Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Actually, I wanted to pursue this question of Canon and Nikon RFs in my original post. I've never owned a Nikon RF in any of its varieties. I've owned a number of Canons and, in fact, still work with a VI-T. If anything, I should argue that the idea of "leica look" is comparatively a recent construction that is contemporary with the ascendency of SLRs--one that through its vagueness and subjectivity eludes exact definition--certainly no description that I've seen here or elsewhere adequately conveys any precise meaning (is the "Leica look" the cold fusion of the camera world?). I'll also argue, until someone presents me with contradictory evidence, that even the phrase itself--"Leica look"--is of comparatively recent origin. As I go through my old editions of Morgan and Lester, I see discussions of the technical capacity of Lecia optics (these dating from the forties and early fifties), usually in relation to difficult and or very technical applications involving small format negative stock, available emulsion speeds, and the performance of lenses in existing light circumstances. The sections on flash photography with the Leica, for instance, in the early Morgan and Lester have always seem to me a bit grudging, but Marc Small and other historians know more about this sort of thing than I do. Within this context, I'd argue that few RF photographers of the 40s and 50s called particular attention to the optical quality of the lens as Eric seems to employ the notion. Rather, they moved more or less promiscuously among Canon, Leica, Zeiss, and Nikon RF systems, mixing lenses and bodies as need and opportunity arose (there've been previous discussions here, I think contributed by M. Small, about the vogue of Nikon lenses among photo-journalists in the early 50s who were otherwise wedded to Leica bodies). I well recall buying an M4 and 21 Super-Angulon from Shel Hirschorn in 1972 (a Time-Life staffer: did the cover for Life featuring the tower from which the sniper murdered a number of people in Dallas in the late 60s among others). Shel told me that he wouldn't trade any Leica lens in the world for his Nikkor 50 1.4 and urged me to buy it (he was going large format in retirement), but the $60 he wanted for it was above my limit. Instead, I argue, this generation of photo-journalists broadly established a body of work, most of which was made with RFs, that exhibits a unique style of photography that we now associate principally with Leica, but that was, in reality, an artifact of the RF- based technology at their disposal. All of this is to say that if RF constitutes one way of *seeing* photographically, then I shouldn't expect to see considerable difference among images composed using an SP, VI-T or IIIf (or M-3, for that matter--though here's where the question of framelines becomes interesting). The problem, of course, is that hardly anyone regularly shoots (or publishes) images these days employing these cameras, and the Leica M series has become the defacto 35mm RF standard. So it's almost invariably a matter of comparing apples and oranges, because "Leica look" can only signify if juxtoposed against the un-Leica (ie: SLR); but I'll stand by the main speculation of my original post. RF users must develop techniques for framing and focusing their images that SLR users need not employ. This doesn't make SLR users inferior; I merely say that using an RF and an SLR engages different sets of cognitive processes, that one reacts to their respective visual fields uniquely, and that this has consequences for the final "look" of the photo. In the end, I'm not much concerned with the idea of the "Leica look" as Eric uses the term--refering to some special optical quality that the lenses themselves possess that we respond to, however subjectively; I appreciate what he means by it and don't doubt that he sees what he describes, however imprecisely. I'm pragmatist enough to grant that perceived reality *is* real to those who must act upon their perceptions. Nevertheless, I propose that this notion of RF as a "way of seeing" is *a* way, not necessarily *the* way, to get at what we mean when we say it "looks" like it was done with a Leica. Chandos > >The problem with Chandos' post was he compared apples and oranges and I >thought he was comparing apples and apples. What do I mean apples and >oranges? He mentions Nikon and Canon, when they don't make rangefinders. >They used to, and I submit those cameras (which are the contemporaries of >many cameras in use today by LUGnuts) have the same "look" compositionally. >Thus to call that the "Leica look" is inaccurate. But that never stopped >anyone. > >Eric Welch >St. Joseph, MO >http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch > >My computer's sick. I think my modem is a carrier. > Chandos Michael Brown Assoc. Prof. Hist and American Studies College of William and Mary http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown/