Gene51 wrote:
Back in the 60s I owned a small collection of Leica rangefinder cameras and lenses. I had a IIF, IIIF, IIIG initially, then went to the bayonet lens mount models M2, M2-4, M3, M4 - though I didn't have more than 2 of these at the same time - being a college student, money was scarce. I had a few screw mount lenses for the older cameras, but sold everything when I got my first M camera. Which coincided with getting a job at their Rockleigh, NJ warehouse. I had every F2 lens they made, and a 21mm Super Angulon with the accessory viewfinder, to their 180mm F2.8 Tele Elmarit, which I used with my Visoflex III. So Leica rangefinders needed mirrors to accomplish certain types of photography. Obviously, your contradiction - "never had a mirror, who needs it" and your subsequent statements, "If I want to shoot telephoto images" and use it for "magnificent macro images" clearly indicates that to expand your photographic horizons a Visoflex was necessary. Besides, an elegant camera like any of the old Leica rangefinders became a lot less elegant when you bolted the Visoflex on it. And Visoflex adapters were not all that popular, in part, because of the focusing errors and general "clunkiness" when using one.
No Leica rangefinder that I know of had a "split image" focusing system. The older ones were zone-focused, the later ones used a rangefinder and rangefinder coupled lenses. Split image, in typical usage, referred to a groundglass with a center split prism, which showed a misalignment when out of focus. Two entirely different systems.
Early Leicas did not have flash sync - making it's use limited to just available light shooting. I think the first Leica that offered flash sync was the IIIF. Early Leicas did not have framing aids or parallax correction until the IIIG. It was hard to use the older cameras with different focal lengths.
I would have to disagree with you that improvements were "minimal." Even little things like having a fast film advance that required just one stroke of the film advance knob, or later, the lever-based film advance, bigger brighter viewfinders, parallax corrected rangefinder/viewfinder - these were all extremely functional and much anticipated improvements.
The metering systems introduced on the cameras were so-so at best. I carried around a LunaPro in the beginning, and later a Pentax spot meter if I wanted accuracy. But the quality of the metering system is only as good as the photographer's ability to interpret the reading.
I won't argue that you haven't taken some pretty spectacular images with your Leicas. But without any real examples of your work it's not possible to comprehend just how amazing your cameras and your photography is. You've got a few images in some threads, but these are small, low res images. Many are over-saturated, but that is not your fault - posting images to UHH will often cause color and tonal shifts, and increases in contrast.
I will argue that you can get better images, with greater variety of subject matter with current tech.
Leicas were beautifully engineered and built, but by no means a general purpose camera. Nor is it perfection. Alpa - another phenomenal camera, totally underrated, was my choice for a few years - I had a pair of 10Ds for a while and in my hands, the Alpha felt just as good as any Leica I ever had.
My idea of camera perfection for film has to be my old Sinar P2. Coupled with great lenses, you could not ask for more when it came to image quality and camera controls. Sadly, the images I took with it in the 80s got lost in a move.
Back in the 60s I owned a small collection of Leic... (
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I agree with you on most of what you say here. I had an Alpha for a while great camera but very cumbersome. One of my favorite cameras was my RB67 Pro S. Loved that 6x7 image, extremely sharp but very heavy. I needed it for some product photography which required large scale transparencies for printing. Most people don't no that the 6x7 image was far sharper than 4x5 for photo prints, not contacts, the thick star base effected its quality. I also had 6 4x5 Deardorfs, I used in a photo poster business, with custom split backs to give me an ideal image size for 18x24 blowups. If I wasn't incapacitated these days I would love to go out and shoot landscapes with it. Many years ago I was in the color separation business and had a Brown 30 x 40 horizontal camera with 2 lenses gave me the ability to go from 10% to 1000%. I had thought about mounting it in a truck, 18 foot long, and touring the country producing 30 x 40 landscapes, what a dream, of course never happened. Many years ago a very large format camera was mounted on a train, up in Canada that produced some outstanding images. Thanks enjoyed the conversation.