The Online Photographer

Most lives include at least a few stories of missed opportunities. Someday I'll tell the whole story of "The Ponton in the Weeds," about a glorious old Mercedes that should have been my first car. Alas.

John Hufnagel, in a Featured Comment to the previous post, mentioned that his brother's associates in Military Intelligence several decades ago bought cheap Polaroids because "government-issued Leicas were 'too hard to use.'"

Reminds me of a little story. (Sorry if I've told this before. I've told all my stories before, I just can't keep track of to whom.)

I went to photography school in Washington, D.C., at the Corcoran School of Art (now called The Corcoran College of Art and Design). The school is right next to the Old Executive Office Building, which is right next to the White House. My schoolwork required me to photograph frequently, and I loved to walk, so naturally I walked all over the city taking pictures.

One day I found myself moseying past the huge Department of Agriculture building on Independence Avenue, on the south side of the Mall, and, as was my wont, I went poking around a bit. Somewhere, somehow, I ran across one of those bulletin boards in a locked glass case. In it was a sheet of paper that said "Public Notice—Surplus Auction." I was a poor photo student at the time, so I thought, hmm, maybe I can score something for cheap that I can use.

So I asked, and was directed to a room somewhere off in the nether reaches of the vast building.

In the room was a paltry collection of the sorriest looking old crap you ever saw. Ancient desks and broken-down desk chairs, heaps of old forms and stationary supplies—I remember a mechanical calculator sitting on a pile of cardboard boxes that looked like it dated from FDR's Administration—and various contraptions and gizmos...spectography plotters, soil sample testers and whatnot. It looked like one of the most unpromising abandoned storage lockers on that show "Storage Wars," only a little neater.

Then I noticed a kind of crisply-made wooden crate barely visible beneath various other crap. It was about the size of a big footlocker.

"What's that over there?" I asked.

The fellow who had let me in shuffled through his papers. "Cameras of some sort," he said. "Navy stuff. There are a bunch of numbers here."

Could I see?

The manifest was marked:

US NAVY CAMERA STILL PICTURE KE7A 30 CT NEW, ELCAN f/2 66MM 30 CT NEW

After which was scrawled: "Outmoded, deaccession."

Know what those were?

I did.

Leicas.

KE7 was the designation for military M4's. And Leitz lenses—Elcan was Leitz's Canadian facility (they still make Leica lenses there, although now it's owned by Raytheon). Why U.S. Navy? No clue. 66mm? Never heard of that. Why were they at the Department of Ag? Also no clue. The ways of the Federal Government are mysterious.

Could I look? The fellow was amenable to the idea, but when we uncovered the crate a little more, it became apparent that it was screwed together. This discouraged him, and he decided we wouldn't look inside after all. It's funny—the visual of the crate with its top off revealing neat rows of pristine boxes is burned on my brain, but it's a sight I never actually saw. That picture exists just in my imagination.

Curiously, I was excited about my find, but only moderately. I really wasn't into old cameras all that much at the time...I was mostly interested in what I could do with cameras. But I'd seen old Leicas on the used shelves at Penn Camera, where we all bought our supplies, and I thought, well, I wouldn't mind using an old Leica. Especially if it was painted army green. Or navy blue. Or camo!

And if "30 CT" meant "thirty count," as I was pretty sure it did, I thought it would be a hoot, if I actually won the auction, to pass out Navy-surplus Leicas to my classmates for free! I was sure I could keep a few, give a few away, and sell the rest to Penn Camera, and come out the other side with a handy profit in my pocket.

I scraped together every dime I could put together and showed up for the auction.

It was a Thursday, as I recall. The place was dead—there were all of maybe seven citizens in the room. And virtually all of them were interested in the furniture or one of the pieces of technical equipment. (Afterwards, one guy, dressed in 1970s plaid pants, was very excited to tell me all about the great deal he'd scored on a perfectly good whatchamacallit. Did I have any idea what whatchamamcallits were worth? He was very enthusiastic, and told me much more than I needed to know about it. Nice guy, although maybe just a tad off.)

I won the crate of KE7's for $180. I think two other people made tepid bids, just on principle, but their hearts weren't in it.

But then when we were herded down what seemed like a football field's worth of endless corridor to another office to make payment, I ran into a little snag. I was told that my crate had been assigned a minimum of $300. My $180 wasn't good enough; I'd have to pay $300.

Which was fine, except I didn't have $300. I fell about $40 or $50 short of that.

So I commenced one of those exercises in futility with which you might be familiar...trying to reason with a bureaucracy. I had $260, more or less; would that do? No, sir, it says $300, and I don't have the authority—. Could I buy half the contents of the crate for half the $300? No. For the whole $260? No. Who decided on the 300 number? Could I talk to that person? (Right, like that person would be easier to reason with.)

Could I pay what I had and come back later with the balance? Sorry, sir, but the United States Department of Agriculture Requisition and Supply (or whatever it is; I don't remember) is not set up to accommodate layaway shopping for the convenience of citizens.

And so forth, and so on.

So could I just come back later with all the money? She didn't see why not.

Eight days later, I got my paycheck from my part time job, and I showed up back at the Ag Department with $300 in my hot little hand, and high hopes. I had won the auction, after all, and bureaucracies remember details like that.

I got shuffled from one room to the next, one functionary to another. Finally someone found the papers.

The verdict? Failed to sell at public auction. Discarded.  

What? Discarded?!? As in, thrown away? When?

Yesterday. I.e., one week from the auction date.

Where?

Well, you know how that goes, too. I couldn't quite give up on it right away, but I had to face facts eventually. My crate of Leicas had gone to oblivion.

More's the pity.

Ever since then, from time to time, I think about them. Somewhere, buried deep in one of the landfills around Washington, D.C., there is a well-made, screwed-together wooden crate of brand new, never-used Leica M4's with matching 66mm lenses—poor virgin cameras that never got to take a picture. Slumbering, they are, deep in the Earth.

Another one that got away. To quote my old friend Paul Kennedy, who was a teacher at the Corcoran at the time: "You know what they say: Oh well."

Mike

UPDATE from Michael Perini: "Elcan designed the Leica Elcan 66mm ƒ/2 ultra-high resolution lens for U.S. Navy. According to some literature, the lenses were used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War."

More from Japan Camera Hunter. (Thanks to Michael.)

UPDATE #2, April 2: Okay, I admit it—this post is almost entirely fiction. April Fool. Hey, I can't take the day off on two holidays in a row, can I?

I did hear a rumor of a guy scoring some used military Leicas at an Ag Department auction when I was in photo school, but that's as far as the facts go.

How did I do, though? This was my biggest fiction project in a while!

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

LJ Slater: "That's one of the most gut-wrenching stories I've ever heard, and that's no joke! Too bad about the date today, though."

Mike replies: What, are you referring to the fact that it's Otto von Bismarck's birthday?

Dennis: "66mm ƒ/2...the missing portrait lens for APS-C! I can see why you'd still remember that story so vividly. My stories run more along the lines of opportunities that I should have passed up."

Hugh Crawford: "You know that 70mm Combat Graphic I keep going on about? That came from the Department of Federal Property Disposal Assistance at a Signal Corps base that closed in N.Y. in the '70s. I bought that and a 4x5 olive drab Speed Graphic, both in fitted Halliburton cases, plus a Leica M3 with a 50mm Summicron, for six dollars apiece. They had huge piles of them (I later was told that most of the Combat Graphics in existance, 2,000 or so, were in that pile), not to mention 4x5 and 8x10 enlargers in fitted suitcases and so on.

"The only problem was that I could only buy as much as I could carry because I had hitched a ride with a volunteer fire company, and two suitcases plus a Leica was about it. Still have both the Graphics. The Leica got stolen, but I never really liked it. Not bad for $12 though. I went back a couple weeks later with a friend who had a 501c(3) tax exempt organization to do a little more shopping, but they had cleared out the 'camera junk' to make room for thousands of hospital beds."

Mike replies: And you know who designed the Combat Graphic? Hubert Nerwin. No kidding.

Rick Wilcox: "Mike, I was a U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate back in the early '60s stationed in Naha, Okinawa. The base lab had a pretty good compliment of Leica M3's, 4x5 Speed Graphics, and Rolleiflexes. Not a bad lot.

"But one day I discovered, on a back shelf, during a pre-inspection cleanup, the find of the century. A 4x5 Graflex Super D,  the original single lens reflex. I was elated. When I looked at it in the light, I noticed a 'F.U.R.' tag on it. That was Navy supply jargon for 'Failure and Unsatisfactory Report.' The tag included a checked box indicating it was earmarked for destruction. This was nuts, I thought. I went to the CPO (Chief Petty Officer) and asked if I could have it. Short answer: no. Fine. Could I buy it from the Navy? No. I was livid. Even then, at 20 years old, I knew this was a collector's item. Still is, or could have been. I went round and round with the powers that be, but to no avail. I watched on the appointed day when that camera, along with several others, were summarily smashed and destroyed with repeated blows from sledge hammers. The hammers were (purposely, I'm sure) yielded by Navy supply depot personnel, who could have cared less about any, and all, old cameras. I ranted and raved about the stupidity of the process and got put on report. I was later scheduled to  have a Captain's Mast. I would have ended up spending most of the rest of my enlistment in the brig, had I not come to my senses and 'seen the error of my ways.' I recanted my opinion of my section leaders, was forgiven and sent on my way. That single experience killed whatever thought I had entertained about a military career.

"To this day, I still find it hard to get rid of a camera. All my old, unused cameras are stored inside a built-in bench seat under an upstairs bedroom window in their original boxes with original documents. Not one of them has a tag or sticker resembling a dreaded 'F.U.R.' tag. I guess this could be considered hoarding."

Mike replies: Let's call it "preservation" and call it even, Rick!

Bahi: "Yours was the only April Fool I've fallen for in years. Not only did I believe it, it didn't even cross my mind that it was anything but true. And I read it twice. Shocking."

Mike replies: (*chuckle*)

Chris W: "I was taken in by your tale partly because of a story told to me by a former boss. He was a radio operator in Lancaster bombers during WWII. When hostilities had just ceased, his plane was ferrying supplies across Northern Europe and they got ordered to accept the surrender of a German airbase in Norway. The plane landed at the airbase and the German commanding officer formally surrendered to the skipper. The Germans noticed that the plane crew were smoking and lamented the fact that they had run out of cigarettes weeks ago. It just so happened that the plane was carrying crates of cigarettes as part of its cargo and they agreed to a swap. And what did the Germans have to exchange? You guessed it—a crate of Leicas!"

Zeiss camera designer Hubert Nerwin and family shortly after their arrival in the U.S. following WWII. Nerwin was instrumental in the development of the dominant American consumer camera of the 1960s, the Kodak Instamatic. Photo courtesy Zeiss Historical Society.

I'm a day late with this. Last month (March) marked the 50th anniversary of the camera that ruined Kodak—the Instamatic.

Designed around Hubert Nerwin's drop-in, "foolproof" film cassette (a picture of which can be seen here), the Instamatic was both the true descendent of George Eastman's $1 box Brownie of c. 1900 and the transformative consumer camera of its own era. It sold seven and a half million cameras in its first two years and 50 million in the decade of the 1960s. It remains one of the most successful and profitable consumer products in the history of photography; it introduced baby-boomers to picture-taking.

...Me, too (although I'm technically Generation Jones). It was my first camera, and the camera I did my first "project" with: six entire rolls on a 7th-grade trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Penn., the site of the turning point of the American Civil War.

Somewhere around here, I still have an Instamatic.

The reason I say it ruined Kodak is that it convinced Kodak that it could dictate the market rather than follow it. And Kodak tried again and again over the years to dominate the consumer market by deciding a priori what people would buy and then attempting to overwhelm them with it via marketing and sheer scale.

(I think this reflects human nature. In high school, I sat on a hillside watching a soccer game, and saw a classmate named Doug make a remarkable goal. He made a high, arcing kick from almost the corner of the field, and, improbably, it cleared the leaping goalie's hands and entered the goal, even though the angle was exceedingly narrow, as he was not far from being lined up with the goalposts at the spot of the kick. As I watched the rest of the game, I noticed that Doug tried to recreate his success by repeating the same kick twice more during the game. Both kicks were surprisingly good; but the first attempt had been both good and lucky, and the subsequent attempts failed.)

Kodak made numerous attempts to recreate the Instamatic success in some form or other. The Disc camera was the most obvious one; the Instamatic cast its formidable shadow all over that doomed project. The last two major attempts were Photo CD and APS. With Photo CD, everyone was supposed to turn their film into the processors, pay $50(!), and receive the roll of pictures as digital scans on a compact disk in return. You were then supposed to look at your pictures on your TV set, using a player that Kodak was going to sell to you. Kodak decreed at the outset of this program that it was going to sell 250,000 consumer Photo CD players every year. Over the product's pathetic lifespan, the company allegedly sold about 25,000 of them—total. And even that was a bit of a feat (I think I referred to Photo CD at the time of its introduction as "three times the expense of prints with all the viewing convenience of a living room slide show"). Photo CD did turn out to be an important method for getting film images on to computers for a number of years, a usage Kodak initially wasn't especially concerned with or interested in.

The next "Instamatic-style success" was intended to be APS, the Advanced Photo System, a thoroughly engineered and exhaustively marketed from-the-ground-up system that gave consumers about what they were already getting, but with more profit and convenience for Kodak and the other film and camera manufacturers built in. The huge investment in APS, which fizzled before it faded, was one of the reasons Kodak was so cash-strapped and ill-prepared to respond when digital began its march to the sea.

Tragic
But I was speaking of the Instamatic. It was actually an atrocious little camera, the Lomo of its day only without the quirky contriarian charm. The lens was horrible and the easy-to-load negative wasn't big enough. But it was meant to be cheap to buy and easy to use, and it was both those things in spades (the "Flashcube," like the film cartridge, was a stroke of genius in that respect—four small flashbulbs in an automatically rotating clear plastic box). The pictures, unfortunately, were an accurate reflection of what you saw through the minuscule, smeary viewfinder. (And by the way, poor, low-contrast lenses like the Instamatic's were the reason why consumer color negative films were typically oversaturated and too contrasty.)

I did a project with the old Instamatic in photography school, making B&W prints from the color negatives. (I think the instructor who assigned it was trying to break me of perfectionism.)

It's a bit tragic, actually. Some of the snapshots I inherited from my family from 20 or 30 years prior to the era of the Instamatic were taken with a Zeiss folder that we found in my grandfather's house when he died but which I have since lost track of. It might have been a 6x9 Super Ikonta. The store-processed black-and-white snapshots from it are contact prints. Their quality and longevity is striking compared to Instamatic prints. Of course, the ease-of-use of 1930s folders was diametrically opposed to that of the Instamatic as well, which is why the latter came into being.

The lead designer for the Instamatic program was the protean Dean Peterson. And Hubert Nerwin, whose name is on the patent for the 126 cartridge, was a fascinating character too. (It's rather elitist and exclusionary that the "history of photography" leaves aside the technical history and its major figures—they ought to be at least as famous as people like lesser-known but important photographers, major curators, and so forth.) One of the 20th century's great camera designers, Nerwin worked for Zeiss before WWII and was involved in the design of many famous Zeiss Ikons, including the Contina and the exquisite Contessa 35. He came to America—literally on the same ship with rocket scientist Werner von Braun!—under Harry Truman's "Operation Paperclip," the OSS program designed to bring prominent German scientists and engineers to America (and keep them out of the clutches of the Russians). Moving his family to Rochester, Nerwin initially worked for Graflex, owned by Kodak, and then for Kodak itself. He retired in 1971.

I have lots of snapshots in my collection, and many of them have great charm. But few of the charming ones were taken with Instamatics. Many of my childhood memories were taken with an Instamatic, and I still have all those pictures, fading now. In the case of the ones I prize, I dearly wish they had been taken with a better camera.

...But then, without the Instamatic, they might never have been taken at all.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "The Instamatic was the Mustang of photography in the mid 'sixties—cute, small, fast, cheap. They were ubiquitous in the '64–'65 NYC World's Fair, another sign of 'the future' compared to their considerably clumsier counterparts."

John Hufnagel: "I still curse the Kodak Instamatic.

"I have restored, documented, digitized, and archived the many hundreds of photographs of my and my wife's families from the 1880s to the present.  What was a treasure lode of memories and family histories collapsed, seemingly inspired by the song 'New York Mining Disaster 1941,' with the introduction of the hated Instamatic.

"Within just a few years Kodak had convinced most of our family that photography was not a skill worth learning, and lousy, blurry, washed-out pictures were actually good.

"Even my oldest brother, a U.S. Army intelligence agent in Europe during the Viet Nam era, reported that most of the agents preferred cheap plastic Polaroid cameras (purchased out of petty cash) as G2's government-issued Leicas were 'too hard to use.'

"The result is a real dearth of documentary photographs from the early to mid 1960s until the advent of decent P&S cameras beginning around 1980. If it wasn't for the very few (three out of dozens) who owned Mamiya, Canon, and Pentax SLRs, our family would have very little from that period.  On the other hand, it made the collecting and archiving effort a lot smaller than it otherwise might have been...."

Steve Mason: "I started my photo career as a camera salesman. Every person I have ever had this conversation agrees, Kodak was its own worst enemy. I often had customers ask for an American-made 35mm camera; of course there were none since Kodak quit. As sales people we often got the skinny on new products and we were told of a new product coming soon. The rumors were of a sprocketless 35mm camera to take full advantage of the film size, we got the Disc camera. Kodak promised better B&W paper, we got plastic RC paper with very little silver. The list goes on and on, even when Fuji came into the picture and started offering better choices, Kodak knew best. As a car guy you can see the same story with GM, Ford and Chrysler during the '60s and '70s. We make it, you buy it."

Mike replies: Steve, that was my impression of Kodak for years: Wrong move, bad move, dumb move, repeat.