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

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Hi, Buzz - It wasn't you I was politely dumping on. I agree with the point about
papers and their "signatures." It was the glorification of blurry old lenses to
which I was referring..:-)


Buzz Hausner wrote:

> 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.