Bill Pierce at Digital Journalist Reflects on Leica

[johnastovall]

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Bill Pierce in his 'Nuts and Bolts' column has some interesting reflections on Leica's history from the working PJ's perspective.

[rleffingwell]

I worked in news service and newpaper journalism from 1968 until mid-1995. I covered the riots in Paris in May and June 1968 and half the shooters there worked as Bill Pierce described, with a 21 or 28 on one M body and a 35 or 50 on the next as well as a Nikon F with a 105 and another with a 200. That was the working kit. It almost was like a uniform. When I joined the staff of the Kansas City Star after college in 1970, three of the five of us on the morning staff shot with Leicas. I moved to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1973 and of the 18 staffers, six shot with Leica Ms. By the time I started at the LA Times in 1984, I was one of four staffers out of 24 who used Leicas most of the time. And that stopped cold when the paper moved to color and we needed to use fill-flash to bring the contrast into the range that newsprint could reproduce. That 50th of a second strobe sync killed Leica as a newspaper photographer's tool in the late 1980s. Nikon had a little, affordable body with a motor that synced at 125 and then at 250.

 

Each of the four of us still has our Leicas but we use them so sparingly. I took mine to a dinner party at the home of another and he gasped, "Oh, my god! I've still got some of those! I wonder where they are!"

 

A close friend shoots for UNICEF in Africa and has done production work for Hollywood films. She uses her Ms and people comment on her old-fashioned cameras. But they don't hear her and they love her images.

 

Pierce's point about Leica's loaner stinginess is spot on and that behavior is legendary among us working stiffs. A number of us tried to "borrow" cameras over the years when ours were down. Nikon and Canon quickly recognized our working credentials - business cards and police department id tags - and loaned us thousands of dollars worth of equipment. Leica let us know we weren't worthy. And that stuck with us.

 

I'm glad to have my Ms. I just tried to shoot one of my books with them but my publisher told me their new prepress house has a real problem converting crisp chromes to CMYK files. I asked them to try and the test results looked like Peter Max psychedelia.

 

I love the cameras - the way they feel and work. I just think Leica has been its own worst enemy for a few decades now.

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[garyvot]

Randy... I don't think we ever met, but I worked at the San Bernardino Sun from about 1979-1986 (with a hiatus at the Everett Herald) which I believe was during the time you were at the LA Times...? I do remember your byline.

 

By that time, Leica's were already a memory for daily newspaper work--the Nikon F2 and Canon F-1 ruled the roost. None of the shooters I knew during that time worked with them. (In additon to flash sync, fast motor drives and long lenses became essential tools.)

 

In a way, I'm sorry I missed the era in which you started. Lots of my idols during college were Leica shooters. It was only years later that I finally started working with Leicas (after changing careers, building a family, then returning to photography on different terms).