[Leica] Nostalgia Just Ain't What It Used to Be

[Buzz Hausner <Buzz@marianmanor.org>]

Actually, B.D., if I had my choice of nostalgic necromancy, I would
resurrect Velour Black from the late Sixties and early seventies, not the
papers of the nineteen-thirties.  Who among us can't look at a slide and
say, "man, that sure has that fifties sanguine hue!"  My point wasn't to
long for the recreation of that which was done in the past, but more to
signify that each era will have its "look," though we won't be able to
identify this decade's look until the next decade or so.

	Buzz

- -----Original Message-----
From: B. D. Colen [mailto:bdcolen@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 3:19 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Lens signatures, old and new


Okay, I'll take my life in mind hands and...

This whole "old glow" thing is really pretty funny...On the one hand we have
Erwin, judging lens quality on the basis of scientific formulae and the
number of
threads visible in a 1" square of silk photographed with  ASA 2.3 film at
100
yards with the latest Leica optic, and on the other we have a bunch of guys
who
call the flare and veiling of the old, optically inferior lenses, the
"classic
leica glow."

Yes, as Buzz and some others have pointed out there were papers available 50
years
ago which are no longer available - and some of them probably would produce
superior prints. But the bottom line, folks, is that that glow which so
captivates
you is the glow of nostalgia; nostalgia for a long-gone world and way of
life
captured in the "glowing" photos of the greats, nostalgia for the days when
photography really "mattered," nostalgia for the days when we were all a
good deal
younger and full of promise than we are now.