Re: [Leica] Eisenstaedt

["Margaret Jeffcoat" <margaret01@excelonline.com>]

What a wonderful and interesting story. Of late I've had a very strong urge
to dip into the digital
camera pool- but then the little angel on my shoulder says-pist-hey get an
M6 and a 35 1.4. So I
guess that is a pretty easy decision right.
Cheers Wilber
- ----- Original Message -----
From: Leslie E. England <engl6914@iamerica.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 3:45 AM
Subject: [Leica] Eisenstaedt


>     I had two interesting experiences this weekend.  First, I went to
> Antietam battlefield in Maryland to visit the scene of Our Heroic
> Defense of the Sharpsburg ridge line.  I was also trying to retake with
> an M2 and 50 Alex Gardner's photos taken just after the battle using his
> view camera, glass negatives, and a darkroom mounted on the bed of his
> wagon.  As I walked up to the New York state memorial outside the
> visitor's center, another photographer, accompanied by a park ranger,
> was setting up a tripod and mounting a Nikon on it.
>     From twenty feet away he spotted my camera and yelped, "My God, a
> Leica!  Is that an M3?"
>     "M2," I said.
>     "A man after my own heart," he said.  "I haven't seen one of those
> in a while."
>     He rambled on how he had worked for Life Magazine and how this
> fellow Eisenstaedt had talked him into getting a Leica and how everyone
> on the staff finally came to use them--IIIc's, IIIf's, and g's.  Then,
> he said, Canon and Nikon came in and gave cameras away to anyone who
> would use them and a lot of the staff switched.  Not Eisenstaedt,
> though; he went on to the M.  I want to say how Eisenstaedt waved his
> hand at them and called them a lost generation, but the old photographer
> said  Eisenstaedt didn't say any more than it's not the box, guys, it's
> the lenses.
>     While I was trying to get the retake of the scene of the Knap's
> Battery photo there by the NY monument, this older photographer (for the
> life of me I can't remember his name) was trying to help the Park
> Service out by taking a panoramic photo using his Nikon and multiple
> exposures and a computer to recreate one of the paintings of the battle.
>
>     Second, the next day I was on the sidewalk in Georgetown outside
> Banana Republic while my daughter worked my Amex card inside.  I've got
> the M2 and 50 in my hand, and I'm passed about 5 times, back and forth,
> by the quintessential street photographer with a huge marroon bag, and
> SLR with about a two foot long lens on it.  He was trying to photograph
> any weird or good looking woman on the opposite (sunny) side of the
> street.   He was nervous and jumpy, and had he had a third hand would've
> been chain smoking.  He was also frustrated.  People blocked his
> subjects, or the subjects moved too much for his lens view.
>     I took two photos on the same block, both on my side of the street,
> each at about 8 feet with the 50 mm.  One was of a woman mounting a sign
> with some rattling and not making sense prose and her looking like she
> could use some Haldol.  Another was of a chef and waiter in the door of
> their restaurant.  I didn't try to hide anything, but worked quickly,
> and while they were unposed, everyone knew afterward I'd taken their
> picture, but no one pulled a knife or even looked bothered.  I haven't
> printed them, but the negatives look okay.  I swear I got better shots
> than anything I saw the other other fellow trying to get.
>
> Lee England
> Natchez, Miss.
>