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On photography: The legendary Leica camera
Most of the photographs on this site were taken using Leica M rangefinder cameras. The Leica is a true classic. Aficionados rave about it; for those used to the throwaway products of the digital age, it's a revelation.
Right: a picture of the Leica M6 fitted with 24 Elmarit Aspherical wide angle lens and double hotshoe fitted with separate optical viewfinder and spirit level. A great set up for buildings, also travel and landscapes. The lens is incredibly sharp and has zero distortion. Also shown: a 90mm Tele-Elmarit: lightweight, great for hiking. A big thank you to my friend George C. Berger, from whom I acquired the M6 and the 90mm lens.
Why Leica?
The Leica has several advantages:
- Robustness
- Precision
- Superlative optics.
The emphasis is on quality, not a proliferation of often-superfluous features. The Leica is truly a case of "form follows function" and "less is more" - to borrow from the founders of the Bauhaus architectural movement.
Early Leicas
A brilliant engineer, Oscar Barnack, invented the Leica because he wanted a light and portable camera he could take hiking with him in the forests of his native Germany. Optical company Ernst Leitz produced the first Leica (from Leitz camera) in 1925.
One of the most significant models was the M3, which appeared on the market in 1953. It featured bayonet mount lenses (much faster to change), and a crystal clear, nearly life-size combined viewfinder/rangefinder that was a masterpiece in its own right.
Right: Leica M3, fitted with standard 5cm Summicron lens - possibly the best standard lens ever produced. Also shown, a 35mm Summaron lens with special "goggles" viewfinder attachment.
All later Leica rangefinder cameras look almost identical to the M3, the most significant innovation perhaps being the built-in meter of the M6. Today's rangefinder Leicas are the MP (which looks just about the same as the M3), and the M7, which features aperture-priority autoexposure. Leica also makes excellent SLR cameras, by the way.
Leica in the digital world
Digital photography is great, allowing pictures to be viewed and shared instantly all around the world. All pictures on this site are digital (obviously!), but they didn't start that way. Most of them started off as slides, and were then scanned onto CDs before being resized for the Internet.
I also use a handy compact Ricoh Caplio GX8 digital camera - it's an excellent camera, too, and ideal when speed and convenience are of the essence.
Film still has many virtues. It's a permanent storage medium, which in transparency form is also the finished product. Film can be scanned to produce large-size prints of very high quality. In practice, 20-30MB is more than adequate for most purposes. Colors are vibrant.
A virtue of Leica film cameras: they still keep going, even without batteries! A combination of digital and film results in the best of both worlds.
Leica's first digital M camera is forecast for release at the Photokina photographic show in October. This will be an amazing camera. It will be fully digital, but will still be compatible with Leica and Leitz's superlative range of optics. The camera is also certain to be expensive, even if no more so than other top pro digitals (which is at least twice as much as equivalent film cameras that produce top-class results. Hmm . . .)
What is incredible is that the digital M's shape and handling will still be the same as the Leica M3, which was first produced more than 50 years - half a century - ago. That's quite an achievement!
Leicas keep going strong
Even old Leicas happily keep going for decades. As one magazine put it, Leicas will still be going strong long after Mars has been colonized and oil reserves have run dry. (Hmm, that last one may be sooner than we envisaged.) The limiting factor may be the availability of film, but I suspect it will still be around for some time yet.
I also own an early Leica, a model IIIa, made in 1935, complete with its original 2/5cm Summar lens. A few years ago I had the camera fully restored. The Summar lens still produces fine results with its own special character. Check out the rhododendron and blossom pictures in the garden section of the Gallery page.
Right: Leica IIIa with Summar f2/5cm lens.
Yet another Leica that has proven to be an asset is the mini 3, now no longer made. It's a tiny and ultra simple point-and-shoot camera.
Leica links:
If you have made it thus far and are keen to find out more about the Leica, you might like to explore these links:
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