luke: "I used to lust after a Leica M. It's a lovely analog machine. The whole focus-by-proxy thing, though...a helicoid, and a cam, and some levers, and windows and frame lines, and a best guess. The only M that Imaging-Resource ever tested was very badly misaligned, and focus was trial-and-error only. My first cheap digital Rebel many years ago was an astounding masterpiece of precision manufacturing for very few bucks. Now, that's amazing."
[Luke tested products at Imaging-Resource for many years. —Ed.]
Rick in CO: "Best all around film camera I've ever used, which I had to sell to get into the Leica digital M, was the Mamiya 7. Great lenses, easy to use and light enough to carry anywhere. Still miss it!"
scott kirkpatrick: "On 'Leica Bigwigs.' Leica's not big enough for the wigs to have grown much. The lead owner, Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, is from an Austrian family which cashed in its real estate enterprises about 20 years ago, was looking for a classy new investment, and were drawn to Leica by its partnership with Hermes. Hermes left soon after, but the Kaufmann family stayed for the cameras. CEOs and finance guys have come and gone since then, but there is a tier of product managers that seem to have come up through the ranks. They also seem to love cameras. Stefan Daniel, who is quoted in your linked article, is a special case, and a real jewel. He's the VP with overall responsibility for products, but he started as a teen-aged intern doing camera and lens repairs. He claims that on certain very old and treasured R lenses, he is the only one left at Leica who knows how to fix them and can do so. His taste is for simple products and user interfaces, and it shows. So when Daniel (and Peter Karbe for lenses) talks about new products or about Leica history, they are not just selling something. They have been there and are willing to share opinions about why things have been done as they were."
Fred Tuman: "In 1974 at the impressionable age of 18 I walked into Olden's Photo Store with $350 in my hand looking to buy a Leica. The salesman showed me a beat-to-death Canon 7 and said this was the best my hard-earned sum could manage. I stared at the wrinkled metal shutter for a long time seeing my dream slip away.
"Then a miracle happened. A priest tapped me on my shoulder and said if I could drive him back to his parish, he might have some Leica stuff I'd be interested in. Luckily I borrowed my brother's car to get into the city, so off to the garage we went. All the way back to Queens, he kept asking me what type of photography I liked to shoot, and from the conversation I knew he was legit and the real deal. We went to his quarters and his room was decorated with excellent photojournalist-style photos taken from around the world. He pulled out from a cupboard a Leica M2, a 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron, a 50mm ƒ/3.5 Elmar, and a Leicavit. (at the time I didn't know the 'Vit' was worth more than the rest of the bunch.) I happily gave him my $350, and started my love affair with Leica that has never ended. It's the only camera you don't look into...you see through. I use my digital M of today exactly the same way as that first M2."
