Re: [Leica] why leica?

[Mark Rabiner <mrabiner@concentric.net>]

Guy Bennett wrote:
> 
> >Why do professionals rarely use Leicas?  Well the reason is NOT that so many
> >non-professionals do so!  This is where I can merely say...nothing.
> 
> lugnuts (professionals or not):
> 
> can you say, concisely, why you do use leica? what is it exactly about
> these cameras that appeals to you? let's try to avoid the hyperbole of the
> fanatic devotee and explain why we choose this camera over another.
> 
> guy

Because all the other ones do!
You get the accepted equipment.
When you get a pretty good paying job you go out and get that lens that you need
to shot it with.
Or that job pays for the lens so the next time you can shoot it right.
The Job pays for the lens. A Nikon or Canon lens that is.
Leica's are generally considered effete. Possibly troublesome and difficult.
When I started out in the late seventies it was Nikon and Hasselblad. Anything
much else was an eyebrow rasier.
You want to raise your art directors eyebrow?
The 1970 Photography Annual at my side is dominated by Leica's.
But if I started a decade later those Canon's have creaped in.
I know a guy who's day rate is astronomical and could shoot it with a Holga or
other toy camera just as easily as he could shoot it with his Nikon's or new
Leica M6. Although not now with the M6 because he made the mistake of sending it
to Leica in New Jersey to get fixed a week after he bought it 2 months ago and
he might get it back next week they say. I try not to mention Leica when I run
into him.
I wish I started out a decade earlier so it would have probably been with a
Leica. And I would have been a beatnik!
Mark Rabiner