Re: [Leica] The Donatists

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

DR. BLACKTAPE IS ABOUT TO PASS OUT LAUGHING, AND GASPING WITH RECOGNITION 
AT VERY AMUSINGLY REVEALED TRUTH!

At 07:45 PM 1/26/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Leica is a religion.
>
>One thing that brings me infinite amusement is history. I did my undergrad in
>early medieval history, and just remembered many nights of  Latin readings
>for my thesis. My thesis was on the Donatist controversy, which was an
>internal persecution in North Africa based on who was a "real" Christian,
>i.e.  who had been persecuted. Let me translate the story into terms familiar
>to this group. I'll take a little liberty to fit our facts.
>
>Once upon a time, there was an asthmatic lens designer known as Oskar
>Barnack. Oskar, for whatever reason, decided that it was time for a change.
>One of his favorite expressions was "for what good is it to have the image
>quality if you lose the image" or some such thing. He suggested to the
>establishment that maybe there was a better way of doing things. He created a
>technologically-sophisticated camera that was easy to use. And it was
>convenient. His followers were persecuted, but they kept the faith while the
>mighty Zeiss empire rolled on.
>
>Barnack's cameras were eventually legalized. After the Great War, his church
>brought out a new model, known as the M3 (clearly because it was 3 cameras in
>one body - one for a 50mm lens, one for a 90 and one for a 135). His
>followers initially despised it, saying that it was inferior to the old one,
>and who needed lever wind or a combined finder? But new adherents latched
>onto the more liberal religion. As time went on, the resistance faded and
>everyone fell in line. (1968).
>
>At about the same time, competing cults known as Canon and Nikon began to
>attract the followers of Barnack. They made it easy, making lenses for Leicas
>first and then slowly easing them into full indoctrination with bodies. The
>Church of Barnack tried hard to adjust its dogma, and it upgraded from the M4
>to the M5. But to no avail. The M5 was flogged and executed. The
>establishment began persecuting again. The number of followers dwindled.
>Canon and Nikon gained more followers by encouraging the "lazy man's way). It
>was a dark day, and the Church went into exile, shipping all of the tooling
>to Canada. (1970s).
>
>Eventually, the dark days of the persecution ended. The M4-P was in
>production and the church was regaining some of its lost members. Some were
>unsure about their souls, and especially unsure about the stamped top covers.
>Things went relatively well until the M-6, when the Pax Wetzlarensis came
>crashing to a halt.
>
>Suddenly, the Church was divided into two camps. One, the Church of the M-4,
>said that all automation was evil and that it's a slippery slope. "If you
>really care about *images*, you wouldn't need automation; only if you are
>persecuted by inconvenience are you a true follower; there is a certain
>pleasure in inconvenience." The M6 adherents retorted that a little
>automation was a good thing, and it was the spirit and not the letter of the
>law.
>
>As time went on, the M-4 people became more and more bitter, talking about
>the old days and how the cameras were better-made. They ultimately concluded
>that "good pictures come through suffering alone." They decided that the M6
>and a subsequent prophet known as Hexar were false, and so they persecuted
>the two of them; they had decided that the true M-7)essiah would eventually
>come, and all the automation worth having would come from Leica itself.
>
>And here we are today.
>
>
>Cheers
>Dante