Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/12/29
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Yesterday night I met some other photographers at Montmartre here in Paris.
Our wives and children are gone for some days, so we stuck together around
some bottles of Medoc and Saint Estephe from the end of the 60s - beginning
of the 70s...the living memory.
We didn't talk much about our work, nor about equipment and so on. A couple
of these guys are very prominent photographers, and have been using
R-equipment for many years. They had marketing contracts with Leitz
GmbH/Leica Camera AG and got their equipment for free/almost for free.=20
Some time ago they decided to get rid of all their R-equipment, and get
Contax/Zeiss instead (same marketing conditions more or less). They claimed
that Contax SLR's/Zeiss is "better" than Leica R's. They are of course also
using Hasselblad/Zeiss and bigger formats.
I find such questions very subjective, so I didn't make any comments upon
this. I found it quite interesting though. I understood that the question is
very complex, and not as simple as: "Anyway Leica is the best!"
When you are a freelance photographer, fighting every day to survive and to
continue your work, you become especially aware of the expenses. The "cost
of production" with Leica R equipment is far too high to be reasonable. That
is at least objective. And if I'll need an SLR for extensive use one day, it
will for sure not be the Leica R.
Oddmund =20
- ----------------------------------------
garvik@i-t.fr - Paris, France
La terre est la m=E8re de tous les peuples
et tous les peuples devraient avoir des=20
droits =E9gaux sur elle.
=20
Joseph [Hinmaton Yalatkit] (1830-1904)
Chef Nez Perc=E9 =09