100 years Null-Serie

[Roland Zwiers]

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Lex,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I should have mentioned that my quote from editor Frerk is from the photo magazine Photofreund, Heft 6, 20 March 1925.
I have this photo magazine in my collection in addition to the Photofreund yearbooks.
So my selection concerns only a small part of the complete review.
I showed this selection as it explicitely refers to the Toxo-Kino film.
This film was available in the German market in 1924 already.

So, it is my working hypothesis that in June 1924 Ernst Leitz II could make his go-ahead decision as this Toxo-Kino film (again) allowed for 10x15 cm enlargements that could not be distinguished from a contact print from a postcard-sized negative.
The quote from Prof. Max Berek (1948) shows that this quality had been available before with the fliegerfilm of 1915-1918.

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The most important sentence in the March 1925 review can be translated as follows:

The "Leica" is delivered with three cassettes, each cassette contains 1,60 meter of Toxo-Kinofilm, each 1,60 meter film has 36 exposures costing 4 cents [Pfennige] per exposure, that is to say the camera - which can be loaded in daylight - allows for 108 exposures one-after-the-other, at a price of 4,32 Mark.

You mention that the booklet So urteilt man über Leitz "Leica-Kamera" (your print is from July 1928) does quote from this March 1925 review, but does not mention the Toxo-Kinofilm.
That is hardly surprising.
The complete source will always give more information!

Now Alan mentioned before that in the booklet So urteilt man über Leitz "Leica-Kamera" there is also a comment from Curt Emmermann.
I will come back to his comments later [everything connects to everything, I can not discuss all these connections at once.]
Important here is that Curt Emmermann (1928, 1931) mentions that in February 1925 Leitz sent him a pre-loaded Leica as well.
In combination this suggests that Leitz also pre-loaded the Toxo-Kinofilm in the three cassettes that are mentioned by editor Frerk (March 1925).

In the next slide I will show the entry in the delivery book 'Kamera' showing the Leica presented to editor Frerk.

 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Leica #211 delivered to editor [Redakteur] Frerk on 4 March 1925

Note delivery number [Auftragsnummer] 46.

On the same page one can find delivery number 11 for several cameras with the abbreviation: E.L.V.
Very likely E.L. stands for Ernst Leitz.
I would like to know what photographers received these cameras!

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[Roland Zwiers]

Interestingly, editor Frerk already announced the Leica in Heft 4 of February 1925 in the same photo magazine Photofreund. 

The most important sentence for our discussion can be translated as follows:

"The exposures are made on regular cine negative film, which is delivered matching spools of each 1,75 meter long under the name "Leica-Film".  

Now in February 1925 the Perutz Grünsiegel film (first discussed in the May 1925 review, see an earlier slide) was not yet available.
In combination with the information in the previous slides this suggests that the Toxo-Kinofilm really is the first Leica-film.

After March 1925 Leitz must have found out that the Perutz Grünsiegelfilm was even better suited for Leica-photography than the Toxo-Kinofilm.  
And after November 1926, with the appearance of the Perutz Fliegerfilm, Leitz publicity was all about the highly orthochromatic and fine-grained Perutz films.
Leica photographers like Curt Emmermann fully agreed.
On the other hand Dr Paul Wolff found the Perutz Fliegerfilm unsuitable for big enlargements.

This is the subject of another article.

Roland

 

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

 

[Source: Photofreund, two-monthly magazine, issue [Heft] 4, 20 February 1925] 

The translation in English is as follows:

News from the photo market

The Leitz "Leica" miniature Camera.

The Ernst Leitz Optical Institute in Wetzlar will soon be launching a miniature camera that offers significant advantages. The images are taken on standard cinema film, supplied in 1.75-meter-long spools under the name "Leica Film." Forty exposures can be made on 1.75-meter film, so each exposure costs approximately 2.5 pfennigs. This allows you to take many exposures in quick succession, and since the images are absolutely sharp, nothing stands in the way of enlargement. Enlargements of the 35mm films can be easily produced using the innovative Leitz enlarger. The "Leica" 35mm film camera is small and handy; the shutter and film transport mechanisms are inevitably coupled, making it impossible to take two exposures on one roll of film.

This news item gives rise to several observations/ questions.

1. Editor Frerk must have known about the Leica name after issue three of his magazine of 5 February 1925.
This is rather early in 1925.
How does this relate to the name change Leca => Leica after it was found out that Leca would cause too much confusion with the French l'Eka?

2. How can editor Frerk still announce the use of spools with a film length of 1,75 meter?
When using film spools instead of brass cassettes there is more space in the film chamber of the Leica.
This may explain the difference in film lenght for spools (1,75m) and cassettes (1,60m).
But I didn't know that Leitz was still playing with the idea of spools as late as early February 1925.
If this part of the news item is wrong (in early February 1925 Leitz didn't consider spools anymore), how could editor Frerk have been so mistaken?

3. Note that in 1932 the Contax was introduced with the option of spool-to-spool transport.
This shows that the concept of spool-to-spool transport for perforated 35mm film was not outlandish. 

Roland

 

The use 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Alan, Bill, Carlos, William, Lex,

I would also like to continue our discussion on early (Ur-)leica negatives.
Some of you will be visiting the Leitz archive soon.
Unfortunately, I am unable to attend due to urgent obligations in The Hague.

Two years ago during our LSI-visit to Wetzlar the leitz archive was so kind as to show me the box with Oskar barnack negatives.
In the short time available I tried to take pictures of as many negatives as possible.  
In this way I can now present and discuss some of the results.

The film strip below may very well contain negatives from 1917 taken with an Agfa Fliegerfilm.
The frames are numbered 17/18/19 on the paper, but 17/19/18 on the film.
The text below the film strip reads:

Original negative von O. Barnack = original negatives by Oskar Barnack

1. Are these indeed the original negatives or is this a film strip with copies of the original negatives?
2. Why would Oskar Barnack write his own name on the paper?
   This suggests that the text was written by someone else.
3. It seems to me that the text refers to a Leitz project to categorize the negatives of Oskar Barnack.
   I will later provide more examples that point in the same direction.
4. In what year would this categorization project have taken place? Before of after 1935? 
5. Would it have been one uninterrupted project?
6. If these are copies, what film matyerial has been used as copying film? safely film?
7. Note that the film itself has no frame numbers, Is this an indicatioin that the film used was from before 1931 or so?
    AFAIK the numbering of negatives was introduced around 1931.

Many questions already!

    

 

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

With the filmstrip in the previous slide it is also possible to discuss the possible use of the Agfa Fliegerfilm.
In Leica literature it is assumed that the picture below (the negative on the right on the filmstrip) was taken by Oskar Barnack with his Ur-Leica in 1917.
I have no reason to doubt this.
Still, for 1917 the quality of the picture is surprisingly good, both in terms of grain and orthochromatism!
This suggests that for this picture Oskar Barnack experimented with an Agfa Fliegerfilm, much in accordance with the observations of Prof. Max Berek (1948). 

In the next slide I will show the full-page Anton Baumann picture that accompanied the Leica review of May 1925.
The quality of this 1925 picture is comparable to the 1917 Fliegerfilm picture.
Again, much in accordance with the observations of Prof. Max Berek (1948)!

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[UliWer]

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1 hour ago, Roland Zwiers said:

How does this relate to the name change Leca => Leica after it was found out that Leca would cause too much confusion with the French l'Eka?

Didn't the name "Leca" only appear in a manual from January 1925 which was withdrawn? Perhaps Frerk as a proper journalist asked in Wetzlar before he published his article in February and was told that it would be named "Leica".

Edited June 26 by UliWer

[Roland Zwiers]

A full-page picture of comparable quality by Anton Baumann, published in May 1925

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[Roland Zwiers]

1 minute ago, UliWer said:

Didn't the name "Leca" only appear in a manual from January 1925 which was redrawn? Perhaps Frerk as a proper journalist asked in Wetzlar before he published his article in February and was told that it would be named "Leica".

Uliwer,

Yes, this is really possible!
I just observed that in early February 1925 editor Frerk already new of the proper Leica name.
That may have been only a few weeks after the January 1925 manual with the Leca name.
So editor Frerk may have been the first to report on the Leica as such.

Roland

[Roland Zwiers]

The film strip with the 1917 Black Forest picture also shows two pictures with a maountain sunset and clouds.
The compositions are not impressive, but the themes are interesting for pictorial photography.
Why would oskar Barnack have made these pictures?

My working hypothesis is that he could use these negatives for Photoshopping clouds and sunsets in other pictures.
Especially in pictures that lacked clouds because they had been made with colour-blind cine negative film.

Note that in pictorial photography it was not forbidden to combine several negatives when this improved the result.
So once Oskar Barnack had at his disposal a highly orthochromatic Fliegerfilm,
a film that had to be used relatively quickly because of its poor keeping qualities,
he must have been tempted to take cloud pictures with left-over negatives.

The big question with the film strip is:
are these copied negatives or original ones?

• For copying negatives Oskar Barnack (or Leitz) could have used specialized 35mm cine film.
• Copying may even have been done on non-inflameable safety film, that used a different film base.
• Specialized film may even have had perforations with a different shape as used for cine negative film.
• Depending on the film type used, the colour of the film base may have discoloured diffently over time.
• In case the 1917 negatives concern original Fliegerfilm negatives, the film base may have been coloured with a yellow dye so as to suppress the dominance of blue and violet.
• This yellow dye may still be visible.
• Of course, if an original yellow dye negative has been copied on another film type, this information has gone lost. 

So there are many non-destructive ways for analysing the early Oskar Barnack negatives!

To be continued.

 

Roland

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

[Oscar F]

21 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

Leica #211 delivered to editor [Redakteur] Frerk on 4 March 1925

Note delivery number [Auftragsnummer] 46.

On the same page one can find delivery number 11 for several cameras with the abbreviation: E.L.V.
Very likely E.L. stands for Ernst Leitz.
I would like to know what photographers received these cameras!

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An aside. The abbreviation is actually E.L.N. (rather than E.L.V.) for E. Leitz New York. Camera no. 213 was the first Leica acquired by National Geographic. They used it for the first Leica photographs to appear in the magazine. Jim Forsyth acquired the camera in 1960 from a friend at National Geographic for $300. Frank Christian, Jr. acquired it (along with no. 105 among other things) in 1969 from Forsyth. From Christian, 213 (but not 105!) quickly passed to my father, and then in 2014 the camera returned to Wetzlar where it remains today. No. 213 also appears in vol. 1 of Netopil's Museum Leica (2018) (which also has detailed photos of no. 126 and Barnack's panorama camera, among many others). (Note: There is also a convincing counterfeit of no. 213 floating around out there somewhere.)

[Roland Zwiers]

Oscar,

Thank you so much for this insightfull comment.
In an earlier slide I already observed that several Null-Serie cameras were linked to New York.
One of these was acquired by Sauppe, who later became an important Leica dealer in the USA.
You will know more about this subject than I do.

In the case of #213, would this camera have been reserved for Ernst Leitz New York at or during the March 1925 Leipzig spring fair?
It is very well possible that editor Frerk, who obtained #211 on 4 March 1925, visited the Leitz stand at the fair.
And subsequently received his Leica as a gift, also for the purpose of writing a review.

[After the review editor Frerk kept his Leica.
In a later news item in Photofreund he complained that his Leica was stolen during a train journey in Italy, while he was taking care of his wife.]

Would the Leitz agent in New York also have visited this March 1925 fair?
Would he have made the reservations for these Leicas (Auftragnummer 11) at the fair, or would there have been a separate procedure for Leitz agents during the fair? 

Roland
 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Is it possible that I overlook comments?
I sometimes get notice of a reply, but when I look for it I cannot find it.
All comments are welcome and will be replied to!
If I don't know the answer I will say so.

Roland

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Now I would like to continue with the analysis of early Oskar Barnack negatives.
My working hypothesis is that many negatives that have been preserved in the Leitz Archive in Wetzlar are copies of original nitro-cellulose based negatives.
These original negatives must have been very liable to decay.
And so at one stage someone must have taken the initiative to make copies so as to preserve these pictures for posterity.

It is possible that Oskar Barnack already started this project.
But there are several indications that this work was done by someone else.

In the film strip below I inverted the image and added the numbers A, B, C

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At A one can see damage in the upper right corner of the negative.
This suggests that the film strip has copied a damaged negative.
The damage may well have bene due to the brittle nitro-cellulose film base of the original negative.

At B there is a stroke above the negative.
Very likely this was done so as to mark this negative for enlargement.
This picture indeed appears in Theo Kisselbach (1955), Das Leica-Buch.

At C there is damage to the perforation.
Is this a cut-out, made on purpose like the V-shaped cut-outs in other film strips (see later)?
Or is this damage also cuased by the brittle film base of the copying film?

To be continued
 

 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

In the image below I have combined three filmstrips that may very well have been part on one and the same film.
The main subject is Ernst Leitz I and Oskar Barnack in the Black Forest.
Negative 27 seems to show two children sitting next to each-other.

The letters A B C D E F G are my additions.
At A one can clearly observe physical damage to the negative, possibly due to the perishable nitro-cellulose filmbase.
At B the scribe assumes that the negatives date from 1914
At C the scribe assumes that the negatives date from 1913
At D one can read in pencil 1917

This suggests that at the time that these negatives were categorized, Oskar Barnack was not around anymore for answering questions.
So was this categorization project done before or after 1935?
I assume that these negatives are part of one and the same film and that the year 1917 is correct.

[I forgot to use the letter E]

At F one can see similar cut-outs as in the previous slided. 
The cut-outs have a V-shape, but with a shallow angle.
On other film strips one can observe cut-outs with a much steeper angle.
I will come back to this later.

At G one can see red markings, probably so as to select these negatives for enlargements.

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

Another intriguing filmstrip shows Oskar Barnack with his movie camera in Bad Ems.
Oskar Barnakc's worknotes (Werkstattbuch) indicate that these pictures were made in early 1914. 
One can even see the panorama-head on the tripod, an invention that is also mentioned in oskar barnack's worknotes.

Again, I added the letters A B C D E F

At A the subject is correctly indicated as Bad-Ems
At B there is a correction: an earlier scribe assumed 1912, this was later corrected to 1914
At C there is a red marking again. It strikes me that several marked pictures appear in Kisselbach (1955). 
At D one can see shallow cut-outs again.
At E one can see that the image sinks through the perforations. This may be a good way to identity the camera used (assuming the negatives are original and not copied)
At F one can see that the adjacent negatives have been cut through!
How is this possible if this is the original film-strip?
Is this a clue that this film-strip is already a copy of the original negatives of 1914?
But a copy on nitro-cellulose film, that was perishable as well?

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[Roland Zwiers]

Another intriguing film-strip is from Wetzlar, 1914

Again, I added A B C D

At A one can read: Eisenmarkt in Wetzlar, 1914
At B there is a red marking again, but this time on the paper, not on the negative.
At C one can see that the images sink through the perforations. This may very well be a feature of the Ur-Leica.
At D one can observe damage to the negative.
At D one can also observe that the cut between negative 60 and the missing negative on the right is rather careless, 
as it has cut through the negative on the right. If this film-strip is already a copy, then this does not matter so much.

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

Another film-strip that may very well part of the black forsest pictures of 1917.
I have seen an impressive enlargement of the negative on the left.
This leads me to assume that for these pictures Oskar Barnack used an Agfa Fliegerfilm,
in line with Prof. Max berek (1948).
According to Berek (1948) it would last until march 1925 befoe the sme quality could be achieved again.

Again, the letters A B C D are my additions.

At A there is a red marking on the negative again. we can well understand that this negative asked for enlargement!
At B one can see that there is damage to the missing negative on the right.
Possibly the space between the negatives was too small for fault-free cutting.
At D-D-D-D one can see that the images do not sink through the perforations anymore.
Had Oskar Barnack in the meantime (from 1914 to 1917) fixed the prblem with the Ur-Leica?
Or have these pictures been made with a later prototype?
At C-C-C-C one can see that the corners have been cut at angles of 45 degrees.
This can be observed on more film strips.
Was the C-C-C-C shape necessary for copying or enlargement work so as to fit in a copying or enlargement device?

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[Roland Zwiers]

Another interesting film-strip, showing Oskar Barnack in a spring garden full of blossoms.
For these pictures he must have experimented with colour-sensitive black-and-white film.
Depending on the year he may either have self-sensitised the film in an Eosin-bath (1914-1915) or have employed a colour sensitive Agfa Fliegerfilm (1915-1918) 

Again,  I added the letters A B C

One can observe the same C-C-C-C shape as in the previous slide.
B-B-B-B shows that the imags do not sink through the perforations, but this time the boundaries of the negatives are not sharp.
I have no explanation for this.
At A one can see a very narrow space between the negatives.
despite this, there has been no damage to the negatives on the left and on the right.
So this time the cutting out of the negatives 30 and 31 has been done much more careful than with the film-strips in the previous slides.

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[Roland Zwiers]

This film-strip is interesting as we know the exact date that the picture was made, yet one can see that it concerns a later copy

Again, A B C are my additions
At A one can read: Mobilmachung 2.8.1914/ Mobilisation 2 August 1914
At B one can read Archiv Barnack No 172.
This suggests that Oskar Barnack had his own private archive with numbered negatives.
can we infer that by august 1914 Barnack had already made 172 pictures with his Ur-Leica? 
At C  we see factory numbering in the perforation area.
This suggests that this negative was copied after 1931 or so.

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