[Leica] Old-style photos, developers, and lenses

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

Glen M. Robinson wrote:

>      I am terribly humbled by these antique pictures; I cannot
produce this type
> quality with my high tech gear.  The sharpness, gradation, and other
visual
> characteristics of these prints are breathtaking.

Perhaps the development techniques of the time were partly
responsible. Some 35 years ago, a friend at work told me he wanted to
try mixing his own developer from the raw chemicals. In some Ancient
Dusty Volume of Photographic Lore which I'd lent him he found a recipe
for "Leitz two-bath developer" and decided to give this a try - I
think the idea of having a developer which had to be used in two
stages amused him.

Anyway, this guy's favourite subject was the female nude, so he tried
his newly-brewed developer after his next photo shoot, and was amazed
by the results - far better graduation than he could obtain with
conventional developers, he claimed. He swore that from then on he'd
use this developer. He moved to another job soon afterwards, so I
never learned if he carried on using it.

(Looking through my photo books today, I can't find this mysterious
developer - I can only assume that I've lost the book, or maybe it was
an old book on loan from the public library. The idea of a "Leitz"
developer seems strange - I can't imagine the mavens of Wetzlar
deciding to invent a developer.)


"A.H.SCHMIDT" <horst.schmidt@actek.com.au> wrote:

>I firmly believe, the era of the warmer, and softer images stopped ,
when  Leitz
sold the last Summar lens.
The Summitar after, was a fabulous lens, followed by the Summicron,
which was the
just about as perfect as was possible. But something had changed, the
emphasis was
more on the reproductive accuracy and some of the aura was lost.

I still have a very clean Summar (coated post-war) and tried it on my
M2 last year. I was very pleased by the results, (probably because the
aberrations of this elderly lens degraded the image to match the world
as seen via my poor eyesight!)

I've since found a Leitz hood for it, so this lens is now going to be
dragged out of its 40 year long retirement and put back into use.

Regards,

Doug Richardson