[Leica] Smith-Corona Summicrons (was 35mm, 90mm, and now 50 mm?)

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

IMO a more appropriate analogy to photography than writing might be fine-art
printmaking.  The tools in that medium are of supreme importance, because
they directly impact the nature and quality of the finished art.
Printmakers spend a heck of a lot of time discussing papers, inks, paints,
the materials they use for plates, presses etc. etc.

Of course the quality of a printmaker's work is more dependent on the tools
than ours, but ours is way more tool-driven than a writer's.  A writer's
output is pure "crystallized thought" - a photograph is an actual objet
(sometimes even an objet d'art), in which the medium contributes to the
final statement as much as the photographer's message does.  A trivial
example of this is to compare the feeling of viewing black and white Leica
street photographs displayed as 8x10 fiber prints to large-format colour
landscape work displayed as 2x3 meter rear-projection transparencies.

While it may be true that the brand of camera may be less important than the
photographer's vision (the NikCanolta wars come to mind), some tool choices
(Minox, or 8x10 view?) will drastically affect the final output.  While we
may at times wax fetishistic in our thinking about camera equipment, there
is at the bottom a sound reason for it.

In short, I too think the camera/typewriter analogy is ill-considered.

Paul


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peterson Arthur G NSSC [mailto:PetersonAG@NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL]
>Sent: Friday, September 22, 2000 10:02 AM
>To: 'leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us'
>Subject: RE: [Leica] 35mm, 90mm, and now 50 mm?
>
>
>
>Dan,
>
>I agree with the thrust of your message, and with Buzz's 
>message before it.
>But as you "harp to [y]our camera group," you may wish to 
>consider that the
>"analogy of writers" is not an apt one.  There would seem to be a good
>reason why you "never heard them say, 'Well, I like the 
>Remington rather
>than the Smith-Corona.'"  A photographer's medium is the 
>photograph, which
>his camera produces through its lens.  On the other hand, what 
>a typewriter
>produces is just a typeface, whereas a writer's medium is not 
>a typeface,
>but rather the words.  A particular typewriter therefore 
>should be far less
>important to a writer than a particular camera and lens (and film,
>developer, etc.) to a photographer.  (And in any case, the 
>final, printed
>edition of a writer's work will almost certainly appear in a different
>typeface from that of his personal typewriter.)
>
>:-)
>
>Art Peterson