Yearly Archives: 2006

Stuff

Cameras

You know, the things in the back of drawers you haven’t seen for ages

As I clear out the last of my film equipment I find I am still left with a lot of, well, stuff. None of this has much value and the effort-to-dollars-realized ratio is not very exciting but, having sold off most of the big dollar items, what am I to do? Throw these things away? Even if my time is worth more spent on other things, I feel a duty of care to these once seemingly indispensible gadgets.

Let’s see.

There is that wonderful Leica MC selenium cell meter which I bought some 35 years ago. It would clip to the top of my Leica M2 or M3 , couple to the shutter speed dial and provide accurate light readings whenever asked. Selenium cells, which need no battery, are meant to die from age but this one was always stored in the dark when not in use and remains as accurate today as it was over three decades ago. It’s the same one clipped to QE2’s M3 in that famous stamp where she can be seen holding the camera. Yes, she was an M3 gal back then. Now you should understand that she never paid for hers. No, she didn’t pinch it. Rather, Leitz, recognizing she was more German than English, honored her bloodline with, yes, you guessed it, a free one with her initials on it, no less! Sold for $40 (the meter, not the Queen).

Or how about that wonderful, inverted cone hood that Leitz concocted around 1971? By inverting the cone and venting the rear, the amount of the hood intruding into the field of view, especially noticeable with the wide angle M2 viewfinder with the older design, became a thin line which you barely noticed after a while. Brilliant. $38.

Then there’s that superb Schneider 8x loupe used to check negatives or slides for sharpness before committing all that time to scanning them. For reasons best known to themselves, Schneider replaced the 8x and only sell a 4X which is not powerful enough to tell you much. A superb tool and indispensible for the film user, if of no use to a digital photographer. $90.

Next up is that sweet little Japanese Kopil self-timer – useful for those cameras like my unlamented Leica M6, which had none, or whenever a jar-free release was needed and no cable release was to hand. No use for that with modern equipment, what will all those options which include what color you want your coffee. $13. It served me well indeed.

Here’s one of the funkier items, though none the less useful for that. A Leica lens coupling ring, allowing two M lenses to be attached back-to-back for space efficient storage in the camera bag. Just be careful you don’t ram that $3,000 21mm Asph Elmarit in there, as expensive grinding sounds will testify to rear element-to-rear element contact! Big bucks for this one – $35.

And while we are on the topic of funky, what about this little gadget? It fits around the rewind knob of a Leica M2 or M3 which, in its absence, is a device designed by Torquemada and his boys, and guaranteed to flay the skin from your thumb and index fingers as you rewind the film into the cassette. A process which takes about a day, by the way. Strange that one camera, the Leica M2, can have both the best and worst designed components at the same time. This jewel, fastened with a set screw, rises with the rewind knob and gives you proper leverage to do a painless and speedy job. Much sturdier than the fragile 45 degree rewind crank that first saw the light of day with the Leica M4. How quaint rewinding film seems now. Another $30. When Leica made their ‘retro look’ MP a couple of years ago, they fitted it once more with that silly rewind knob, then immediately started offering these for $180 as an accessory. No kidding!

What about that cute Olympus Stylus Quartz Date, a clamshell design 35mm point-and-shoot with a 35mm Olympus lens, auto everything, and truly pocketable? This one went around the world with me several times. Lucky if I get $30 for it.

Now for the heavy artillery. There’s that Leica Bellows, modelled on the Golden Gate when it comes to rigidity, which was the bee’s knees in close-up gear thirty years ago with your Leica M and the Visoflex mirror housing. Beyond gorgeous in construction and I still cannot seem to unload this one, a bargain at $80, which includes a couple of beautifully machined adapters.

Next a couple of whoppers. First the 200mm Telyt, an f/4 lens of wonderful sharpness and zero automation. You have to stop down by hand though, in its defence, it fits just about anything out there with the right adapters – Visoflex I, Visoflex II/II, any number of SLRs and, yes, you guessed it, even DSLRs. $179 doesn’t seem a lot, even though it has seen better days. Why sell? Well, when you have a Canon 200mm L, with auto aperture, auto focus and a stop faster to boot, why torture yourself?

Finally, the piece de resistance, the wonderful 400mm trombone focus Telyt. Sure, I have adapted this to my Canon 5D and it works fine in auto aperture priority mode; the snag is that I take one 400mm picture once in a blue moon, and frankly for those occcasions, the sensor in the 5D is so good that a simple enlargement from a snap taken with the 200mm f/2.8 L is every bit as good, with far less bulk and full automation. Beyond mint this one and superb in every way, it’s a bargain at $645, original box, shoulder brace, the whole megillah.

Now hang on a minute. That little lot, if it all sells, adds up to some $1,000+. Now I don’t need any more equipment, as I have all I need. Then again, a few more books with photographs never hurt….

Leica – Witness to a Century

Book reviews

A fine chronlogy, if factually flawed

I picked up my copy of this book a couple of years ago from overstock bookseller Edward R. Hamilton for a few dollars. It’s actually worth that sort of money.

This is the last place to go for factual accuracy regarding the various Leica models; I am no maven but could scarce find a page without several technical errors accompanying each of the illustrations of the many models of cameras made by Leitz over the years.

On the other hand, the book does a fine job of showcasing the work of some great photographers from Oscar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica (he was a fine photographer), down to modern times. Especially pleasant to see is the work of a couple of relatively unknown Italian photographers, probably attributable to the nationality of the Italian author, Alessandro Pasi.

And, technical errors apart, who can argue with the caption for the M3, first sold in 1954? “The turning point: Leica M3”.

Indeed.

Print the facts, forget the rumors

Photography

The best photography company publishes the best results.

Before someone accuses me of conflicted bias, let me confirm two facts. I am conflicted, as I own a boat load of Apple stock, and I am biased for the same reason. And as long time readers of this journal know, I am also a customer, electing to put my money where my mouth is.

Today, confirming that Wall Street analysts for the most part commit grand larceny every pay day, Apple published its fourth quarter results, disclosing iPod sales up 34% (the analysts had it that the iPod had ‘peaked’) and excelling in all other areas, with dramatic growth in notebook and iMac sales. Now watch all those analysts become historians (they get paid for that?) as they raise their earnings targets.

And all of this is before iTV hits the shelves, allowing you to route movies from your Mac to your TV. Then add the forthcoming iPhone, which will be the first cellular phone that will have proper ergonomics, and you have a company on a roll.

For this user it’s the iMac and Aperture and iPhoto which constitute the most powerful photographic triumvirate ever known to man. Forget front end gear. Any one of dozens of cameras by Canon, Nikon, Leica, Sony, Samsung, HP, Casio, Pentax, etc. etc. can take great pictures. It’s delivering them to the viewer that matters and that’s where Apple’s products excel.

So do yourself a favor. Make some coin for that next camera, or better, for that iMac, and buy the stock. Generally, it’s best to buy right after some two bit bed wetter calling himself a stock analyst, one better suited to garbage collection where he can pick up his detritus, pontificates that the stock is a ‘hold’ (Wall Street euphemism for ‘sell’) or a ‘sell’ (Wall Street euphemism for ‘run for the exits’). These fellows are the perfect contrarian indicator.

Don’t believe me on analysts? Try this well informed Apple Blog which appropriately bestowed its Jackasses of the Week award on two analysts from a purportedly reputable firm.

Apple used to leak famously; now that Jobs has learned his lesson, leaks are punishable by death. So the company blithley refuses to comment on Wall Street noise and just delivers the goods. And the financial results.

As for that option thing? Forget it. No way the US is going to lock up the most popular man in America.


The world takes notice. Apple stock over the past six months.

Apple. The best imaging company in the world.

Take 55

Book reviews, Photographers

A useful and inexpensive photography book series

There are many photographers whose work I enjoy but not enough to splash out big bucks on a monograph of their work.

Enter the ’55’ series of small paeprbacks published by Pahidon.


Panasonic Lumix LX-1 included for scale

I think that means there are 55 pictures in each 128 page book, as they are printed one every other page, with descriptions on the left. Phaidon says that their goal is to emulate the Penguin paperback pheneomenon of the 1930s which made so much great literature available inexpensively to so many. They want to do the same for photography. A laudable goal.

These are easily obtainable remaindered from on-line booksellers. I generally pay inder $4 (under $4!) for each. While the pages are small, the quality of printing is high and it’s an economical way of finding out if you want to learn more of an individual’s work.

Phaidon continues to list a dozen or so on what has to be one of the worst designed web sites of all time, and you can do better for less by simply going to Powell’s Books.

A part of me is no more

Photographs, Photography

After 35 years, my Leica M3 is sold.

Did I really needed to sell it? After all, it was so hard to buy, back on August 2, 1971. It had won many prizes and kept me in film and paper when I was a poor kid trying to make his way.

“It could be worth a lot one day” I thought.

“No, it’s a machine for taking pictures and it needs to be used. And I will not let it lie around gathering dust.”

Trying to console myself.

So right before packing it and including an autographed copy of my book, every picture in which had been taken with that M3, I ran through the shutter with the tape recorder on. There was that familiar second curtain bounce, common to all Ms, at 1/15th and 1/30th. The sound of the escapement on the slow speeds. The joyous sensuality of 1/60th or 1/125th. Not so much a click as a susurrus. The delayed action – so useful, I wonder they ever deleted it from later models.


A great shutter, one last time

But one thing none of the above can recreate is the feel of that Leica body and the flare free nature of the great view/rangefinder, equalled by the M2 and destroyed in later models by accountants who thought they knew better than the engineers.

And all those pleasant memories.

Pictures speak louder than words.

Roll 1, Picture 1 – a winner:

Girl on a train. My first ever Leica photograph, August 2, 1971. Roll 1, Picture 1. M3, 50mm Elmar, TriX

Then, but a few rolls of TriX later, that crazy wolfhound at Cruft’s Dog Show:


Crufts Dog Show, 1972. M3, 90mm Elmar, TriX at 800ASA

Or how about that tough guy with the balloons?


Balloon Guy, 1973. M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX

My first big prizewinner – Photographer of the Year, 1974, Photography Magazine (UK):


Comparisons, 1974. Reg Butler sculpture show, Holland Park, London. M3, 50mm DR Summicron, TriX

Or that Parisienne – I leave it to you to guess her profession:


Lady and dog, Paris, 1974. M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX

These and many more like it chronicle 1970s London and Paris in my book.

In 1977 that M3 accompanied me in the cabin of PanAm’s 747 with a one way ticket to America, leaving behind poor, socialist England, with its class distinctions, foul climate and punitive taxation.

And the magic continued, this time in color:


Late sun, Anchorage, Alaska, 1978. M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64

Later, when the west coast beckoned, the M3 was just as much at home:


Ojai, CA, 1990. M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64

But it would be disingenuous to preach ‘Change or Die’, as I am wont to do, and have this magnificent machine gathering dust in some never opened cupboard, a victim of digital technology.

So the Leica M3 had to move on.

May its next custodian have thirty-five great years with it.

Sob.