Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/04/16

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Subject: Re: [Leica]Longish--Compositions and different focussing systems (was 75'lux focusing)
From: Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@mail.wm.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:00:05 -0400

Actually, I wanted to pursue this question of Canon and Nikon RFs in my
original post.  I've never owned a Nikon RF in any of its varieties.  I've
owned a number of Canons and, in fact, still work with a VI-T.  If
anything, I should argue that the idea of "leica look" is comparatively a
recent construction that is contemporary with the ascendency of SLRs--one
that through its vagueness and subjectivity eludes exact
definition--certainly no description that I've seen here or elsewhere
adequately conveys any precise meaning (is the "Leica look" the cold fusion
of the camera world?).  I'll also argue, until someone presents me with
contradictory evidence, that even the phrase itself--"Leica look"--is of
comparatively recent origin.  As I go through my old editions of Morgan and
Lester, I see discussions of the technical capacity of Lecia optics (these
dating from the forties and early fifties), usually in relation to
difficult and or very technical applications involving small format
negative stock, available emulsion speeds, and the performance of lenses in
existing light circumstances.  The sections on flash photography with the
Leica, for instance, in the early Morgan and Lester have always seem to me
a bit grudging, but Marc Small and other historians know more about this
sort of thing than I do.

Within this context, I'd argue that few RF photographers of the 40s and 50s
called particular attention to the optical quality of the lens as Eric
seems to employ the notion.  Rather, they moved more or less promiscuously
among Canon, Leica, Zeiss, and Nikon RF systems, mixing lenses and bodies
as need and opportunity arose (there've been previous discussions here, I
think contributed by M. Small, about the vogue of Nikon lenses among
photo-journalists in the early 50s who were otherwise wedded to Leica
bodies). I well recall buying an M4 and 21 Super-Angulon from Shel
Hirschorn in 1972 (a Time-Life staffer: did the cover for Life featuring
the tower from which the sniper murdered a number of people in Dallas in
the late 60s among others).  Shel told me that he wouldn't trade any Leica
lens in the world for his Nikkor 50 1.4 and urged me to buy it (he was
going large format in retirement), but the $60 he wanted for it was above
my limit.


Instead, I argue, this generation of photo-journalists broadly established
a body of work, most of which was made with RFs, that exhibits a unique
style of photography that we now associate principally with Leica, but that
was, in reality, an artifact of the RF- based technology at their disposal.

All of this is to say that if RF constitutes one way of *seeing*
photographically, then I shouldn't expect to see considerable difference
among images composed using an SP, VI-T or IIIf (or M-3, for that
matter--though here's where the question of framelines becomes interesting).

The problem, of course, is that hardly anyone regularly shoots (or
publishes) images these days employing these cameras, and the Leica M
series has become the defacto 35mm RF standard.  So it's almost invariably
a matter of comparing apples and oranges, because "Leica look" can only
signify if juxtoposed against the un-Leica (ie: SLR);  but I'll stand by
the main speculation of my original post.  RF users must develop techniques
for framing and focusing their images that SLR users need not employ.  This
doesn't make SLR users inferior; I merely say that using an RF and an SLR
engages different sets of cognitive processes, that one reacts to their
respective visual fields uniquely, and that this has consequences for the
final "look" of the photo.

In the end, I'm not much concerned with the idea of the "Leica look" as
Eric uses the term--refering to some special optical quality that the
lenses themselves possess that we respond to, however subjectively; I
appreciate what he means by it and don't doubt that he sees what he
describes, however imprecisely.  I'm pragmatist enough to grant that
perceived reality *is* real to those who must act upon their perceptions.
Nevertheless, I propose that this notion of RF as a "way of seeing" is *a*
way, not necessarily *the* way, to get at what we mean when we say it
"looks" like it was done with a Leica.

Chandos

>
>The problem with Chandos' post was he compared apples and oranges and I 
>thought he was comparing apples and apples. What do I mean apples and 
>oranges? He mentions Nikon and Canon, when they don't make rangefinders. 
>They used to, and I submit those cameras (which are the contemporaries of 
>many cameras in use today by LUGnuts) have the same "look" compositionally. 
>Thus to call that the "Leica look" is inaccurate. But that never stopped 
>anyone.
>
>Eric Welch
>St. Joseph, MO
>http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
>
>My computer's sick. I think my modem is a carrier.
> 
Chandos Michael Brown
Assoc. Prof. Hist and American Studies
College of William and Mary


http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown/