Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/04/16

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Subject: Re: [Leica]Longish--Compositions and different focussing systems (was 75'lux focusing)
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:34:44 -0400

  I'll also argue, until someone presents me with
>contradictory evidence, that even the phrase itself--"Leica look"--is of
>comparatively recent origin.  
>
>Within this context, I'd argue that few RF photographers of the 40s and 50s
>called particular attention to the optical quality of the lens as Eric
>seems to employ the notion.  Rather, they moved more or less promiscuously
>among Canon, Leica, Zeiss, and Nikon RF systems, mixing lenses and bodies
>as need and opportunity arose

a Time-Life staffer: did the cover for Life featuring
>the tower from which the sniper murdered a number of people in Dallas in
>the late 60s among others
*****
(Not unless they moved the tower there after Charles Whitman climbed in and
wrecked havoc! I believe it was either Austin or San Antonio I believe -
Lee Harvey O did his work in Dallas. Whitman was at U.T. :-) )
*****

>
>Instead, I argue, this generation of photo-journalists broadly established
>a body of work, most of which was made with RFs, that exhibits a unique
>style of photography that we now associate principally with Leica, but that
>was, in reality, an artifact of the RF- based technology at their disposal.


>The problem, of course, is that hardly anyone regularly shoots (or
>publishes) images these days employing these cameras, and the Leica M
>series has become the defacto 35mm RF standard.  So it's almost invariably
>a matter of comparing apples and oranges, because "Leica look" can only
>signify if juxtoposed against the un-Leica (ie: SLR);  but I'll stand by
>the main speculation of my original post.  RF users must develop techniques
>for framing and focusing their images that SLR users need not employ.  
>Chandos

Great post...sniper nest mislocation aside! ;-) B. D.