[Leica] BALUG rocks: Prince of Wales to Camranh Bay (long)

["Peter Choy" <pmcchoy@earthlink.net>]

The Swap-Meet (6 Jan 01, San Mateo CA)

John Gong had reserved a table at the swap-meet and invited BALUG members
to use it as a meeting place and venue for hawking their excess gear.   John
designated me his official "helper," which got me a nice badge marked
"Assistant" and the perk of free fair admission during the vendors' set
up time, before the doors were opened to the Great non-LUG Masses. The
GLUM assembled themselves restively outside, noses pressed against the
glass, until the doors flung open -- shades of the running of the bulls of
Pamplona, or the surge of suburban matrons on buy-one-get- one-free day at
the mall.

A regular three-ringed free market circus, surprisingly robust and busy even
by the standards of such things.  An Aladdin's cave of treasures and dross,
in
equal measure, sometimes one disguised as the other.  A swirl of hagglers,
online arbitrageurs, well-heeled collectors, budget-minded hobbyists,
assorted shearers and the shorn.  The gamut ranged from gentleman traders
such as our own Roland, culling his personal stable of thoroughbred Rolleis
and Leicas, to lean and hungry online resellers sniffing out bargains to be
had from unwary innocents. The pure and faithful of heart were able to
repair
to the BALUG table, with Roland right next door.  Ken Iisaka, Jerry
Haussler, Bill Lawlor, Steve Attaway, Mark Cohen, Tom Schofield and George
Hartzell joined us at various times, either to swap gear, talk story or to
partake of the jumbo carton of cholesterol bomb doughnuts John supplied.

Seeing my official badge, a retail vendor scoffed, "Assistant?  Hah.
Assistant to what?"  He had recognized me from his shop as a particularly
tiresome window-shopper, as I didn't simply buy whatever he had on offer.
Little did he know that I now had the collective wisdom of numerous LUGGERS
advising me on the best lenses, how to clean them, and the responsible use
of
UV filters.  In the end, my deal of the day was to trade my ancient SBLOO
35mm
brightline finder (clean and clear but lousy bokeh) to another LUGGER for
his
well-used 90mm Tele-Elmar (non-fat version), much to the satisfaction of
both
parties.

To the Prince of Wales

After the swap-meet, the BALUG made its way to the Prince of Wales, a Merrie
Olde Englishe pub right outside the fairgrounds.  Joining us there were Ken
Gerlach, Ed Popejoy (venerable LTM master who motored in from the wilds of
Browns Alley, somewhere in the vast UpNorth of California), Byron Rakitzis,
Godfrey DiGiorgi and Keith Lee. The Noctiluxes, Visoflexes, Rapidwinders and
even the odd SL or R7 emerged from bags and satchels,  and a lot of
English beer was sloshed around prints and slides.  Bill Lawlor had a big
box of 8x10s from his 5-month around-the-world odyssey;  Jerry had
portraits of blues musicians; Keith, who teaches college photography, showed
slides and his comparison test of Leica normals  (Summilux, Summicron [2
versions incl LTM collapsible], and LTM Elmar f3.5); Godfrey had a potpourri
of diverse inkjet prints including some shot on Minox; and Byron showed
photos of Greece and London and family in various formats from 4x5 to Rollei
35.  There was such a flurry of show and tell that it was hard to keep track
of whose cameras and prints the beer was being sloshed on.

Camranh Bay

Dinner at a toney Vietnamese restaurant was a lively seat-changing business,
with any four of us conducting six conversations at any one moment.  This
time Digilux 4.3s, heaven save us, emerged from the depths of the camera
bags.
We also explored our favorite off-topic tangents, including Ken's Rivendell
bike and Godfrey's Cinelli and various hi-tech and lo-tech watches, but I
think the honors for fetish object of the evening went to a solid platinum
fountain pen.  Its owner allowed that it was worth more than his M6/24mm,
even
though one of Godfrey's toy cameras can take better pictures.   All this in
high good humor and the spirit of LUG comraderie (with an undercurrent of
admiring covetousness).

The best thing about this rabble of gearheads and retro junkies is that most
of
them actually take pictures and share a real passion for photography.  A
couple of things emerging from this:

    -- a BALUG web site is in the works, courtesy of web designer Stephen
       Attaway and computer maven Mark Cohen.  They need input from
       BALUG members about content, beyond basic listing of member e-mail
       addresses, a place to post photographs, and a bulletin board for
local
       meetings, picture taking events and photo appreciation activities.

   -- there was a lot of enthusiasm for periodic live meetings, where BALUG
       members would bring prints and show them to each other for
interactive
       critiques and discussion of creative issues and strategies for making
       photographs.  We agreed this would be separate from purely technical
       discussions or discussions of camera gear, which most deemed not to
       require any special encouragement, oddly enough.

Finally, hats off to John Gong for suggesting the day's events and making it
all happen.

Rgds
Peter.


Peter M. C. Choy
SPEEDLEGAL
San Francisco & Melbourne
pmcc@speedlegal.com