Alfred Eisenstaedt

Book reviews, Photographers

One of the fathers of photojournalism.


Click the image for Amazon.
I get no click-through award if you do that.

In 1947 four of the great photojournalists in Europe created Magnum Photos. They were Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger. But America’s LIFE magazine, recreated as a photo weekly, had been in the photojournalism business since 1936. Its first cover was by Margaret Bourke-White. Alfred Eisenstaedt followed one week later. By the conclusion of his career he had 90 LIFE covers under his belt. Eisenstaedt had had the foresight to leave his native Germany for New York in 1936 before the German killing machine could get at him and his family. Indeed, the apocryphal story has it that it was learning of Elsie’s ethnicity that put the scowl on Goebbels’s face in the famous image below.

Eisie was a lifelong devotee of the Leica camera, maintaining that its inconspicuous appearance – in contrast to the large plate cameras favored by many of his contemporaries – helped put his subjects at ease. Well, maybe not Goebbels.

This book is a marvelous collection of his finest images. Whereas HC-B specialized in composition of his many street pictures, Eisie was much more the journeyman snapper who could always be relied on to get the job done. Unlike HC-B he was also a fine portraitist, as these images show:


GBS


Goebbels – evil personified


Oppie


La Hepburn


WSC in 1951. A lovely, warm portrait.

Eisie also had a fine sense of humor:


Miami Beach on a cold day

If you like great portraiture and great photojournalism, this book belongs in your library.

Note: These high quality scans of the images in the book were made using the fine scanner in the Epson ET-8550 printer.

Viet Nam – 50 years later

Photographers

We have learned little.

It is 50 years to the day since America lost its first war. Viet Nam. The losing streak has continued uninterrupted since, despite an annual budget for the Pentagon and for Veterans’ Affair of $1 trillion.

The New York Times ran a superb piece focused on the photography from that conflict. The Pentagon had not yet adopted a policy of sanitizing its failures by strictly controlling access to photographers and journalists. Back then they were free to roam – armed solely with a Nikon – amongst the armed forces. And their work, along with the resulting student protests, saw the war come to an inglorious defeat for the land of the free.



A protestor confronts US soldiers. Click the image to download the article.

Many of those brave photographers died in the process of pursuing their passion along with 55,000 American soldiers and over a million locals. Read and weep.

A focus tab for the 35mm f/2 Canon LTM lens

Leica, Lenses

A handy improvement.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.



The 7Artisans tab in place on the Canon 35mm f/2 LTM lens.

Leica originally fitted its 35mm lenses with a locking plunger as a focus collar aide. This would lock focus at infinity, making removal from the M’s bayonet mount easier (there’s little to grip at the base of the lens) as well as providing purchase for the left index finger for focusing. It works well.

Some time in the 1960s this plunger gave way to a shaped protrusion which is, if anything, even better. Some lenses retained the infinity lock though that’s largely gone out of fashion. The point remains that the focus collar on small 35mm lenses is narrow and not that easy to grasp and the protrusion makes focusing much easier.

I am finding that the 35mm f/2 Canon LTM lens, with a bayonet adapter for the M body is an outstanding optic, very much at home on the M10. Small, fast, wonderfully sharp, and pretty much the standard lens for street snapping. Having added a glued-on half dome index for easier mounting of the lens, it remained to do something about the total absence of a focus tab. Strangely, while Canon includes a locking tab on the 50mm f/1.4 LTM lens, none is to be found on any of the many versions of the 35mm optic.

7Artisans to the rescue.



Correct placement.

The 7Artisans ‘focus wrench’ (!) is available from Amazon for under $10, and includes a (3M, no less, if you believe that) sticky contact patch. It adheres well. What’s not to like?

Topaz Labs Image Unblur

Photographs, Software, Technique

It actually works.

I’m not much one for post processing. Maybe a touch on the Highlights and Shadows sliders and a correction of a leaning vertical or two, but that’s pretty much it. Mostly I’m of the set that believes you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

But this is an image I rather liked for the girl’s intensely watchful expression and it was a real grab shot. No time to think, just point and click. And the result was a blurred image owing to camera motion.

Here it is after processing in Topaz Labs Image Unblur:


The deblurred image.

In addition to passing the image through the web-based Topaz app (which has jumped on the ‘add AI to anything to make it sexier’ bandwagon) I added Sharpening=113 in LRc. The result, shown in this after and before 100% pixel peeping comparison in LRc is fairly remarkable, with artifacts at a minimum:


After and before.

Topaz gives you 20 freebies but for the life of me I cannot figure out the pricing thereafter. Still, 20 is likely to last me a few years …. even if encroaching age points to more blurred images!

Leica M10, 35mm Canon LTM.