100 years Null-Serie

[Roland Zwiers]

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[Roland Zwiers]

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[Roland Zwiers]

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[Roland Zwiers]

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[Roland Zwiers]

The past 18 slides cover my presentation on 100 years Null-Serie.
Thanks to new information provided by Alan Stokes and Fabrizio Pangrazi I was able to refine my working hypothesis.

One remaining question has to do with how to define the test series/ Null-Serie of 1923.
Does it amount to Nr. 101-120 =  20 cameras with the old shutter design?
In that case one must assume that the new self-capping shutter was introduced on Nr. 121 and Nr. 122.
This is an empirical question that can be anwered in Wetzlar.

If Nr. 121 and 122 still have the old shutter design, then it is logical to define the 1923 Null-Serie as Nr. 101-122.
Additional information may also come from Nr. 122, which was delivered to Sauppe in New York! 
We will know the anwer very soon!

Roland
 

 

 

[willeica]

1 hour ago, Roland Zwiers said:

 

Anything to disagree with in the first paragraph?
"Oskar Barnack originally joined the Leitz company to develop a top-quality cine camera" 

 

William,

I agree with everything in the first paragraph by John Wade.
But I hesitate with the quoted sentence.
This will open up a completely new topic for discussion!

My first hesitation is the implied link between the Oskar Barnack cine camera and the Mechau film projector.
This link is assumed in Leica literature: Van Hasbroeck (1987) and Ulf Richter (2009).
But when I put the 1911-1914 work notes of Oskar Barnack in chronological order, then the Mechau projector is finished before the cine camera is tested succesfully.
I will come back to this later.

My second hesitation has to do with 'top-quality cine camera'.
Of course, the all-metal cine camera was top-quality.
But was it also state-of-the-art?

As far as I know in 1911-1914 a state-of-the-art cine camera had a built-in facility to mark the filmstrip.
So before shooting a scene the moviemaker would make two markings, one at the beginning and one at the end of a test strip.

Before development of the film one could feel where the filmstrip was marked.
This filmstrip = test strip was cut out and developed so as to have information on correct exposure.
In this way the proper film reel could have an adapted development that compensated for over- or underexposure.

As far as I can find in Leica literature, Oskar Barnacks cine camera did not have this state-of-the-art facility.
This may be due to patent rights on the German market.
The said lacking facility may even have inspired Oskar Barnack to develop M875.

In combination: the Oskar Barnack cine camera and M875 could even be sold as an improvement!
Simply because M875 allowed for test development of the filmstrip on location!

As I said, this is a big subject.
I can make more contributions on this later.

First I would like to share my presentation for todays research meeting.
After all, that was the reason for starting this posting in the first place!

Roland

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Roland

Your presentation today was excellent and I am happy to share it by email with all who be attending the visit to the Leica Archive in October. Your talk today should be out on the PCCGB YouTube Channel sometime soon and you can share the link here.

I mentioned this morning the Nettel camera which Barnack used as a test camera and which was sold along with No 105 last year. I saw them together before the auction. I believe this may be a modified Deckrullo model with a capping shutter. It is, of course, much larger than the Leica 0 Series, which makes sense as it should be easier to engineer downwards to a smaller camera with concepts tried out on the larger camera.

 

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Finally, for your thoughts, my friend Michael Pritchard Director of Education and Public Affairs at the Royal Photographic Society has published a book called 'A History of Photography in 50 Cameras. In the section about the Leica I he has listed some of the earlier and contemporary 35mm cameras. I am sure you know all about these cameras already, but I am showing this here for the sake of completeness.

Finally, as regards your oft repeated point about accepted wisdoms, the approach of using 'copy and paste' long precedes the IT era. However, if you are going to replace old paradigms with new paradigms you will need to produce supporting evidence, as people are very slow to let go of 'received wisdoms'. As it is, one person's opinion is just as good as another person's, but new facts may be undeniable. So, it is all to play for as they say in football 😀.

William 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

William,

I agree completely with you.
But also take care of double standards:

Several old paradigms like the Perutz-Leica legend or Dr Paul Wolff winning his fist Leica in 1926 have been presented with no substantial evidence.
They become paradigms through 'copy and paste' by serious Leica researchers.  

Bill and you advised me to buy part one of Helmut Lagler, which covers the period 1848-1929.
It is a fascinating source and I am very happy to have it in my collection.
But even he uses 'copy and paste' when it comes to the Perutz-Leica legend.

 

Roland

 
 

[willeica]

41 minutes ago, Roland Zwiers said:

William,

I agree completely with you.
But also take care of double standards:

Several old paradigms like the Perutz-Leica legend or Dr Paul Wolff winning his fist Leica in 1926 have been presented with no substantial evidence.
They become paradigms through 'copy and paste' by serious Leica researchers.  

Bill and you advised me to buy part one of Helmut Lagler, which covers the period 1848-1929.
It is a fascinating source and I am very happy to have it in my collection.
But even he uses 'copy and paste' when it comes to the Perutz-Leica legend.

 

Roland

 
 

I don’t have the Helmut Lagler book myself. I have seen it in the museum shop and also in the Villa Friedwart. It and the other volumes in the series are very heavy to carry in luggage and, of course, they are in German, a language which I don’t speak. I’m hoping that Helmut will be at our October event.

William 

[Roland Zwiers]

Ulf Richter was so kind as to send me a high quality scan of page 115 of Oskar Barnack’s work notes.
I can now decipher texts that were unreadable to me only one month ago.

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[Roland Zwiers]

Vernickelt = nickel-plated

One interesting observation is that the adjective vernickelt [nickel-plated] seems to appear in two locations on this page.
I have made this observation also in the posting Is this leica III nickel or chrome?
But because of its relevance to my posting on 100 years Null-Serie it is proper to mention it here as well.

Page 115 is from 1923 and mentions the test cameras that he gave as a present (central column) and on loan (the column on the right) to selected photographers.
The first example is in the column 2 Leihkameras (2 cameras on loan), where vernickelt is crossed through.

If the handwriting indeed stands for vernickelt, then the crossed through photographers (presumably Freund and Flohr) must have received a nickel-plated loaner camera.

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The second example is at the bottom of the central column:  - - - - Freund, vernickelt

It is interesting to note that the same photographer Freund is associated twice with a nickel-plated Null-Serie camera.
It implies that the other Null-Serie cameras in the central column were not nickel-plated.
Otherwise Oskar Barnack need not have added this adjective explicitly.

If so, why would the loaner cameras (column on the right) have been nickel-plated whereas the cameras that were presented as a gift (central column) were not?

Of course, I am 99%, but not 100% sure that the handwriting stands for vernickelt.
It just seems to be the only interpretation that makes sense.

[Roland Zwiers]

Loaner cameras begin on 28 September 1923?

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A very puzzling observation is that the first photographer that obtains a loaner camera seems to be Freund, who received the camera on 28 September 1923.

But strangely enough the second photographer, Flohr, received his camera on 6 June.
If this stands for 6 June 1923 then Oskar Barnack is writing his notes in reversed order.
This is puzzling, unless one assumes that the notes in the Werkstattbuch have been made at a later date
(possibly in 1924 or 1925) using original notes that have gone lost.

Theoretically it is also possible that 6 June stands for 6 June 1924.
In that case Flohr may even have received a new test camera with the self-capping shutter.

But this alternative explanation (6 June 1924 instead of 6 June 1923) still does not solve the problem of the reversed order.
How to explain that Prof Sch… received his loaner camera on 4 June?
And that Freund received a camera again (?) on 1 February?

Moreover, Lehr is associated with Nr. 116 at the lower end of the column.
This must be still in 1923 Null-Serie territory!
 

All this makes clear that the work notes of Oskar Barnack still contain a lot of under-researched material.
So I hope that the Leitz archive is willing to make available a good quality scan of the complete work for further research.

Roland

[Roland Zwiers]

Research presentation on 100 years Null-Serie on YouTube

Timothy Campbell  was so kind as to post my research presentation on the PCCGBs video channel on YouTube.
I offered to do a similar presentation in Wetzlar next week and to answer questions, but unfortunately there is no time in the programme. 
When there is sufficient interest in this subject the organisers may invite me for a future event.

Roland 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Dear all,

2023 has been an exiting Leica year.

I want to continue with my research in 2024.

This requires additional consultation of primary sources from the 1910s and 1920s.

As I have to do this in combination with a full time job, it will take some time before I can share  additional information.

In the meantime best wishes for 2024!

Roland

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[willeica]

All of our discussion ended up here:

https://leicasocietyinternational.org/blog/a-visit-to-the-leica-archives-during-the-lsi-wetzlar-2023-conference

William