Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/31

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Subject: [Leica] somethin useful
From: Hans-Peter.Lammerich@t-online.de (Hans-Peter.Lammerich)
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 02:25:44 +0200

Picture book: Jim Marshall: "Not fade away". Certainly this is not a peace of 
art, but plain documentary photography. Nobody would take notice of this, if the 
subjects were not rock an' roll celebrities. Just be at the right place at the 
right time, get focus and expusure settings right and press the shutter.  Being 
an amateur, I am not able to achieve the quality of professional travel or 
nature photographers who have time to identify the optimal place and time. This 
and not cost of equipment I consider as the crucial factor. But I can copy to 
some extend Marshall's style when I record my environment during business or 
leisure trips. In the context of today's dominance of flash and colour in press 
and amateuer photography, b&w and available light has something special. I would 
agree that this is a simple, trivial and even cheap trick, but the results are 
"different" and catch the attention of my friends and colleques.

Equipment book: Hans-Jürgen Kuc: "Auf den Spuren der Contax", "Tracking the 
Contax". This is the type of book I would like see about Leica! Book and camera 
shops are full of rewritten camera/lens manuals, illustrated collector books 
copying the same old anecdotes from each other, with superficial and sometimes 
contradictary information on design specs, dates etc.. Kuc's book integrates 
(!!!) company history (camera/lens designers, the company's market position 
etc.) with a detailed description of product evolution.   

Non-picture and non-equipment book: Armin Hermann "Nur der Name war geblieben", 
"Only the Name Remained". The History of Carl Zeiss. Company sponsored books on 
company history in Germany either downplay the Nazi period or contemplate the 
usual package of anecdotes and stereotypes demonstrating that management and 
owners were indeed anti-nazi from the beginning on, helped jewish employees 
etc.. Hermann's books avoids this and basically starts after 1945, describing 
how the Zeiss management screwed up the camera/lens business and lost market 
share to the Japanese competitors. Despite success in non-photo optical 
applications I find it sad that most big names from Germany's pre-war optical 
industry nowadays are reduced to mere trademarks, with the products being 
designed, marketed and produced in Japan and Korea. On the other hand, if Leica 
had not been ignorant to the majority of consumer wants in the 1950s and 1960s, 
but had followed Nikon/Canon today we would have a family of plastic, autofocus 
Leica SLRs with a goood market share, used by pros and amateurs, but certainly 
not a M6.

Hans-Peter