Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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