Leica article in New Yorker magazine

[Guest darkstar2004]

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This article A Critic at Large: Candid Camera: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker may have already been commented on here - I do not recall if that is so or not. I thought it was an interesting article, particularly the part addressing the price issue and Leica cameras & lenses:

To non-photographers, Leica, more than any other manufacturer, is a legend with a hint of scam: suckers paying through the nose for a name, in a doomed attempt to crank up the credibility of a picture they were going to take anyway, just as weekend golfers splash out on a Callaway Big Bertha in a bid to convince themselves that, with a little more whippiness in their shaft, they will swell into Tiger Woods.

 

To unrepentant aesthetes, on the other hand, there is something demeaning in the idea of Leica. Talent will out, they say, whatever the tools that lie to hand, and in a sense they are right: Woods would destroy us with a single rusty five-iron found at the back of a garage, and Cartier-Bresson could have picked up a Box Brownie and done more with a roll of film—summoning his usual miracles of poise and surprise—than the rest of us would manage with a lifetime of Leicas. Yet the man himself was quite clear on the matter:

 

"I have never abandoned the Leica, anything different that I have tried has always brought me back to it. I am not saying this is the case for others. But as far as I am concerned it is the camera. It literally constitutes the optical extension of my eye."

 

Asked how he thought of the Leica, Cartier-Bresson said that it felt like “a big warm kiss, like a shot from a revolver, and like the psychoanalyst’s couch.” At this point, five thousand dollars begins to look like a bargain.

 

Photography is not about the price of the camera and/or lens - it is about making the best images you possibly can. Using the best cameras and lenses in exsistance can do nothing but help in that endeavor.

 

JMHO.

[bullis]

 

Photography is not about the price of the camera and/or lens - it is about making the best images you possibly can. Using the best cameras and lenses in exsistance can do nothing but help in that endeavor.

 

JMHO.

 

I enjoyed the article.

 

The money? It's only money.

 

Once in a while, most of us end up with some money for awhile; then it goes away. The important thing is to buy the camera when you have it, and don't allow yourself to sell it when you are hard up. And it doesn't matter, you could use one like this. I paid $400 for it (lens acquired at Goodwill for $10 but that isn't going to happen again anytime soon) and then the vulcanite fell off. It works perfectly, even though UGLY. It has someone's Texas drivers's licence number scratched in it. I'm going to cover it with something one of these days. Maybe fish leather.

 

I posted this image the other day in another thread, so if you have seen it twice I'm sorry if you are bored with it.

[Guest darkstar2004]

The money? It's only money.

 

Once in a while, most of us end up with some money for awhile; then it goes away. The important thing is to buy the camera when you have it, and don't allow yourself to sell it when you are hard up.

Truer words have rarely been spoken here!

 

Money is merely numbers on pieces of paper. Leica cameras and lenses are objects of art carved from brass, steel and glass. If they were violins, they would have been made by Antonio Stradivari.

 

One of the biggest blunders I have EVER comitted was selling off my Hassleblad camera & lenses "Because I wasn't using them very much." It will be one cold day in hell before I make that mistake with my MP and its lenses.

[Thomas Edwards]

Money is merely numbers on pieces of paper. Leica cameras and lenses are objects of art carved from brass, steel and glass. If they were violins, they would have been made by Antonio Stradivari.

 

...i don't know of many things in this world in this day and age that are comparable to a usd 3,999 hand-crafted precision-made leica mp...about the same cost as a pair of bespoke shoes from st. james's...