The Online Photographer

Don't use it to take pictures of the police...and when you go to that rally for the President or Prime Minister, better leave this at home!

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Photoscala is reporting this morning that Franke & Heidecke GmbH, of Braunschweig, Germany, will reorganize as DHW Photo Technik GmbH, initially with 30 employees, to sell products to both dealers and private consumers. Offerings will include three versions of the famous and historical TLR, several slide projectors, the Hy6, and bespoke versions of the Rollei 35 Classic in runs of one to five priced between €4,000 and €4,500 each. (Gulp. How's that for the economies of small scale?)

The three TLRs will be distinguished by their lenses. Available will be a 50mm ƒ/4 Super-Angulon wide angle, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar normal, and 135mm ƒ4 Tele-Xenar telephoto. (Kind of interesting to reconsider this old trio in light of the criticisms of Ricoh's lens-sensor modules, eh? The Rollei TLRs might be considered the granddaddies of lens-sensor redundancy.)

For a couple of nice samples of Rollei TLR pictures see here (by "clubgrit" from ClubSNAP) and here (by Christopher Schwer).

Featured Comment by James McDermott: "Well, as much as my Rollei T still seduces me from her perch on my bookshelf, I feel that, if my forthcoming bank robbery/lottery win/rich chick seduction (I wish) pays off, I might just have to have one of these absolutely last wide TLRs. Nothing comes close—big boy DSLRs, DMDs, rangefinders, whatever. If you absolutely have to make a statement whilst insouciantly making a piccy, these are the beasts."

T. J. Mapes owns a company called RIPT Apparel that sells T-shirts online. Every day they offer a new shirt design, and only for 24 hours.

The design for today (February 26th), by the Italian artist Saintgraphic, features a camera theme. $10 in men's and women's sizes.

I like the design-a-day concept. (And you thought a picture a day was hard....)

Mike

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Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "The artist has good taste. The still camera is a 1940 Kodak 35 RF. The external RF contraption was added to the Kodak 35 to compete with the Argus C3. Here's mine, bought for $17 at a local swap meet. 

"There's more about the camera at basepath.com.

"(I ordered the shirt, too.)"

Gotta love this...!

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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In the comments to Ken's nifty post below about the Olympus Pen, a reader named Antony Sheperd asked, parenthetically, "how many camera designers can people name? I can think of Barnack and Maitani."

Barnack...that got me to thinking. Barnack is well known, and always gets the credit for the Leica. Rightly so, of course. But no one ever mentions Willi Stein.

Barnack's line of Leicas was long-lasting and had many offshoots, ending with the magnificent IIIg (designed by Adam Wagner) which stayed in production until 1960 and has never been anything but prized.

So who was Willi Stein? He was the designer of the M3. To be more precise, Stein designed the camera; he and Ludwig Leitz designed the rangefinder; Heinrich Schneider and Willi Keiner engineered the finder optics; and Hugo Wehrenfennig was responsible for the M bayonet. (This information comes from Erwin Puts.)

Photo by Rama

The M3 was the noble progenitor of most of the Leica M rangefinders that came after it, with the exception of the M5 and the CL, or "compact Leica," which spun off the mysterious probably-Japanese, maybe-a-little-bit-German CLE (compact Leica electronic). I don't know who was responsible for the M5 (I'm sure I'm about to find out), but Stein designed the CL too. Willi Stein's M3 design is still very much in evidence in the M8 and the new M9. They are very different cameras, of course, but they pay homage every which way to Herr Stein's design. His line of Leicas has lasted longer even than Barnack's. They've been around for more than 55 years now.

And apart from that, the M3 has only the classic folding wooden-and-brass field view camera to compete with it for the title of the prettiest camera ever made. And quite possibly the title of most significant, too.

Let's not forget Herr Barnack. But when the subject of camera designers comes up, perhaps we should spare a thought for the oft-overlooked Willi Stein once in a while, too.

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Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "And, of course, Masahiko Fuketa, designer of the Nikon F."

Featured Comment by Chris Lucianu: "What about the most obvious name: Victor Hasselblad? By the way, this page shows Victor Hasselblad and Reinhold Heidecke (of Franke & Heidecke, makers of the legendary Rollei) taking pictures of each other."

Reinhold Heidecke and Victor Hasselblad taking pictures of each other, from hasselbladhistorical.eu

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "Lots of really significant camera and lens designers aren't well known to the public because, beginning in the 1950s especially, so many of them were Japanese. And aside from Olympus's promotion of Maitani, the Japanese optics and camera companies generally follow traditional Japanese cultural norms and do not single individuals out for special recognition.

"One such person who, if he were German or American, would be known worldwide is Nikon's Zenji Wakimoto, who has to rank as one of history's great lens designers. (A Google search will turn up a little bit of info about him.) He was the lead designer on many of Nikon's most famous camera lenses from the 1950s and 1960s, but he also designed the Ultra Micro-Nikkors of the 1960s and '70s, which were industrial process lenses that were the highest resolution lenses ever made at that time.

"The Ultra Micro Nikkors evolved into today's lenses for steppers, which are without question the highest precision optics ever put into regular production. A modern top-end stepper lens can resolve a line about 1/1000th the width of a human hair; they can weigh a ton or more and can be 5 ft. long by 2 ft. in diameter, and cost several million dollars apiece."

Featured Comment by David Goldenberg: "A remarkable camera designer who hasn't been mentioned here so far is Emanuel Goldberg (no relation, so far as I know). Goldberg was the head of Zeiss Ikon in the early 1930s, before escaping from the Nazis and making his way to what was then Palestine. At Zeiss Ikon, he designed the original Contax, elements of which were copied in the Nikon rangefinder cameras of the 1950s, and eventually wound up in the Nikon F (such as the removable back).

"But, the Contax was only a very small part of his career.  He worked on sensitometry and aspects of cinematography, including sound tracks.

"One of the most interesting things that he did was to devise, in the 1931, a scheme for indexing microfilm data with marks on the film edges that could be read by a photosensor.  This may have been the earliest implementation of electronic indexing. In 1945, the American scientist Vanevar Bush published a very influential article, entitled 'How we may think,' that described a very similar, but hypothetical, data retrieval machine, which many people consider the conceptual ancestor of hypertext. But, Goldberg's much earlier version has never received much attention.

"Information about Goldberg can be found at a web page maintained by Michael Buckland, who has studied his work and written a book about it."

By Ken Tanaka

Two thousand and nine thus far has seen some interesting and exciting new developments in camera design. Leica’s S2 perhaps shines brightest for the boldness of its new sensor format. But for those of us outside the investment banking and hedge-fund-management worlds, Olympus's E-P1 digital Pen represents a far more accessible and encouraging development. A small interchangeable-lens camera with good performance at a reasonable price: just what a big slice of the enthusiast market wants.

As it turns out, this is such an old tune that Frank Sinatra could have recorded it. So what's the root of the history that Olympus commemorates with the E-P1?

I knew nothing of the heritage of the Olympus Pen before the E-P1’s introduction. But as I nosed into the Pen’s history I found it to be a delightfully human story of ingenuity and perseverance in a culture that simultaneously celebrated and discouraged both.

The young Maitani
The year was 1956. Japan was well in its stride toward its post-war industrial swagger. The camera industry was doing well but looking to do much better as peacetime and brightening economies encouraged travel. The big Japanese optical companies, now deeply invested in camera manufacturing, were busy trying to knock off the industry’s prestige brand, Leica. Eiichi Sakurai, the head of Olympus’s camera division, became intrigued by a very clever rangefinder patent that a young student had filed. Breaking form from Japanese corporate protocol, Sakurai personally invited the student, Yoshihisa Maitani, to join Olympus in 1956 when he finished his university studies.

Maitani had loved cameras and photography since he was a boy. His family owned a Leica which he would often use on the sneak. He built his first camera when he was 10 and was fascinated by camera design.

But he never dreamed of trying to build a career from this interest. He was studying automotive engineering and, in fact, had already been offered a post-graduate position with an auto manufacturer when Sakurai approached him. But he eagerly joined Olympus where he was fast-tracked into camera design.

Maitani’s first big project was to design a small, precise, but easy-to-use consumer camera. The target price point was established as a meager 6,000 yen, roughly a third the price of Olympus’ least expensive cameras of that day. (Leicas were selling in the 200,000-yen range.) This low target price, plus Maitani’s decision to use a half-frame format to make the camera even more economically attractive to consumers, presented him with some formidable technical hurdles. But it was the organizational hurdles that proved to be far higher*. Basically Maitani had a very hard time getting anyone in Olympus to take the project seriously. A cheap half-frame camera was considered an unworthy junk project. The Olympus factory management even refused to build the cameras, forcing Maitani to outsource the Pen’s initial manufacturing.

But the smart and ambitious Maitani persevered. In October of 1959 the first Olympus Pen hit the market and became an instant bestseller in Japan. It also spawned a bit of a half-frame camera craze for the next decade and beyond.

Prototype of the original Pen, internally named the "Olympus 18" during development

The first Pen models were rather like squarish point-and-shoots, bearing little resemblance to the Leica-like form most commonly associated with the Pens (and which the E-P1’s design echoes). The design emphasis for these early Pens was quality, simplicity of use, and compactness. During the next nine years Olympus would introduce eleven models of these compact, fixed-lens Pen cameras to an eager worldwide market.

The Pens were a big hit with casual snappers but not as much with the burgeoning amateur enthusiast market. So in 1963 Olympus once again enlisted Maitani’s design talents, this time to create a Pen aimed at both serious amateurs as well as casual snappers; a Leica for the average Joe. This meant not only opening the Pen to interchangeable lenses but also maintaining a 35mm rangefinder-size body while using a reflex design. It also meant keeping the camera’s operation simple. These were formidable technical challenges for Maitani; fortunately, the record-breaking sales success of his first Pen designs had earned the young engineer significant stature within Olympus. He was even permitted to hire an assistant for this project! The result was the Pen F, the first and only single-lens reflex half-frame camera.**

The Pen FT with 38mm ƒ/1.8 Zuiko lens

Fast-forwarding to the 1966 Pen FT, the second and final F model**, we can see the culmination of Maitani’s design solutions. One of the main challenges in maintaining a small body was creating a through-the-lens viewfinder without the bulk of large Porro prisms to right the lens image. The solution was to create an elaborate system of tiny prisms and mirrors that compactly delivers a true image to the eyepiece. The compromise of the design was a somewhat dimmer viewfinder. This was not the big issue it would be today, since the camera could not even handle emulsion ASAs (ISOs) higher than 400. Few Pen owners were shooting in the dark.

Looking through the Pen F’s viewfinder can initially be a bit jolting. Since the camera uses a half-frame format it splits the normal 35mm frame horizontally in half. So rather than  36mm x 24mm you get an 18mm x 24mm frame oriented vertically. That is, holding the camera in a normal landscape orientation produces a portrait-oriented frame. (This actually turned out to be easy for me to get used to.)

Of course the Pen F predated the introduction of electronic exposure control by many years.  But it did feature a rather clever through-the-lens (TTL) metering system. Like most metered cameras of the day, the Pen F was basically what we would now call a "shutter-priority" exposure system. You first set a ballpark shutter speed between "Bulb," which keeps the shutter open for as long as you hold the shutter button down, and 1/500th of a second. As you look through the viewfinder you see a floating photometer needle point to a number on the left. You then turn the lens’s aperture ring to index at that number to produce a "correct" or metered exposure! What could be simpler?

The Pen F's unique vertical mirror

Strip of 35mm film shot with the Pen FT

Exposures
Olympus knew that getting good exposures was the primary challenge of using cameras of the day. They also knew that the average camera owner had no interest in dealing with those f-numbers. They demanded (and still demand) maximum simplicity. 

But the shutterbugs love "those f-numbers."

Maitani’s solution to draw both types of customers was remarkably simple and effective. Pen F lenses featured an aperture ring that had two sets of indexes, one corresponding to the viewfinder’s simple 0-1-2-3 etc. meter indications, the other showing the actual f-stops (1.8, 2, 2.8, etc.). These indexes were engraved 180 degrees opposite each other on a floating outer ring which could be read from either the top or bottom of the lens barrel. If you were a "sophisticated" owner you could even rotate this index ring to show f-stops on top. (You would have to count stops to correspond to the meter numbers but, hey.) Problem solved!

Aperture ring indexes in the standard position

Aperture ring indexes in the advanced user position

Olympus took a new marketing tack to sell the Pen F. They very much wanted a piece of that Leica trade, particularly from the U.S.. The camera had a similar size and feel to a Leica but for a price of $140–$170 it was a much cheaper thrill. They enlisted photojournalist Eugene Smith to endorse the Pen F, giving it a certain "Marlboro Man" panache. (Can you imagine such an ad these days?!) Instead of calling the Pen F a "half-frame" camera, which sounded wimpy and discounted, Olympus called it a "single-frame" camera. Isn’t advertising fascinating?

It worked.  Although they were nearly forgotten today, Olympus’ Pen cameras became one of the most successful lines of cameras in history, selling over 17 million units in just over ten years.

Maitani after the Pen
Following his work on the Pen Yoshihisa Maitani designed many other Olympus cameras such as the iconic OM-1, the OM-4, and the XA. Maitani actually became a celebrity for Olympus after being featured in a famous series of ads, something quite rare within the whack-a-mole conformity of 20th century Japanese business. (He even has a fan site!) Maitani retired as a managing director of Olympus in 1996 following an extremely successful 40-year career.

Sadly, Maitani passed away this past July at the age of 76. I hope he was able to see the digital incarnation of his Pen. Warts and all, I think it would have made him smile.

Ken

P.S. I did not receive any form of compensation or cooperation from Olympus for writing this article. I researched it myself and I own all of the equipment used and/or illustrated.

Related References:
The World of the Pen
YouTube Pen Channel

*Yoshihisa Maitani’s account of the Pen’s development is a fascinating story of problem-solving and of mid-20th century Japanese industrial culture. You can read his first-hand account in this English translation of a speech he delivered in 2005.

**See Hugh Crawford's and Dwig's comments in the Comments section.

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Featured Comment by Skip Williams: "If anyone is looking for more detailed information on the history of the system, I have 14 scanned vintage advertising and editorial pieces on my site. There are a few more that I have, but have not had a chance to scan."

The "Ugly Cameras" discussion reminded me of something from way back in the hazy reaches of early memory.

My first camera when I was young was a Kodak Instamatic 104, which I still have. I used it on my 7th grade trip to Washington, D.C., and I recall using profligate amounts of film at the Gettysburg Battlefield Park (I was a Civil War buff as a kid—at one point I had memorized all the names of all the generals, North and South). But I believe that even before that, possibly from before I was born, my father owned an Argus C3.

He also owned a Zeiss Contaflex B, and that one I remember vividly. I loved it—I loved its solid construction, its shutter sound (a crisp, clean, quiet, well-oiled snick), and the "clear" pictures it made (compared to my Instamatic, anyway)—although I used it solely to take pictures as references for paintings and drawings. I managed to get "our" Zeiss stolen—I worked at Kentucky Friend Chicken the summer I was 14, and while opening the store one morning I left the camera sitting on the electrical box outside, where I had put it momentarily while I unlocked the door. I brought my bike indoors but I forgot about the camera. When I remembered it much later, it was gone. I still have regular anxiety dreams about losing cameras, although that was the only one I've ever lost. My father (generously, under the circumstances) bought me a very nice Konica T3 for my 16th birthday, with which I shot my first public "show"—hung in the lunchroom of the prep school I attended.

Zeiss Contaflex Super B. Photo from J. Vaughan Collectors' Cameras page.

Rather a long way to go to make a minor point, but the thing I'm remembering is that the Argus held zero appeal to me as a boy. It felt awkward and foreign to hold, it was hard to work its controls, it had a tiny, obscure viewfinder, and I remember having no interest in finding out what kind of pictures it took. I was not curious to use it and it inspired no possessiveness in me. Quite the opposite of "my" beloved Zeiss.

As I recall, my father didn't much like the Argus either, although I could be wrong about that.

I wonder if I would have gotten into photography in quite the same way I did, or as soon, if the Argus had been my father's only camera? I think probably not—that Zeiss had a strong appeal to me. It made me want to use it—a feeling that I can still conjure today, as I reminisce.

(P.S. In retrospect, it seems odd that the management would entrust a 14-year-old with the responsibility of opening a retail store in the morning, even if it was only a KFC stand.)

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After I published the post called "The Leica as Teacher" on May 28th, followed by "Why It Has To Be a Leica" the next day, a number of people contacted me to say that they'd been inspired to try the "one Leica, one lens, one year" experiment that I was suggesting. (Good going and good luck to one and all, by the way!)

My old friend Nick Hartmann did that very experiment—one lens, one Leica—but he did it for almost a decade. He contacted me last week wanting to know how he might de-accession his old trusty Leica and 50mm Summicron while at the same time helping it to get into the hands of someone who might want to use it for its intended purpose.

So: one Leica, one lens for Sale. Cosmetically it's what would be called a "good user"—it has a few scars, and some scratches on the baseplate. Probably the worst thing appearance-wise is that Nick blacked out the engraved camera name and the "red dot" with a sharpie, and, when that didn't quite work, covered them with black electrician's tape. He's removed the tape, but the engraving and the red dot don't look so hot.

However, it's been treated well and scrupulously maintained since new. Nick bought it in September of 1996 and used it "almost daily" until April of 2005. During that time he logged 500 rolls of film (you can see some of his work online), which means the camera has seen about 20,000 shutter actuations. The M6 shutter will go to about 100,000 shots before needing service, and has been known to last for as many as 400,000. So there's a lot of life left in this one.

The lens is also somewhat "experienced," but the rear element has been protected by being on the camera since new, and the front element has always had a protective filter on it.

Mike and Zander at the Cozy Corner, Oak Park, by Nick Hartmann

Nick shot one of the best photo archives I have—for years when we'd see one another I'd drag Zander along to whatever restaurant we met at, and Nick would take pictures of us, then send prints to me. I have them all in an archival box, and the set as a whole is a lovely record of me and my son over the years of my adventure in single parenthood. Most of those pictures, of course, were shot with this very camera and lens.

Anyway, if you're one of those who are thinking of trying the "Leica year" experiment, here's a camera you can use. Nick would like to get $1475 for the camera and lens, which seems a fair going price. He'll stand behind the sale, as will I: in June, a year from now, if you'd like to re-sell the Hartmann Leica again (assuming of course you haven't done anything grievous to it in the meantime), I'll advertise it again here on TOP and you can pass it along to someone else who wants to try it.

Anyway, if you're interested, leave a comment to that effect and I'll pass your email address along to Nick. (In order, if there is more than one.)

BONUS: In the spirit of passing useful things along, the buyer of the Leica can also do a favor for another (perhaps young, perhaps impecunious) photographer he or she knows: Nick will send a "good user" Canon EOS Rebel XT DSLR and an EF 50mm ƒ/1.8II lens to a photographer of your choice, for free. Just let him know the name and address of the person you want the DSLR to go to when you make the arrangements for the M6.

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UPDATE: About ten people have expressed interest now, in the comments and via email (it's about 6 p.m. here in the Midwest). Nick won't be in his office until Monday morning, but he'll get in touch with people then, in order. If it doesn't go to #1, then it will go to #2, and so on...in any event I think we can safely say it's sold now. Thanks to everybody who expressed interested, and if you just missed it, sorry about that.

I'm really rather exhausted...lots of comments to the two previous posts, plus, many people have sent me private emails, many of them long and involved.

Some of the comments got pretty far off track. I was pretty sure they would. I'd remind some of y'all that this is just one possible learning exercise I've proposed, and I proposed it explicitly for beginners (remember?). It's not the secret of happiness or the One True Path, and I'm not Sir Dektolius, Keeper of the Grail.

All this stuff...it's really all about what happens in the mind. The didactic strategies are just ways of opening up the pathways of thinking—which, since this is photography we're talking about, means visual intelligence—seeing photographically. How you train your mind to see is the whole puzzle.

Some people are very eager for the camera not to matter, but like it or not, the camera can help. Cameras don't take pictures, true; but then, people don't take pictures either. People with cameras take pictures.

And you're unlikely to be able to train your mind to hit an exact moment if you have a camera that can't respond immediately. You can't learn how the lens sees if you're constantly switching lenses. You can't learn how to operate the camera without thinking if the camera requires too much thinking to operate. It's just a question of deciding which lessons might be worth learning and how best to get them into your brain. Don't make too much of it.

Now then, a few variations on the theme from the previous posts.

Variation #1: Substitute a simple "MMM" (metal, manual, mechanical) SLR for the Leica. Maybe you have one in the closet.

Variation #2: Substitute a different rangefinder for the Leica.

Variation #3: Substitute a medium-format rangefinder for the 35mm Leica. Easier to scan the filmstrips on a flatbed, for one thing—this is the way I'd go if I were doing that.

Variation #4: Substitute color negative film for the black-and-white negative film. There's just no way other than using black-and-white film any more to reach that state where you learn to "see" luminances and ignore color, and I really do think it's an interesting and instructive way to see the world, even if you only do it temporarily. But let's face it, darkroom work is too much for most people these days (even me, and I never thought I'd say such a thing), and finding good black-and-white processing is tough. Even with photo processing contracting as a business, it's still a lot easier to get color neg film processed and proofed. So, if you must, okay.

I'm probably just getting my head turned by those 50-100 people who say they intend to actually take my advice and do the "TOP training" thing for a year...I know most people who are all fired up now will probably not stick with it for long. But let's make a date for next May. If anyone actually manages to follow through, I'd love to hear how it went. 

Variation #5: Do it for 4–6 weeks instead of a year. It's not total immersion, and not long enough to get "the feel of the wheel." But you'll know a lot more about how the water is if you get your sock off and stick your toe in.

A short primer on black-and-white films
• Tri-X. Tri-X (say "try ex") is made by Eastman Kodak. The code is "TX" and it's ISO 400 speed. There's another film called Tri-X that's a totally different film, Tri-X Professional (TXP rollfilm and TXT sheet film); the way to tell them apart is the nominal speed: the Pro film is labelled 320 and the regular Tri-X is 400. Stick with the 400 stuff. But I recommend not pushing it: it's actually closer to a 250-speed film than 400, so shoot it at 200 or 250.

• HP-5 Plus. Ilford's 400-speed film is sharper than Tri-X but not as forgiving and (IMO) not quite as nice tonally. On the other hand, it matches better to Ilford's papers.

• 400 Delta. A thin-emulsion, fine-grain 400-speed film from Ilford that's a bit touchier and tougher to master the the two above. Better for scanning, though, if you're going to go that route.

• Fuji Neopan 400. Fuji's competitor to Tri-X and HP-5 Plus; I like it marginally less well than the other two. In D-76, at least, its grain is a bit mealy and the upper part of the curve seems a bit exaggerated.
But basically I'd use whichever of these films is easiest to get wherever you are.

• Ilford XP-2 Super and Kodak BW400CN. So-called "chromogenic" films that use color negative technology to yield a monochrome negative. Require C-41 (color negative) processing, the advantage being that most labs and some drugstores will process it along with regular color neg film. Two possible downsides are that the negatives aren't as permanent as silver negs (at least, that was true ten years ago), and drugstore-made proof prints often have a color cast. Printed well by a good custom printer, the prints can be very beautiful. The chromogenic films have a different look than regular B&W films; when heavily-exposed areas are replaced by dye clouds, the result is very grainless and smooth, meaning that the films handle highlights well, especially things like clear skies.

Mike

NOTE: If you're looking for good black-and-white processing, I can recommend my friend Bob Meier. Bob charges $12.50 to develop a roll of B&W film and proof it by contact, plus $2.00 return postage for any number of processed rolls of film. He does good work.

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Featured Comment by Jonathon Delacour: "Mike, the only thing that could have been more dispiriting than the carping and/or hostile responses to your last two generous and insightful posts is what has transpired: that, under the onslaught of ill-considered nitpicking, you've felt compelled to water down your original suggestion.

"Hopefully, three out of your 30,000 daily visitors will have the courage and humility to do the exercise, exactly as you prescribed. No ifs or buts, just buy the Leica and a single lens and spend a year shooting. For me, it was an M2 plus a 35mm Summicron using Tri-X developed in D-76. Where did the money come from? Like you, from part-time jobs. (At what point in our lives do we begin to echo our parents?)

"Consider the (ultimately reimbursable) cost of the Leica as representing a kind of challenge, similar to those encountered and overcome in any hero's journey. In other words, someone says he or she is serious about learning to take good photographs, let's see how serious. (A friend who taught printmaking in an art school was stunned when a student told her he couldn't afford the materials needed to complete an assignment. She said to me in exasperation: 'So why doesn't he give up smoking?')

"I suspect that much of the resistance is prompted by the fact that, as eloquently as you explained it in your second post, unless one has actually shot with a Leica, it's truly difficult to understand why a Leica is the only tool for this particular job.

"Not a metal, manual, mechanical SLR. Not a different brand of 35mm rangefinder. Not a medium-format rangefinder. Not color negative film. And not for 4–6 weeks.

"A Leica. One lens. Black-and-white negative film. For a year. Report back at the end of May, 2010.

"As the Zen master said, 'The further you travel along a narrow path, the wider it becomes.'"

Mike adds: Really, the only reason I suggested the original exercise is empirical. I've been a nut about photography for many years. It's true that I'm more of a writer and teacher than a photographer, but I've been enthusiastically learning and experimenting in all manner of ways since about 1980. Timewise, that puts me ahead of some people and behind some others. The quality of my effort has been sporadically very good; I've read a lot and looked at a lot of original work, listened to a lot of people, deliberately chased a lot of experiences. Again, that puts me behind some people (especially those who have chosen different tangents to their journeys, or more specialization) but ahead of...and here I will say most others. As a photographer, I've been interested in didactics as much as accomplishment. What's valuable and what's not? What's interesting and what's not? Which lessons are worth pursuing? And there I can't say for certain what every practitioner will experience—people are, after all, different. 

The exercise that I suggested was just one of the ones that helped me the most over those years, and that I found the most informative and interesting.

Frankly, I've noticed that viewfinders that do more for me help me more—that is, viewfinders that go more of the way towards suggesting what a scene will look like reduced to two dimensions bounded by distinct borders. Digital viewing screens are probably the best for this. I had a minor personal Renaissance—and a blast—when I acquired my first "live view" digicam. I suspect the EVF in the Panasonic G1 would also make it easier to "translate" pictures. Its viewfinder looks like a tiny TV, that strongly reduces every view to two dimensions. But handy as they are, they're not challenging. The rangefinder window, on the other hand, doesn't help you at all. It leaves the visualization entirely up to you. 

Why is this valuable? Well, only because the rangefinder view is very close to how we see with the naked eye. The more you are forced to learn to visualize a picture through a rangefinder window, and accommodate to that, the easier it becomes to see pictures just by looking at the world without using a camera at all.

Naturally, there are a thousand ways to learn most things, and, just as naturally, most people will never learn most things there are to know. But the premise of my original tossed-off post is that the Leica, specifically, is itself a kind of teacher, in that it lays bare the need for certain skills and abilities that really have to be provided by its user. I can't say that's something that I would like to be stuck with permanently...I'm not sure I'm talented enough to cope with it. But engaging with it for a year was an experience that I valued at the time, and find that I value even more now, almost fifteen years later.

I was shocked to learn, the other day, from that little "Do they still make the M7?" video, that Leica is only selling 100 to 150 film cameras a month, mostly to Asians, for whom camera collecting is a more prestigious and popular pasttime than it is elsewhere. Probably, few of those cameras end up being used hard, even for a year. What it made me realize is that this very fecund strain of influence is sifting inexorably out of currency: it's absolutely on the way out. For 55 years, the strange little device that is the Leica M has had an incalculable influence on many of the world's most talented and accomplished photographers. It suggested ways of working, encouraged certain skills and mental abilities and habits, that helped many people create a huge body of work that is valuable in very many ways, in its corpus and its typical characteristics and its influences, and will continue to be. Some of the "nitpickers" as you call them choose to emphasize that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new era in photography. Which is true. But just as surely, everyone reading this also finds themselves at the end of an era that is not quite yet gone. Embracing the future certainly has value. But taking hold of the best of the recent past while it still retains a little currency and viability might be valuable too. Especially for the young, whose life journeys will take them farther away from it than us "old guys" will ever get. Specifically, from the not-so-lofty perch of my modest 52 years, I'm convinced that any 20-year-old who spends a year shooting Tri-X with a Leica now will value that photographic experience more and more as the years of their own lives slip past, and as that method, and the possibility of that experience, slips ever more irretrievably into obscurity. I just can't imagine them regretting it, thirty years from now.

Featured Comment by Bernd Reinhardt: "I want to plug a custom lab in Los Angeles for Black and White. It's called Schulman Photo Lab. They are a small custom black and white lab, and the owner is a master printer in his forties. I think the price for processing and proof sheet is in the twelve dollar range, and they are very good. He is one of the few master printers left that do real darkroom work and I know that this economy can be rough on a place like this. I have no affiliation to them other than being a happy customer."

Featured Comment by Chris Bertram: "I appreciated the advice Mike, even though I'm not going to take it...I'm not a 20-year-old with a possible life as a photographer in front of me, but a 50-year-old with a demanding non-photographic job. I've got a keen interest in the medium (and its history) but I'm never going to follow the zen path you suggest. For those of us in the middle-aged amateur enthusiast category, I thought this post over at Shutterfinger was very useful."

I honestly didn't mean this to be a big thing on the blog this week, but I guess, by popular demand, I have to elaborate. But please see the note at the very end of this post.

First of all, what I'm suggesting is an exercise. Young people think a year is a very long time. All us older people know it isn't. A year spent learning several important aspects of photography at once, in a concerted way, will pay off for many years after that, regardless of where you take it later. That's assuming you really want to be a photographer in the first place, of course.

Why using a Leica for a year doesn't cost anything, as several commenters have correctly guessed: a used M6 goes for between $1000 to $1200, give or take, and won't depreciate much (if at all) in a year. How much interest would your bank give you right now for keeping that grand parked in a savings account for that period of time? I don't know if you've checked interest rates recently, but the answer is "not very much." At the end of the year you'll lose maybe $100, counting shipping and Ebay fees and lost bank interest, maybe $200 if you're unlucky and/or impatient. Dave Terrell recounts, in the comments to the previous post, how he used some Leica gear for four years and came out $140 ahead. The same has been true for me. I've owned three Leicas at various times over the years, and I made money on two of them. Not much, but the upshot was that the three together ended up not costing me a dime to own and shoot with for a while. Not a dime. (Wish I could say the same for my digital cameras, which have collectively depreciated more than enough to cover a nice Leica and a good lens.) If you do what I suggest, film and paper, or outside processing and printing, will cost much more than the camera will—and both will be dwarfed by the value of the time you'll put in.

And in case you're feeling all whiney about not being able to come up with a grand for the camera: you're young. Work. Save up. Get an extra job. Sacrifice a little. Drink less. Get motivated and go find the damn money, for chrissake. (Malcolm Forbes used to say that no motorcycle enthusiast should be jealous of his motorcycle collection, because any working stiff could afford one motorcycle, and one is all anybody really needs.) Even if you don't have enough credit with anyone on Earth to borrow a grand for a year, it's still not impossible. When I wanted my first camera, I worked two jobs, seven days and 70 hours a week. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to do that for the rest of my life, but after a few months of that grind I had my camera and lens. In any event, if you're not committed to being out of pocket to the tune of $100 or $200 for a camera you're going to use every day for a year, well, then maybe you aren't committed enough for this exercise, is all. No penalty, no prison time. But don't complain.

Why it has to be a Leica: well, other cameras can be good teachers too. But the Leica is the best teacher, and here's why you should pick it and not a substitute:

1. It's no fun to look through. Totally boring, in fact. Just a window. The framelines aren't even accurate, so you you can't get all prissy about edges and exact framing. And about that "what you see is what you get" with an SLR, digital or otherwise? Not so, because you're always seeing through the lens at its maximum aperture, meaning its minimum d.o.f., aberrations maximized. That particular distortion is just as distracting as parallax and the other flaws of rangefinder viewing, just different. The RF camera sees like you should during this year: at a glance, taking everything in at once. A few months of shooting with a Leica and you'll start to get a feel for what aperture you need for what depth of field. (Mostly I think you'll learn it's not as all-fired important as the SLRs—and the online forums—would lead you to believe.)

2. The Leica is really simple—truly, "as simple as possible, and no simpler." (Well, except for that frameline-preview lever.) You know what "the feel of the wheel" is? It's when you've been driving for a few months and suddenly you realize you don't have to think about anything consciously any more. When you first got behind the wheel of a car, you had to think about everything. After a while it becomes second nature. You think what you want to happen, and it happens. I'm not saying this is some deep spiritual thing. I'm reminded of the old joke—what did the guru say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything." But "becoming one" with the camera is a cool thing, and a good lesson. It is really, really hard to achieve on a modern DSLR, because they're not built for that. I'm not saying it's necessary to learn to handle the camera this way to do good work or anything like that, but it is really cool, cool enough that it's worthwhile experiencing at least once in your life with cameras.

3. The Leica is quiet. Not super quiet, any more, but quiet enough. It changes how you can shoot compared to most SLRs. You'll see.

4. The Leica is really responsive. First of all, it doesn't ever do one damn thing you don't tell it to do. Modern cameras are your servants: always stepping in trying to help, always trying to take things out of your hands and do the work for you. Which is fine. But we're talking about learning here, and you will learn more if you have to do everything yourself for a while. Think of the difference: who is better off, the rich man who has servants doing everything for him, but who is fully capable of taking care of himself if he has to, or the rich man who is helplessly dependent on his servants to take care of him, and would perish without them? Learn to pull your own weight, then go back to all the helper-cameras. You'll be infinitely better off. Forever, not just for the time being.

And the shutter lag is 18 milliseconds, with a very positive mechanical shutter feel. That, coupled with the total absence of blackout in the viewfinder window, will teach you to take the picture at the exact right moment, not some vague approximation of it. All good pros know how to do this, regardless of how they learned it.

5. A Leica is cool to wear in any language, in any country. You don't need to make excuses, feel sheepish, wish you had something else, worry about your image, etc. If you can't get better, then you never have to fret about not having good enough.

6. Finally, and just as importantly as any other reason here: a Leica is a Leica. The icon, the legend, all that, yatta yatta. It has been responsible for far more than its share of great work; more great photographers used it in the second half of the twentieth century than any other camera, at least part of the time. You can see even in the comments to the previous post that the camera provokes strong emotions and opinions; no other 35mm excites nearly the same passions nearly as universally in our little craft. Until you get to grips with a Leica, you haven't gotten to grips with a Leica. So, do it. Then you'll know firsthand what everyone is bloviating about, and need never suffer a scintilla more angst on that account.

Do this while you're young, and have time in your life. Do it while you have the energy to commit, while all your possibilities are still open, while you still have the motivation to stay in training. Because make no mistake, photographing the way I suggested in the previous post is the photographic equivalent of being a top athlete: it takes dedication and coordination and talent and time and sacrifice and lots of training. Not everybody can do it. (I can't, these days. Too old, slow, stiff and lazy.) This whole idea works better—it's simply more possible for most of us—when we're young and have energy to throw away. You can tell from the comments that a lot of our readers have done something similar to this at some point in their lives, and only a few don't agree it was a good thing for them.

So what I'm suggesting is that you devote a year and some cash and work your butt off and learn some lessons about photographing that will stick in your brain pan throughout the rest of your life. It's not a film vs. digital thing; you can go back to digital and never look back and it will still never stop helping you. It's not a black-and-white vs. color thing; a year of seeing "luminances only" will help your color photography too, even if you never shoot another "capture" of B&W in your life. It's not a rangefinder vs. any-other-kind-of-camera thing; I think you'll find that the lessons the rangefinder will teach you are exportable. And it's not even a Leica vs. other-rangefinder thing, either. But until you've gotten to know life with Leica, you don't know about life with Leica, and it's just going to keep on being one more thing you don't know. So why not get to know it, firsthand and for yourself?

I don't even really like rangefinders. Most other people don't either. (What they like is Leicas, not rangefinders, for many reasons, some sensible, some stupid.) If they did, there would be more people buying them, and there would be a few viable digital rangefinders on offer. The reason there aren't is that only a few people really like the damn things.

They still have a lot to teach you, though, in my humble opinion. Most people will never get to, but a year with a Leica as a teacher is something every passionate photographer would experience once in their lifetimes if they were really lucky.

P.S. A year with a view camera, too. But, as Ctein would say, "Put down the can opener and step slowly away from the worms...."

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N.b.: Again, remember, nobody's going to actually do what I'm suggesting. It's an historical moment whose time has passed. I'm glad I got my year in, but the experience is going to be extremely rare in the future. So if you're tempted to get your bonnet all askew over this, please don't bother.

As to why then I bothered to spell all this out, people asked, that's all.

UPDATE (5/6/10): Two illustrations were removed from this post at the photographer's request.

Featured Comment by Tod Papageorge: "Two great posts, I think, and not only because they echo a sweet tirade I've been abusing my graduate students with for the last several years (none of whom has used any kind of 35mm camera over that period). I resist getting mystical about the Leica, as the fact that I earned my great friend Garry Winogrand's less-than-benign puzzlement when I gave it up for a medium-format Fujica should testify. But, sorry everyone, or some of you, there really is nothing else remotely like a Leica for in-the-hand picture-making, and the only reason I could consider setting it aside for the clumsy Fujica was precisely because I'd put in a decade of steady practice using it and was ready to apply what I'd learned to a more ponderous kind of process.

"Also great to see Garry and his between-the-legs method. In all the years I knew him, never once, not once, did I observe him resort to this particular shooting style. He must have been inspired by Arnold."

Featured Comment by Paul Amyes: "I teach photography at an art school and we are just starting to get the first totally digital generation of students coming through—they have never used anything but digital. The first year of the three year program has them shooting monochrome, developing and printing. We recommend totally manual cameras with a 50mm prime. They all bitch about this and say they know all there is to know about exposure and composition. Second semester tranny [transparencies] is introduced to teach them a little more about exposure and composition. The rate of improvement is considerable as they learn that they have to work for an image. At the end of the first year they have to produce a portfolio of 16 B&W prints of professional standard. It is at this stage the penny drops and they realise what we h ave been on about.

"Oh, and second year it's all 5x4 transparency in the studio and on location.

"As to Mike's suggestion about the Leica, yes I would tend to agree with him, only because the depreciation is very small. Any rangefinder would do, and a few of the students who really catch on buy Bessas. But I think most people would benefit from doing this exercise using an OM-1, a K1000 or an FM, as long as they used just one prime. when I first started I had an old Praktica Super TL and a 50mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss. It was truly an agricultural experience but I have still got a couple of the photos from those days which have stood up rather well to the test of time. So just get a mechanical 35mm camera and just one lens—35–50mm is probably best—and shoot away."

Apropos the video we linked the other day, I would just like to throw this out there for what little it's worth...if any young or beginning photographer of real ambition within the sound of my voice would like to radically improve his or her photography quickly and efficiently, I suggest shooting with nothing but a Leica and one lens for a year. Shoot one type of black-and-white film (yes, even if you're completely devoted to color and digital, and hate film and everything it stands for. You don't have to commit to this forever; it's an exercise). Pick a single-focal-length 50mm, or 35mm, or 28mm. It doesn't have to be a "good" lens—anything that appeals to you and that fits the camera will do. Carry the camera with you all day, every day. Shoot at least two films a week. Four or six is better (or shoot more in the spring and fall and less in the dead of summer and winter). The more time you spend shooting, the better. The amount of film you shoot is related but not so important. (Photographing is like jogging: benefit accrues to time spent doing it, not how fast you go or how much ground you cover.)

Proof the rolls of film by contact and file them sequentially in a notebook. Get or make between one and six workprints per roll, however you choose to do it (even if you scan your picks and look at the pictures on a computer screen), and, every five or ten rolls or so, have one nice print made, or make it yourself. Craft well, but don't crop and don't fuss; just take what the camera gives you.

If you don't like this idea, no need to get all scornful or whimpery with me. If there are, say, 30,000 people reading this (approximately our average daily readership, an astounding fact that still mystifies me), a couple of thousand might think this suggestion is a sound one; 50 to 100 might read this and sincerely intend to follow the suggestion; and, maybe, one, two, or three people will actually follow through and do it. So if you're among the other 28,000, no need to bother defending or rationalizing your opposition. You're solidly in the majority as it is.

But I'll say this: A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist.

At the end of your year, sell the Leica and go back to doing whatever you really want to do, whether it's full-frame digital or a digicam and Potatochopping or whatever it is. I guarantee you will be a much better photographer after you finish the year than you were before you started. You just will be. It's a promise.

I'm not trying to be didactic or contrarian or provocative here. What I say is simply true.

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Mike adds: In response to many of the comments, no, it doesn't have to be a Leica—except if you want to take my advice, in which case it does have to be. Must be, in fact. There are half a dozen excellent reasons why. I'll try not to get my feelings hurt that people would think I'd specify something like that (in the title of the post no less) without good reason. Of course, no one is under the slightest obligation to take my advice, and many people would want to modify my suggestions to suit their own taste: a different mechanical rangefinder is next best, a "manual, mechanical, metal" 35mm SLR next after that.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Leicas for projects such as this are not costly; they're free. Or very close to it. Although, if you find yourself suddenly interested in buying a Leica from Ebay, I'd suggest waiting a few weeks so you won't be bidding against other people who have also just read this post.