Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sam McCracken" <SMcC@bu.edu> To: <idcc@KJSL.COM> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 8:55 AM Subject: [IDCC] RE: Camera of the millennium? > > > -----Original Message----- > From: idcc-admin@KJSL.COM [mailto:idcc-admin@KJSL.COM]On Behalf Of David > Foy > Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 11:25 AM > To: idcc@KJSL.COM > Subject: [IDCC] RE: Camera of the millenium? > > > >>I understand that the Leica's mystique and mythology bedazzle many > >>people, but having owned and hated two of the wretchedly over-rated > >>things, I don't feel like automatically signing off on Sam's > >>nomination. > > Personally, I am so un-bedazzled that I have never owned even one of the > wretchedly over-rated things. > > I guess I interpreted the question as "what is the most consequential camera > of the 20th century?" The Leica was the commercially successful and > widely-imitated launcher of a package: the 24x36 format, five-foot strips > of 35mm film, fast, short, high precision lenses, eye-level view finding. > None of these was original to it, of course, except the format (I think), > but in toto they led to the sort of photography most widely practiced even > today. It could have been considerably less able than it was and still been > as consequential. The typical digital camera is, in everything but medium, > the Leica's child, no more different from it than similar wet and dry plate > field cameras. > > The question does not reach to whether one likes Leicas or whether someone > else would have come along if Barnack had been killed in a hiking accident > in 1912. > > > Sam > > _______________________________________________ > IDCC mailing list - IDCC@KJSL.COM > http://WWW.KJSL.COM/mailman/listinfo/idcc >