Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/14

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Subject: [Leica] BALUG rocks again.
From: "Peter Choy" <pmcchoy@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:03:40 -0700

At the risk of interrupting this lovefest on Sontag, Hexars and cathedral 
photo etiquette, let me report that yet another micro-mini-BALUG dinner
spontaneously bloomed last night in the San Francisco Bay Area & environs.
Caveat:  parts of this posting are even Leica related, however tangentially!

When we heard that stalwart Hong Kong LUG member Howard Cummer was finishing
a business trip in San Francisco, BALUG member Jerry Haussler (check out his
site at <www.zephyrblau.com>) rose to the occasion and kindly arranged an
impromptu get together over dinner at his local eatery, a hilliside
restaurant looking down from its perch over San Mateo to command a panoramic
view of the mid-peninsula with the S.F. Bay in the distance.  It was a
glorious
evening -- crystal clear, shirtsleeve weather, and the lights of the
peninsula were magical.

It was short notice but we managed to scrape together a quorum.
Jerry, Howard, Bryan Caldwell (who made the haul in from Stockton to join
us) and I marveled at Howard's chrome LTM 35mm Summicron ASPH and LTM 50mm
Summicron, both of the recent limited production, Bryan's Noctilux mounted
on a black paint M3 acquired in a Tokyo shop (and identified by serial
number at the last S.F. BALUG dinner by Tom A as one he previously owned and
sold!), and Jerry's 90mm Leitz brightline finder, just returned from Tokyo
where it was Shintaro's first attempt to paint a finder.  The results are
stunning, an object of resplendent beauty in its black enamel finish with
white enamel engravings.  Jerry also passed around a portfolio of portraits
and performance shots of blues artists, including a picture of Bill Graham
polishing Albert Collins' shoes that Jerry is proud to have gotten while Jim
Marshall did not.  The piece de resistance for me were the first photos I've
seen
taken with the new 12mm/f5.6 Voigtander/Cosina in L mount, which Howard
brought from Vancouver, where he got to play with Tom A's lens last week.
By the way, watch for the next issue of Viewfinder, which will have Tom A's
report on this lens, an optical tour de force.  This will no doubt be the
first place we can see a full report on this lens in print.

In summary, another fine evening brought about through connections made and
nurtured through the  LUG.   Howard and I were accompanied by our respective
wives, Esther and Ruth, and joined by Esther's San Francisco cousins, the
Johnsons.   Our spouses seemed to have as uproarious a time as we did,
trading tales of lives lived abroad (England, China, Malaysia, Singapore,
Canada, U.S.A.), but to go into that would be Off-Topic!

Rgds,
Peter Choy,
Staying Put in California.