Re: [Leica] Mythology v Reality - A Call For A Thoughtful Discussion

["Dan Post" <dwpost@email.msn.com>]

Mark-
You made a good point! It reminded me of the show on the Independent Film
Channel, where several modern directors were given a rebuilt turn of the
century Lumiere movie camera and each got a roll of film- about three
minutes worth. They were told to tell a story in the three minutes, using
the old camera.
The old lens made images that harkened back to the old movies that I've
seen, and I can see that a lot of the great early work had that 'glow'; I am
sure that one of the reasons that the great photographs that we see from the
early years of Leica is a combination of the fact that photographers could
go where no one had gone before, with a small discrete camera, using the
this same motion picture film, and using such a limited repetoire of
materials that we can hardly imagine the limitations ourselves. They had to
create an art, essentially from scratch. The small negative has many charms,
but as anyone who has used large format cameras can tell you, it is but a
part of a 'spectrum' of machines and materials, each with their own
capabilities and limitations.
Just my $.02 worth!
Dan
dwpost@msn.com