[Leica] Reply to Alastair

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Alastair,
Thanks for your reply, and I'm sorry if my comments made it look like
each and every thing I said was directed at you personally. I didn't
mean that.

I suspect we have more areas of agreement than of disagreement. The M6
is a truly extraordinary device, both in and of itself, and in terms of
its history, and what might be called its "ethos." It embodies a certain
directness and clear thinking--and certainly a resolute, bare-bones
simplicity--that is sadly lacking in almost all cameras today. The fact
is, the more automated and feature-laden a camera is, the more likely it
is not to match any particular individual's own feature preferences, and
the more quickly it will go out of date. It might be possible to argue
that, more than any other camera extant, the M6 distills the experience
of actual photographers, who need their cameras to take pictures with
under difficult conditions. (This is in contrast to a number of the
current "black blob" Wunderplastik cameras. A high official at one of
the mainstream camera companies once admitted to me that most of their
camera designers are not photographers. It does show.)

But I confess I get tired of two things in this context--first, the
tendency of the Leica to attract snobs, to whom the appeal of the camera
is not in its function but in its preciousness, expensiveness, and
exclusivity. These folks tend to be fastidious perfectionists who want
their cameras to remain pristine and protected, and who have never come
to grips with how I think a Leica is meant to be used (i.e., "hard and
often," as I said in the write-up for the M6 in our latest "World's 25
Best Cameras" feature). The Leica's role as a prettified collector
gewgaw and its role as a tough-as-nails, lasts-forever picturemaking
tool are excruciatingly incongruous when juxtaposed. (Well, "to me," I
should add. Others may have no trouble there. And really, I have no bone
to pick with collectors--it's a free country and a legal activity.)

The other thing I get tired of--and that I may unfairly have ascribed to
you more than was warranted--is the bigoted or partisan idea that
everything Leica does is perfect and anything anyone else does is crap,
which is closely related to a snobbish assertion that people who use
Leicas are somehow (and necessarily) superior to all other
photographers. This is just a status-and-prestige issue among photo
enthusiasts, nothing more, and it's just as petty and selfish as most
status-and-prestige issues can be in the wider society. Perhaps you will
be more disposed to forgive me for unfairly including you in such a
sweeping generalization if you'll bear in mind the position I'm in. I'm
a lightning rod for a lot of peoples' disaffection and complaint on any
number of scores--I'm routinely accused of "not understanding"
allegiances to everything from color photography, to the Zone System, to
commercial advertising photography, to alternative processes, to
whatever, by people whose entire interest lies within the bounds of
those particular single areas. What these people usually mean is that
I'm not sufficiently prejudiced in favor of that one enthusiasm or
*against* all other forms of photography to be "one of them." Which is
true. I'm paid to *try* to be objective, and to remain sympathetic to
many disparate areas of interest, practice, and commitment.

Some Leicaphiles (present company included only if the shoe fits, and
not otherwise) are particularly virulent with regard to this tendency.
When we reviewed the Contax G2, the letters we got were mostly from
Leica partisans, who were agitated that we could possibly presume that
the G2 could be worth considering on its own merits. One person even
wrote a detailed analysis of all the illustrations, concluding that the
G2's lenses were awful and that "Leica had nothing to worry about."
(Evidently that lack of anxiety did not extend to himself.) I got
several letters from people who attacked me personally for not placing
the M6 in the #1 spot on the "25 Best Cameras" list. And so forth. You
get the picture....

There is a lot of prejudice out there in the photographic world. I'm
often approached by people overanxious for their work to be taken
seriously on the basis of mere technical choices--because they use Tech
Pan and Technidol LC developer (as distinctly poor choice for most kinds
of photography), or because their negatives are developed in pyrogallol
or their prints in Amidol, or because they are using the very
highest-resolution lens ever made, or whatever.

The unfortunate fact--unfortunate for those folks, I mean--is that tools
do not impart excellence to work. The worker imparts excellence to work.
Great Leica photographers--and there have been many of them, even down
to the present day--are generally people who have learned to handle
their cameras supremely well, and practice constantly, and never think
twice about it. They're like Indy car drivers, at one with the machine.
Some of the more strident Leica aficionados, by contrast--present
company again not implied to be included--are more like people who buy
an Indy car to drive to work, and then try to make a virtue of the fact
that they never get out of first gear, and that it only turns left. <g>

The other thing I get from time to time are bad (and usually technically
poor) amateur snapshots in the mail, with a note to the effect that it
was taken with the M6 TTL HM and the 35mm ASPH, or whatever the proud
photographer's pride and joy happens to be, on whatever he thinks is the
very finest-grained and highest-resolution color film. I'm not against
such enthusiasms--far from it--but you can imagine that I get a little
impatient with assertions that such things exemplify the very pinnacle
of what photography is capable of.

This is getting too long. Let me try to wrap up by saying that I admire,
even love, the M6 and much of what it stands for. But there are lenses
that cost $50 (and I can name them) that take pictures that can be every
bit as good as pictures taken with the latest wonder lens from Leica;
and a talented photographer--one who has good ideas and who is willing
to work hard and shoot lots of film and edit carefully and
persistently--can use virtually any old camera and come up with work
that is far more powerful and more valid than the occasional weekend
photographer will do shooting thirty rolls a year, regardless of what
camera and lens he has paid for.

As for your particular points regarding the Xpan, the CLE, and so forth,
I don't absolutely agree in every single particular, but what you say
makes sense and I find nothing I'd want to argue with. Thanks again for
your interesting and thought-provoking posts.

- --Mike

P.S. Stephen Gandy (www.cameraquest.com, one of the tastiest sites on
the Web) thinks that the M4 is the last Leica that was built according
to "old-fashioned" Leica standards, and having used my friend Nick
Hartmann's M4 for a pleasant interlude of more than year (thanks again,
Nick, if you're lurking), I agree. Similarly, a number of Japanese lens
connoisseurs believe that the 7-element 50mm Summicrons were the last
ones truly made to "cost no object" standards, and that every 50mm since
then has been subject to cost-cutting considerations and budgetary
restraints. Compare a current 50mm f/2.8 Elmar-M with the original 50mm
f/2.8 Elmar, for example. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the
older lens was much better made and finished--it's glaringly obvious. An
M4 with a 7-element Summicron or an original Elmar is a cut above the
current products for sheer mechanical excellence, beauty, and
silky-smoothness. The current cameras are almost as good and the current
lenses perform better without being quite as well made, which in both
cases is really saying something!

P.P.S.
>>>>>
Many people will prefer the battery miser
that the M6 has been, why I even manually rewind the R8 to save power,
but
that may have to do with my ancestory ;-)
<<<<<

And what is your ancestry, if I may ask?