[Leica] Eisenstaedt book

[InfinityDT@aol.com]

I was in a camera shop yesterday and picked up a copy of a book Eisenstaedt 
on Photography.  I've never seen it listed before anywhere, even in 
out-of-print listings.  I don't know how I'd missed it.  Published in 1978, 
it's a general "how-to" book with the greater emphasis on composition and 
covers everything from portraiture and photojournalism  to landscape, 
wildlife, macro and travel.    The book was a revelation to me, as I always 
considered him as synonymous with journalistic photography and Leica.  In the 
chapter on equipment, there's a great shot of Eisie's gear, arranged in a 
circle with (counter clockwise from 12:00) M3 with collapsible 50 Summicron, 
chrome 90 Elmarit, 1st-version 28 Elmarit, 1st version chrome 35 Summicron; 
and (clockwise from 12:00) Nikon F2 (non-metered) with 55 Micro, 105, 28 and 
80-200 f4.5 (all older, non-AI versions).  Remembering that this was around 
1977, Eisie's choice in a current Leica R would have been limited to the R3 
type.  Still, he could have used an SL2, as many of these seem to be working 
well even 20 years later.  A couple shots were captioned "Leicaflex" so it 
would appear that Eisie had used them prior to switching to Nikon.  He states 
emphatically his love of the Leica rangefinder for its quietness and 
unobtrusiveness, not a word regarding optical superiority.  Perhaps that's 
why he didn't consider it mandatory to use Leica glass for his SLR work.  
Then again, for a number of shots (landscapes in particular) he used a 
Rolleiflex, so sharpness and definition must have been a priority.  All in 
all, a  nice addition to my Leica library.

DT