[Leica] Wha...?

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

>>>>>>>>
>Yes, his last camera of choice was the Leica R4. He was always a 35mm
SLR
>user ever since the Contax SLRs came out.

To the contrary, Adams became a devoted Leica user in the 1930's.  He
was
the principal instructor at the American Leica School in the '40's and
'50's.  This was more than twenty years before the RTS appeared.

Marc
<<<<<<<<


Are you guys talking about ANSEL Adams, the American landscape
photographer??? In years of reading about Adams I have _never_ run
across a reference to him owning or using a Leica; neither the words
"Leitz" nor "Leica" rate an entry in the indexes to the Spaulding
biography, the Alinder biography, or Adams's own _Autobiography_; the
sparse few 35mm photographs of his I have ever seen published were all
taken with Zeiss cameras; and when he visited Steiglitz in 1936 he
reports (in the _Autobiography_) taking portraits of Steiglitz with "my
35mm Zeiss Contax." When Arnold Crane photographed Adams (Arnold using a
Leica) for the book _The Other Side of the Lens_, Ansel photographed him
in return with a Contax rangefinder. Crane asked him if he used Leicas
and Adams  told him, "Leicas are very nice cameras, but I have always
preferred Contaxes." (Or words to that effect).

According to his assistants King Dexter, John Sexton, and numerous
others who knew him, in the last 20 years of his life he photographed
mainly with a Hasselblad (recently auctioned by Hasselblad for charity;
radio personality Don Imus was a high bidder at one point, although I
don't know if he won it). While it is apparently true that he purchased
a Leica R4 SLR just before his death, there is no evidence that he ever
used it seriously.

His stock answer to the question, "What camera do you use?" was: "The
biggest one I can carry!" And I have that in his own handwriting.

He was certainly never a "devoted" 35mm photographer, and that much we
know from the best evidence of all: his work.

- --Mike