Re: [Leica] A Humbling Experience

["Noel H. Charchuk" <nhcharch@calcna.ab.ca>]

Glenn wrote:
I am terribly humbled by these antique pictures; I cannot produce this
type
quality with my high tech gear.  The sharpness, gradation, and other
visual
characteristics of these prints are breathtaking.  I realize that these
pictures
are contact prints, but are the wonderful films and lenses that we use
today in
reality lower in quality in the essential operating parameters than those
of
that time?              

Glenn I have shared a bit of your experience, looking at a family album in
a camera store. It was a record of their trips to Banff National Park in
the late 20's. I would suspect a box camera or folding Kodak of some sort,
with a slow lens and film, but the shots were excellent. The photographer
had a real sense of composition and balance. I think the technique was
more important than the technical details.
To get on topis with Leica, Heinrich Harrer (the real life character,
played by Brad Pitt in "Seven Years in Tibet") published "Lost Lhasa" a
couple of years ago. Most photographs were taken with a Leica, using left
over movie film, and developed in some primitive equipment. But the
photographs are very well done, very moving, and really tell the story of
an end of an era before the Chinese took over the country. I think again
technique prevailed over the technical aspects. A good photographer can
make equipment and material sing, a poor one can have the best equipment
in the world, and still produce a technically perfect, totally boring
result. 
I suspect the album Glenn discussed may have been done by a photographer
with talent, if it moved him so much a 80 or 90 years later.
Noel Charchuk