Are Leica owners photographers or technophiles?
New photography
There is a supposedly apocryphal story about some of the early Leica adopters, Kertesz and Munkacsi, that they immediately adopted the Leica camera after handling one and sensing the potential of the instrument for a ne w kind of photography. For a long period, from say 1927 to about 1965, the golden age of documentary photography, the Leica stayed the preferred image making tool for two generations of concerned photographers. The properties of the camera supported the goals and style of the photographers and it is quite obvious that they worked within the limitations of the camera. In fact that was the power of the documentary style of photography. In Capa's words: if the picture is bad, you are not close enough. The compact and fast Leica camera (and Contax or Canon or Nikon RF) allowed the photographer to become immersed in the scene. It is also well-known that Cartier-Bresson was not interested in exposure, assuming that the flexibility of the film material and the expertise of the lab assistant would compensate.
The Leica camera had functional value in those days and the technique was instrumental for the result. The final image however had the emotional value and the camera was simply the tool to express visually the emotional connotations.
There exists a fleeting but real relationship between the qualities of the technical tools and the results that you can create with the tool. A finely crafted car is more pleasure to drive than a mediocre car and a Stradivarius can heighten the quality of the music when there is a rapport between the musician and the tool. Bu however well crafted the tool, it is never an end in itself.
Boys toys
In a book, called 'Fotopsychologie' the German social scientist Schuster analyses the psychological roots of the enduring attraction of the image and the image making process: smiling for eternity is the subtitle. Here we do not find an expose of the art approach to photography, but the analysis focuses on the everyday experiences of the amateur photographer. There is also a chapter about the role of the camera as an object of affection. It is evidently the case that many camera collectors admire the tools they collect. Many Leica owners however have a special relation to the camera, that transcendent the collector role. One Leica owner is cited as saying that he adores his Leica with heart and soul. Some time ago, a book was published in Germany about the Leica M6, with the subtitle: my declaration of love for the Leica M6. This attitude is quite widespread: a glance at the many Leica User Groups and personal sites devoted to the Leica show many comparable emotions. Schuster thinks that especially the male part of the human race is focused on technological gadgets and mechanical equipment, like cars, as a substitute for the teddy bear of the youth: you have a very strong emotional bond to the teddy bear, because the relationship to that toy gives comfort and nurses love. One can with reason note the superficiality of this analysis, but it is a fact that the Leica camera generates quite a high level of affection and that the Leica community does not accept critical comments. Another book about the M6, by author Scholz, is much better researched and documented than the above mention love declaration, but because of the critical distance that Scholz has to the adoration of Leica aficionados for every Leica product, he has been effectively silenced in Germany at least.
Technical expertise
It goes without saying that one cannot take technically sound pictures without some knowledge and expertise of the technicalities involved. That was true in the film-based age and is equally valid in the digital age. In fact the consumer-electronics industry has incorporated photographic equipment and the shift form hardware to software is most evident in recent years. We all know by experience that the mastery of the software is more time consuming than mastery of the chemical processes. When you know the basics of film development and the impact of the different chemicals on the negative quality, you can proceed for a long period without new learning. It is by the way interesting to note that you could select one film, but needed several developers to extract that quality from the emulsion that is required for different purposes: best definition, best tonal range, best contrast compensation. All purpose developers do exist. That balance and compromise between conflicting demands. In digital photography we are in the same situation: there is not one Raw developer that suits all demands optimally: is is best to buy and use e suite of Raw products that are best for optimizing some aspects of the image: detail definition, contrast compensation, high light recovery etc. There is not one developer that is best to deliver all these classical characteristics. Of course the industry and many dedicated users of a single product will beg to differ.
To create the pictures you want to show and feel comfortable with, one needs to experiment and fine tune the parameters. But what is happening now in most Leica User Groups is an over the top show of technophile obsession. It is now accepted that conspicuous consumption is a fact of life and one that is being nourished by the industry at large: you consume not for pleasure but to show who you are. And because we all want to stay in the early adopters part of the product evolution, we feel compelled to buy and consume new products as soon as they arrive on the market. Who dares to confess that he still uses Photoshop 5.5 and feels happy with it?
Product evaluation and product comparison is nowadays easy: to measure acutance and tonal scale of a film, one needed sophisticated equipment and a lens test was prohibitively complicated: MTF analysis or an optical bench are not to be found at every street corner. The analysis of a digital file (aka digital image) is a piece of cake: a program like Imatest does a good job and Photoshop can blow up any mage to 800% at a computer screen and allows the user to analyze an image pixel for pixel.
What to measure and why?
There is an old engineering proverb that says that to measure is to know. But this is valid only when you know what you measure and why and when you do not forget what you wanted to know. The recent discussion of focus shift in high speed lenses is a good example: focus shift has been known for a long period in the domain of optical design and lens testers have always been aware of the fact and its effects on the image quality. The Noctilux when stopped down to 5.6 has a lower contrast and resolution that the Summicron stopped down to the same aperture. Picture by picture comparisons do show the difference. The differences are small but recognizable when you know what to look for and how to explain what you see.
Recent experiences with the Zeiss ZM Sonnar 1.5/50 and the Leica Summilux 1.4/35 ASPH have drawn widespread attention to this phenomenon, that existed for years in all high speed lenses, but was not recognized as such.
The main difference with the past is the approach and attitude: in the past you accepted the fact and tried to cope with the effects. You know the strengths and weaknesses of the material you use and you work in such a way that the strengths are optimized and the limitations minimized. Now it seems we demand that the lenses should be redesigned to reduce focus shift and that a lens which exhibited the effect is worthless. The Sonnar and Summilux lenses are now being stigmatized as useless for digital capture.
There is a saying that when you only have a hammer, all problems are seen as a nail. Then you can use the hammer with good effect.
Living with limitations
The film based technology did not bother about some lens defects. I have written many reports about lenses and almost invariably noted that the lens had some defects but that was not a practical problem because at normal print sizes this could not be detected. And the result is what you want to have and display. Now we are looking at screen magnifications to study individual pixels and make unreasonable demands about lens and image quality. In the past one could project a slide to a five meter screen and study individual grain clumps at close distance before the screen. That is what I often did to study image characteristics: but is would be nonsense to infer from that experience some lens characteristics.
Photography is not about lens comparisons and looking at computer screens at maximum magnification to detect chromatic aberrations: they will be found without doubt: but what sense does this make: the endless comparisons on the internet (ten 50mm lenses compared, ten raw converters side by side, fifteen 10 megapixel cameras compared etc) do not bring real knowledge about the tools of the trade and are not at all helpful in developing an awareness for good imagery. It is better to stick to a quality product and learn its characteristics and adapt your photography to optimize these values.
It is however much easier to take two pictures and start to compare them on the basis of perceived differences than to take good pictures that do what pictures are supposed to do: convey an emotion or a viewpoint or to document a position: the depiction of reality does not depend on focus shift or chromatic aberrations or a certain type of blur in the background or the use of a certain color space.
To photograph or not to photograph, that is the question?
I am the first to admit that I take lousy pictures. Still I enjoy taking them and I have no problem using a lens that has some minor optical defects: I accept these defects or evade them by knowing how to compensate.
The Leica M8 may be not the best digital camera that money can buy, the Canon 1D M3 might be better value for money: by the way: the Live View option of the Canon shows the road for future evolution of the DSLR: you will no longer need a cumbersome and heavy pentaprism and you can throw away the mirror box: why looking through a viewfinder to see a virtual image when you can look at the image itself as captured by the sensor. But when the DSLR sheds the mirror and the pentaprism, what is then the difference with an M camera other than the AF function. Assume an RF with AF (which may make redundant an RF mechanism) and we may see the convergence of two great camera systems.
The M8 however is a well thought-out product that impresses by its simplicity and high quality imagery: use it for BW images and couple a suite of Raw developers to the DNG files and you can create pictures that can be rooted in the great tradition of the first generations of Leica photographers. Focus your creative energy on taking pictures and printing them on A4 or A3 baryta paper with excellent definition and tonality and maximum contrast for clean chiaroscuro images.
The M8 is one of the few cameras with digital capture than can directly relate to the classical camera shapes and uses.
If you stay wondering whether you bought the right lens or camera because someone on the internet or in the printed press expresses some reservations about the product, you should stop reading these opinions and stop being a technophile. When one really thinks that a lens with a merit figure of 67.2 is less than one with a figure of 68.1, one is indeed a technophile and not a photographer.
And for what it is worth: a few days in the wet darkroom with Adox or Spur microfilm and classical chemicals and paper are a good reminder that there is no easier way to produce perfect BW imagery than silver halide technology.
Using the M7 with .85 finder reminds one of the fact that the 1.33 reduction in viewing angle is really the limit: framing and focusing the subject with the .85 finder is a most pleasant act, whereas the M8 finder is just acceptable. One has to switch between the two finders instantly to note the boost in clarity and ease that the M7 offers.