[Leica] Bessa-R to Bilbao (Part 2 - Long)

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

 After this very pleasant interlude we continued to Solms (remember the 
respective spouses did stop Erwin and me from going completely into 
camera-talk) with Erwin leading the way. The discussions at Solms have to be 
cloaked in utter secrecy as I did promise not to say anything about what was 
discussed there. It will all show up at Photokina and later anyway.
 Erwin remained in Solms for a couple of days, but we aimed the little green 
bug of a car towards Paris. There are advantages to driving small cars in 
France, particularly with French plates on it, you can get away with driving 
like the "French" and they only think you are one of them.
 Paris is Paris and in spite of the impossibility of getting together with 
fellow LUGger Bob Keene and wife (not for want of trying from both parties) 
we had a great time. Met with fellow LUGger Peter Choy and his son James from 
SF with their French friends, ate well, drank lots of good wine and wandered 
around. Some serious stuff too, saw the Magnum exhibit at the old Biblioteque 
National, this is the 50th anniversary exhibit (if you are pedantic, it is 
the 53 anniversary, but my sources within Magnum are still surprised that the 
book and exhibit only were 3 years late). Great exhibit and the premise was 
that all the pictures had to be taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 
Amazingly enough, I went to La Chambre Claire on rue Saint Sulpice and I did 
not buy a single photobook! This is a first and will probably never be 
repeated. However I did manage to buy 17 pounds of photobooks later in the 
trip!
 From Paris the Green Machine took us down the spine of France, down to 
Bergerac, an area designed to kill you by the best food and wine. You start 
the trip in Perigueux, famous for its goose-liver pate, continue to Bayonne 
for its ham then on to Roquefort for cheese and then stop in St Emilion for 
some of the best red wine the world has tasted. Of course, after dinner you 
go to Cognac for after dinner drink and coffee. This way you can cover all 
the 4 key food groups, at least according to the French and yes, it will 
probably kill you in the end, but so will eating pizza and potato-chips and I 
would rather go the French way!
One of the main targets for our trip was to go to Bilbao and see the new 
Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry. If you have even a slight chance 
of going there, do so. This is one of the most spectacular buildings I have 
ever seen. On a space-frame, designed with the help of the French aerospace 
designer Dassault's computer-system, the building sweeps and curves around it 
central core. The curved walls are covered in titanium plates that shimmer in 
the sunlight. Of course, Bilbao is bit of a dump otherwise, horrid traffic 
and rather snarly locals but it is well worth the effort to go there. Bilbao 
looks like a high-tech version of Tolkien's "Hobbit" houses.  As our luck 
would have it, the main exhibit was "The Motorcycle as Art"; a BMW sponsored 
exhibit of 100 years of motorcycles! Of course, no photography inside but 
that allowed me to admire bikes that I once owned and then all of those that 
I wished I owned the MV Augustas, The Ducati Desmo's, the Brough-Superiours 
and the Vincent Black Shadow. As they say about Leica's "They don't make them 
like that anymore!"
 After Bilbao it was a quick run up to Sweden to see family and also to meet 
with Hans Pahlen. As usual we set up our meetings in strange places. This 
time it was in an old bank in Vaxjo in southern Sweden. The reason is simple; 
it is now an edifice dedicated to cameras, rather than to boring stuff like 
money. It is the shop of a friend of Hans and us, Kjell Kullsten. He usually 
has lots of Leica stuff, slightly less after Hans and I has been through 
(Hans got a M3 with Rapidwinder, I got a couple of M2's and a Nikon F, 
probably some lingering after effect of the NHS meet!). Great lunch with 
Hans, Kjell and Tuulikki and me.
End of trip coming up, back down through Denmark, Germany, Holland, 
Belgium,and France. The car was returned to the rental place in Calais, dirty 
and well run-in and we took off for London and an extra day there. Of course, 
we wandered back to Pied Bull Yard to see Andrew and Ivar at Classic Camera, 
although that was only a pretext to talk to Fay, Andrew's 10 month old 
Weimaraner. We were both suffering from severe pet-withdrawal by now. Of 
course, London being London and Pied Bull Yard being the Leica magnet, a 
friend of ours, Terence Dixon, came in to buy a hood for a screw-mount lens. 
We thought that he was in Hong Kong and he thought that we had already gone 
back, so we decided to celebrate and went to Truckles for a coffee and a 
glass of wine. Well, they closed at 11.30 PM (they had tried earlier but we 
refused to budge) and we staggered out in the London night after a multitude 
of wine and some probably very intelligent discussions, although I am damned 
if I remember much of them. Great ending to the trip though.
 Equipment wise, I took my M6 Millenium and had something done to it at 
Solms, prior to Solms it went through a set of batteries in 4 days, but now 
they seem to last for month! Of course they never acknowledged that there was 
a problem! I also took my M6TTL HM and a M2. Lenses were 15/4,5, 21/2,8 Asph, 
35/1,4 Asph, 50/1,5 Nokton, 75/2,5 Color-Heliar and the 90/2 APO-Asph. Of 
course I also took the Bessa-R along. Looking at the negs done so far (60 
rolls), I used the Millenium M6/35/1,4 Asph and the Bessa-R about equally, 
with the M6TTL for the 50/1.5 and the M2 with the 21/2,8 (fairly quickly 
replaced with the "Houten" 21/3,4). Apart from the TTL's propensity for 
devouring batteries, nothing went wrong with anything. The Bessa-R has the 
original set of batteries in it! At least 100-120 rolls of film through it so 
far. Film was evenly split between Tri-X and Delta-100, with some Neopan-F 
thrown in for slow film work (40ASA). I could have gotten away with 1 less 
body and I think that the 75/2,5 could have substituted for the 90/2, as I 
did not shoot any low light stuff with the 90, and the 75 is amazingly small 
and compact and at f 4 and lesser f-stops it is sharp enough for pulling 
16x20's with Delta-100.  The Heliar came into its own when I shot the 
Guggenheim II with it. The soaring, curved walls really needed the wide-angle 
to convey the space and shape, and there are no good vantagepoints at a 
proper distance for the 21mm lens. Wonder what I can do with the 12/5,6 
there? The 50/1,5 Nokton keeps surprising me with its performance. The Bokeh 
is different from the Summilux, but I can live with that for the better 
wide-open performance.
 Back to reality and once the film is processed I will make some prints and 
do the trip all over again when I look at them. I did learn to hate the 
Citroen, too small, too underpowered and it kind of died at 145km/hour. Hell, 
even the trucks go faster than that! Next I am going for something a bit 
peppier for Photokina in September.
Back to reality and Rapidwinders! 
All the best,
Tom A