Leica photographers - the naked truth

[ciniframe]

This is why, about 10 years ago I sold a Mamiya C220 outfit to a young (and poor) artist for less than half the going rate.
Had bought that setup about 5 years earlier with some vague notion of doing something worthy of it. Finally realized I’m a ‘dabbler’ with photography. (Don’t know if dabbler is a real word, but you get the idea.) All I’ve ever done is tinker with photography, fascinated with intricate mechanical devices, cameras being to me the best expression of such things.
Had seen her carefully crafted exhibition prints taken with a borrowed Yashica 124 and realized she was a real artist and would actually put the Mamiya to good use. Left the whole kit with her at the vintage dress shop where she worked and told her she could make payments to my wife who worked around the corner.
If I had had any brains would have traded her for one of her art prints.

 

[removedacct1]

Nice tools are a great thing, but I'm as much Miroslav Tichý as I am Oskar Barnack.

 

[Radost]

I shoot Canon New F1s, and F1ns, I have never wanted a Leica.

I have shot mainly SLRs for a long time. Going to mirrorless have allowed me to get some great pictures shooting slower shutters.

 

[Radost]

People with the best gear are mostly the once that say gear does not matter.

 

[Huss]

I drive a battered Toyota. I have never wanted a Mercedes, although some models from the 1930s looked magnificent.

I walk with one sock, no shoes.
I've always wanted a pogo stick.

 

[Huss]

People with the best gear are mostly the ones that say gear does not matter.

Gear does not matter

 

[removed account4]

Would you rather have your car repaired by an excellent mechanic who uses Craftsmen tools, or a lousy one that uses Snap-On?

People with the best gear are mostly the once that say gear does not matter.

IDK. I've never used snap on tools, but I know at least when the car burned up on the side of the road and the craftsman tools were a fused mess harvested from the pyre scraped into the wrecker, craftsman replaced all the the tools. sadly on this forum ( and everywhere else ) there's too much hero worship and tool worship. its seems people would rather spend time spinning yarns about their alleged camera/ lens
filled with Swedish or German or Japanese or Rochester, Kyiv or British magic instead of making photographs filled with magic.
its like the home chef who has a Viking range, Henkel Knives, All Clad cookware and only boils water for ramen or a makes grilled cheese or gets take out.
not sure what the point is other than bragging rights and bling. I'd rather have all my worthless crappy cameras, and actually use them, not alleged magic that some alleged hero used and gear worshiper worships..
but I guess that's the whole thing its to say you have great gear, after all Jon Cook used to share a glass of White Zin in front of a romantic fire with his Ebony.

That's a dumb statement. By your argument, no one should use large format cameras. High-megapixel cameras serve the same purpose; they allow making large high resolution prints. For those of us who regularly sell large prints, it isn't 'snobbery,' it's professionalism.

too funny

most people who use high pixel count digital cameras and big/small LF gear don't sell large prints, some say they do, but how many nudes at slot canyon can someone look at, and will someone who has a spouse really let them put on their wall most of it's soft core porn .. most nudes ( not all but the lion's share ) are bragging rights to say you got some young model found on model mayhem to take their clothes off ... most people take their giant negative pay someone with a drum scanner the big bucks to scan it and shrink it (because they spent all their $$ on gear not the processor or memory to work on a giant negative without crashing their computer ). and then down again to 72DPI and post it on the internet with everyone else ..

 

[benjiboy]

People with the best gear are mostly the once that say gear does not matter.

That's because they know by experience that photography excellence can't be achieved by the most expensive equipment.

 

[BrianShaw]

its like the home chef who has a Viking range, Henkel Knives, All Clad cookware and only boils water for ramen or a makes grilled cheese or gets take out.

Have you ever had water boiled in All Clad… it really is superior… but it has to be vintage all-clad!

 

[Sirius Glass]

24mpx at 300dpi is a 14x18 print. Anything bigger is interpolation. Almost no one is buying higher megapixel cameras to make big prints, though, so it really doesn't matter. Almost no one using a film camera is making prints, either - even people with Leicas. It's a sad, sad thing. Pictures are now almost entirely digital phenomena.

Do not include me in your assessment as I only do optical enlargements and only use photo finishers who only use optical printing methods to produce the enlargement that I cannot handle. I suspect that I am not alone here.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Would you rather have your car repaired by an excellent mechanic who uses Craftsmen tools, or a lousy one that uses Snap-On?

Actually both Craftsman and Snap-On are good tools. Snap-On are higher quality. The quality of tools can affect the ability of a mechanic to do the best repair job.

 

[Sirius Glass]

People with the best gear are mostly the once that say gear does not matter.

The people with the best gear that know how to properly use it know that all the bad photographs and mistakes are entirely their own.

 

[Radost]

Digital printing of film photography looks great.
Not as good as dark room enlargements but pretty close.

 

[Radost]

The people with the best gear that know how to properly use it know that all the bad photographs and mistakes are entirely their own.

Amen

 

[Sirius Glass]

Digital printing of film photography looks great.
Not as good as dark room enlargements but pretty close.

Printing film digitally can look good.
Printing film optically can look good.
Printing film digitally can look bad.
Printing film optically can look bad.
Regardless of the equipment, it comes down to the ability of the maker.

 

[Radost]

Printing film digitally can look good.
Printing film optically can look good.
Printing film digitally can look bad.
Printing film optically can look bad.
Regardless of the equipment, it comes down to the ability of the maker.

Once the film has been properly developed and scanned printing it is pretty automated and results are mostly great.

 

[Don_ih]

Do not include me in your assessment as I only do optical enlargements and only use photo finishers who only use optical printing methods to produce the enlargement that I cannot handle. I suspect that I am not alone here.

You realize that the vast majority of cameras and people using them are not to be found on this forum, in this thread. Good for you that you only do optical enlargements - has nothing to do with what I was saying. You're not alone here, but you're pretty close to alone out there.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You realize that the vast majority of cameras and people using them are not to be found on this forum, in this thread. Good for you that you only do optical enlargements - has nothing to do with what I was saying. You're not alone here, but you're pretty close to alone out there.

I am aware of that. It has gotten harder to find fine optical only providers, even in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles.

 

[Helinophoto]

I don't think the camera has anything to do with it people are people.

I would never buy one, ever. give me a kiev88cm or arax88cm any day, better camera better glass better disposition.

I have the Hasselblad 503CW, it is fine, but the sound it makes when you take a photo never really sat well with me.....CLAPAP!
However, the lenses for this camera are not very well designed in my opinion.
You need to twist, and twist and then twist some more.
And then even more.

At the same time, this long focusing-throw is hampered by the stickiest lenses I have ever used.
I thought mine were perhaps dried out or serviced wrong, but after looking online, apparently this is how these lenses are supposed to be.

It really makes it a sloooooooooooooow type of camera.

Actually, if you want to make portraits outdoors, it is better to pre-set the focus to a certain distance and then focus further with your feet.

Also, most of them came with pretty crappy ground-glasses, it took me a few years and some money until I was finally able to secure one that corrected all my focusing errors (well, it was the ground glass indicating wrong actually, some two-glass, split image thing).
With the screen (and my feet) the camera can be used outside, where people are not posing like it was 1855.

But, I have to admit that I rarely use it, due to the long and sticky focusing throw challenges.

 

[Radost]

I am aware of that. It has gotten harder to find fine optical only providers, even in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles.

Have you ever enjoyed a photobook??

 

[Helinophoto]

I used to use a longer strap - so that it could go diagonally across my body.
There is even three ways to attach the strap:
View attachment 278461

How cool is that?!

I wonder if this is true for the RZ67 as well.
I have the RZ67 Pro II.
But, I only use the neck-strap as an auxiliary safety feature, I even wear it when the camera is on the tripod.
I have taken hand-held portraits with the RZ67, it has a very nice focusing screen and mechanism, so it isn't really hard.
It also only weigh 2.4kg's with the 100mm (according to the internet), so even though it is not really suited to walk around with, it is perfectly doable to shoot some portraits hand-held with it for a short period.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Have you ever enjoyed a photobook??

Yes

 

[markjwyatt]

Actually both Craftsman and Snap-On are good tools. Snap-On are higher quality. The quality of tools can affect the ability of a mechanic to do the best repair job.

Agreed. So which would you pick if you had the choice of the two I laid out (an excellent mechanic who uses Craftsmen tools, or a lousy one that uses Snap-On)?

 

[Helinophoto]

The digital guys have their gear snobbery too. They seem especially enamored with megapixel counts and don't seem to notice that they're throwing most of them away when they re-size their enormous photos down to a usable size to show them.

It is mostly true.
I left dpreview.com 15 years ago, after being there for only a year, because I was already tired of all the crap they were discussing.

Basically a few things are discussed now with digi cameras regarding picture quality:
Resolution
"bit depth"
Dynamic range
ISO performance.

These days you can take a 50 megapixel photo (of your cat....that's what people do, apparently), in a black bag, in the middle of the night, at ISO 250 000 and then argue over technicalities on that site.

For video, they are bitching about new cameras not having 8K resolution, while 4K has barely even begun to become commonplace for TV's.
And, if you cannot record true 4K video (that is big enough for cinema, mind you), with the option to do in 120 or 240 frames per second, you apparently need a new camera.

For lenses it is basically all about edge-to-edge sharpness and maximum aperture. After that it is build quality and focus performance.

Now, you can throw your cat out of the bag, flinging it up into the black sky at night, and get a perfectly focused image as well.

None of these people are in it for photography, it is gadget-masturbation and dick-measuring at an insane (and expensive) level, judging photo-quality based on math and graphs.

My "old" 1ds mk II only went to 1600 ISO (it could do 3200, but then color started to shift) , and I took a portrait with it in a church back in the day.
When looking at the photo on my monitor, I could see a lot of noise.
However, when printing it in A4, I could not see any noise, no matter how close I got. It ended up as a wonderful family portrait, still under glass and frame in this family's house today, and keep reminding me how powerful these gadgets are and how useless they become when we only look at them at a monitor.

I doubt most of these gadget-focused people realize the capabilities they possess.

 

[Helinophoto]

Would you rather have your car repaired by an excellent mechanic who uses Craftsmen tools, or a lousy one that uses Snap-On?

Why is he automatically lousy?

How about a lousy mechanic using craftsmen tool, and an excellent one who use snap-on?

As long as the job is done well, to specifications and standards and the end-result is what you are after, who cares.