Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/19
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The current discussion of photographic equipment necessities and the
idea of minimization seems a curious one for a group whose organizing
principle is equipment, albeit of a particular brand. Over the years
I have owned and used a Minolta rangefinder camera, a Nikkormat, an
Olympus OM-1, a couple of different Canon SLRs, and a Nikon, before
switching to the Leica rangefinder system. And while I do like Leica
cameras and lenses and am unequivocally glad I switched, I nonetheless
cannot honestly say my photographs are better now, aesthetically, than
they were with any of that earlier equipment. And so it is based not
only on the obvious results of a comparison of photographs produced by
some people using a plethora of equipment with those produced by, say,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, who used primarily a 50mm lens, but also on my
own personal experience that I share Thomas Kachadurian's opinion that
"great photographs...have much more to do with the photographer than
the camera or the lens."