RE: [Leica] The quintessence of Leica photography?

[Paul Chefurka <Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com>]

Erwin

Your message brought back some interesting memories for me from the early
80's.  At that time I was a budding serious audiophile, and digital audio
was just arriving on the scene.  Many of the arguments raised against it by
the analog cognoscenti of the time (make that Harry Pearson and crew) were
very similar in both tone and content to your complaints.  The objections
included such shortcomings as decreased resolution, decreased contrast and
an increased potential for new types of artifacts to interfere with the
information.

One factor the critics failed to take into account was that of progress.
They saw "digital audio" as a monolithic, unchangeable standard - one that
had been cast in stone when the technology was still in its infancy, and
whose mathematical underpinnings would preclude the kind of incremental
refinements possible in the analog domain.

Quite simply, they were wrong.  They were wrong about the malleability of
the technology, about the possibilities for refinement within the standards,
about the speed with which those refinements would come about, and about the
fact that the new technology would eventually produce results which were
both technically and perceptually better than the old.

The standards proved to remarkably robust - we still have 16-bit 44.1 kHz
digital audio as the gold standard, for example.  What improved was the
execution of real-world equipment to implement those standards.  Algorithms
improved, circuit designs improved, recording and mastering techniques
improved.  Within 10 years of its introduction digital audio was challenging
analog in perceptual quality, and in the next five years decisively passed
it.

The analogy is not perfect, of course (if it was, it would be digital ;-)
In the case of audio the new technology preduced results that were
technically superior but, initially, perceptually inferior.  In our medium
the reverse seems to be true - while technically inferior, digital results
seem to be (in many peoples' opinions) better than the analog.

This bodes extremely well for the near future.  What you are seeing as
deficiencies in the shadows are nothing more than shortcomings in the inks.
Inks, papers and ink delivery systems are in a state of rapid development
right now - look at the results obtainable with an Epson 700 vs today's 870,
and this in the span of less than five years.  While I'm not saying the 870
is state of the art in any absolute sense, it certainly indicates that the
potential of the medium in nowhere near being maximized.

Your pessimism about the desires of the public seems a bit misplaced, too.
It is true that down through the ages most people have been of the "good
enough" school, and cheaper was always more important than better (or even
"as good").  A 20% quality loss has always been widely accepted as a
tradeoff for a 50% drop in price.

This does not apply to the hard core of connaisseurs, however - and anyone
who uses a Leica M can safely count themselves in this camp.  For these
people, the best is an absolute requirement.  They will seek out the older
technologies that produce the best results, and will goad manufacturers into
improving their offerings.

In the case of analog audio, these connaiseurs kept the turntable market
alive long after the public had voted with their dollars for cheap CD
players.  At the same time, they made such a noise that independent
manufacturers sprang up to offer improved CD players that might be
acceptable to this crazed band of quality-conscious Luddites.  The
improvements that were developed gradually made their way into the
mass-market products.

The same thing is going to happen to digital photography.  The public will
vote with its dollars for 2 megapixel digital cameras and low-quality
digital prints (as they did for P&S's, Instamatics, APS and 1-hour prints),
while the fanatical band of Leica, Contax, Nikon and Canon users will
continue to demand the image quality we're used to from custom labs, but
done at home or the office with all the controls and convenience of
PhotoShop.

We'll get it, too.  Scanner resolutions are improving, printers are
improving, inks are improving, software is improving.  Don't make the
mistake of assuming that what you see or measure today is the state of next
Tuesday's art.

Paul Chefurka

P.S. For a closely related analysis of this issue from the field of
photographic colour prints, see the article entitled "The Once and Future
Color Photograph" by Ctein, at http://www.phototechniques.com/