A Little Story: What I Learned About Leica This Year

[JohnWolf]

….Forcing the light, forcing the camera, forcing the lens, forcing the film/sensor to do my bidding ... that is what matters to me….

All that forcing sounds exhausting. When Tod Papageorge was asked the hardest thing to teach photography students, he replied that the world itself is far more remarkable than anything we can conjure. Amen. May I be open and receptive to whatever life offers.

John

 

[chuckroast]

All that forcing sounds exhausting. When Tod Papageorge was asked the hardest thing to teach photography students, he replied that the world itself is far more remarkable than anything we can conjure. Amen.

The notion of bending it to my will is completely foreign to me. May I be open and receptive to whatever life offers.

John

It's a nice sentiment, but all art is constructive. It is built from the materials found in reality, but shaped through the vision of the artist. That's true whether we're talking about a Brett Weston abstract, an Adams landscape, a Karsh portrait, or a HCB street photo. We are always interpreting our world, and never simply recording it. That's why understanding and pondering our own worldview, values, and sense of life is important when/as we proceed to make art.

(Even street light cameras have some degree of interpretation in that how you choose to aim them influences the outcomes...)

 

[JohnWolf]

Not a sentiment but a way of life.

John

 

[Richard G]

What a Leica offers better than most cameras is no force, no tension, no major conscious decision often. Like HCB’s head, heart and eye on the one axis. Or Sergio Larrain: a good image is created by a state of grace. The only force I allow is the pressure from my wife. “And don’t bring a camera.” So it’s the IIIf; or the M9-P with the Summaron M 28 I can almost hide in my hand. She won’t wait. If I see it, it’s taken, and I have to move on quickly. Very little thinking. This generates some quite good shots.


The Hasselblad is totally different. But I still would not let force into it. Tripod, cable release, mirror up release, framing, re-examination of the subject, not through the viewfinder, back to the viewfinder, need to be higher, swap to the 45 degree prism. Wait again for the light. It’s like dance, a slow waltz.

 

[tcmx3]

If you like printing I don't think that doing it traditionally off a negative is any better or worse than off scans.

Different process sure. And I appreciate it's hard to give up something you're good at to flap about with a new process that seems like it should work the same way. But if you come to it without that expectation you can have fun if prints are your thing.

Re Leica lenses vs other manufacturers, well here's the thing about Leica :


for context this is the 35mm APO Summicron and the 35mm APO Lanthar, two of the very best 35mm lenses money can buy. borrowed from this nofocus article since I don't own either of these lenses personally.

Anyway I also like the M system and it's still the best system for bringing with you for more spontaneous photography IMO, as long as 1. you can afford it and 2. you are good manual/scale focusing.

 

[Tim Murphy]

I never cared about the process of printing.

Printing is a BORE.

GETTING the image is all that matters to me. Being there. Forcing the light, forcing the camera, forcing the lens, forcing the film/sensor to do my bidding ... that is what matters to me. The print? It's nice. Last Christmas I bought a stupid expensive big framed print for the best shot that I made in 2023 for my hated stepmother because she liked it. It was _good_ and she liked it.

That was enough.

I gave other prints to coworker friends recently just because they expressed enjoyment in what I've done. That was enough.

I love it when it turns out pretty, even better when a loved one likes it but if I capture the perfect image but no one else ever sees it but me? I can still die happy. Because it will have still been captured.

That is my aesthetics.

That is my Art.

That is what I. Live. To. Do.

I doubt anyone else really gets that.

Dear wlewisiii,

I get what you are saying 100%, courtesy of a friend whom I've never met.

He became a professional photographer as a teenager, working for an NFL team back when it was film and digital wasn't even a blip on the horizon. He learned hard, he learned fast, and became an excellent photographer.

But then a career and his family got in the way. He went 30 years as a professional engineer. But he said enough, and went back to photography as a profession about 8 or so years ago.

To see what he can do with a suspect digital imagine to turn it into a quality saleable print harkens back to the days of darkroom printing. Some people will question whether that is actually photography, but his results don't lie.

I guess people need to do what they enjoy and let others do the same.

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Hmm... A lot of folks here laying down the law about How Photography is Done. We humans, unfortunately, like to think in absolutes. However, over sixty years of doing photography, I've watched my own "absolutes", both in equipment and aesthetics, mutate and often turn into their opposites, to the extent that I've finally reached a point where I try not to have any. My current equipment, as well as my formal and expressive concerns, are utterly different from what they were ten years ago, and if I'm lucky enough to be here, I expect that ten years from now, I'll be saying the same.

 

[chuckroast]

If you like printing I don't think that doing it traditionally off a negative is any better or worse than off scans.

Different process sure. And I appreciate it's hard to give up something you're good at to flap about with a new process that seems like it should work the same way. But if you come to it without that expectation you can have fun if prints are your thing.

I would say that it's quite a bit more than just a "different process". It's an entirely different process that has very little in common with traditional silver printing for a number of reasons. To get to a traditional silver print from a digital source you have to:

1. Work around the fact that a digital sensor responds to light very differently than film. So, to get the same look, you have to fiddle digital into similar behaviors. Possible? Sure. But a whole new way of looking at light. Digital actually feels more like transparency film than anything, but even that isn't quite the perfect match.
   
   
2. You have to ensure that you have enough digital resolution and dynamic range to match or exceed film. Possible? Yes, but at very high cost. And forget it if you want to match or exceed large format. Even the highest end capture systems like an M11 or the Hasselblad X2D 100C that cost in the range of $9000US cannot do what a $100 4x5 rail camera or Graflex can. Granted, they get close and perhaps even "close enough".
   
   
3. But the elephant in the room is making an internegative from the digital file that can be projected onto silver paper. Possible? Yes, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish. So far as I am aware, there are no digital-to-film writers available at any price rational for the individual. So, you have to have a very high resolution printing device of some sort to print the negative. That means yet more fiddling and calibration.

All these complexities add places for error and I'd rather print knowing the process as I already do.

Let it be noted that I do shoot digital with a Nikon D750 but I think of it as being an entirely different medium - as different as monochrome film was from Kodachrome 25...

 

[chuckroast]

Hmm... A lot of folks here laying down the law about How Photography is Done. We humans, unfortunately, like to think in absolutes. However, over sixty years of doing photography, I've watched my own "absolutes", both in equipment and aesthetics, mutate and often turn into their opposites, to the extent that I've finally reached a point where I try not to have any. My current equipment, as well as my formal and expressive concerns, are utterly different from what they were ten years ago, and if I'm lucky enough to be here, I expect that ten years from now, I'll be saying the same.

I fundamentally agree - there are many ways to work and they evolve as the artist does.

But the one thing I am unyielding on is the impossibility of being neutral in the process and just letting it flow over and out of you. Your work always has you in it somehow. Implicitly or explicitly, you will always "force" yourself into the final work product (to use the term introduced upthread).

There are probably a thousand different ways to work. There are zero ways to take yourself out of the equation.

As an aside, I am not saying that everyone is entitled to their "personal truth" which is an abysmal notion inflicted upon us by the postmoderns and poststructuralist bunch. (If something is actually true, then its true for everyone.) But - despite what you hear from the various pontificators on art - art isn't ever really about "truth" - it's about expressing the artist's worldview. This used to be in service of searching for beauty, but - again, thanks to the post-whatever bunch - even beauty is being cast aside.

The good thing about all this is that - while I enjoy seeing the work of others and likewise sharing my own - ultimately, the only opinion that matters to me about my work is ... mine 😉

 

[tcmx3]

I would say that it's quite a bit more than just a "different process". It's an entirely different process that has very little in common with traditional silver printing for a number of reasons. To get to a traditional silver print from a digital source you have to:

1. Work around the fact that a digital sensor responds to light very differently than film. So, to get the same look, you have to fiddle digital into similar behaviors. Possible? Sure. But a whole new way of looking at light. Digital actually feels more like transparency film than anything, but even that isn't quite the perfect match.
   
   
2. You have to ensure that you have enough digital resolution and dynamic range to match or exceed film. Possible? Yes, but at very high cost. And forget it if you want to match or exceed large format. Even the highest end capture systems like an M11 or the Hasselblad X2D 100C that cost in the range of $9000US cannot do what a $100 4x5 rail camera or Graflex can. Granted, they get close and perhaps even "close enough".
   
   
3. But the elephant in the room is making an internegative from the digital file that can be projected onto silver paper. Possible? Yes, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish. So far as I am aware, there are no digital-to-film writers available at any price rational for the individual. So, you have to have a very high resolution printing device of some sort to print the negative. That means yet more fiddling and calibration.

All these complexities add places for error and I'd rather print knowing the process as I already do.

Let it be noted that I do shoot digital with a Nikon D750 but I think of it as being an entirely different medium - as different as monochrome film was from Kodachrome 25...

I mean, I get where you're coming from.

But your goal seems to be to emulate something you know, rather than trying to get the best results from a new thing. And that's fine, but I'm a younger person and I grew up in a world with digital cameras AND film cameras side by side and don't feel that I need to make one like the other. In the same way that one should make the bread that suits the flour they have, rather than asking why their rouge de bourdeaux makes bad pancakes.

FWIW almost all of the best monochrome prints I have ever seen have not been silver gelatin. They've been platinum/palladium. Mostly (significantly) larger than 4x5. That is not in the cards for me to do myself (I have done a fair bit of darkroom work just not that process). For myself, I do find the M11 adequate, no doubt. In terms of dynamic range my understanding is the M11 at its base iso of 64 is in the 14 stop realm. You need a good bit more than film, as I understand it, as film doesn't behave quite the same way. Which is fine anyway, what people like is different. I personally prefer the sort of in your face contrast one sees in an Alex Webb (color) or Ralph Gibson (b&w) print, so I've been fine with digital on that front for a long time. It's always been an issue more of how well a camera can capture the subtleties, and in 2024 I think both of my cameras (a Zf and an M11) produce results better than any slide film I ever shot on (including my favorite E100G, as I was never able to shoot any kodachrome for myself).

 

[Deleted member 65559]

I don't think any particular person is "laying down the law,"...... but there does seem to be a general acceptance of "change is inherent".....& by implication perhaps inevitable & better? I play acoustic guitar & that is by its nature different than electric guitar (both in sound and musical genre)....& I don't want to change mediums...or get a synthesizer..... I shoot film and print in a darkroom. That is my personal choice of genre, and to refer to another thread...I don't want to buy a Z because of the "unreasonably" high cost of film... 😉. You are of course, free to choose your medium and rationalize your choices. There are career photographers who continue to work in film, as there are some who switched to digital...or work in both or hybrid depending on the client/job demands.

 

[Richard G]

If you like printing I don't think that doing it traditionally off a negative is any better or worse than off scans.

Different process sure. And I appreciate it's hard to give up something you're good at to flap about with a new process that seems like it should work the same way. But if you come to it without that expectation you can have fun if prints are your thing.

Re Leica lenses vs other manufacturers, well here's the thing about Leica :
View attachment 4838227

for context this is the 35mm APO Summicron and the 35mm APO Lanthar, two of the very best 35mm lenses money can buy. borrowed from this nofocus article since I don't own either of these lenses personally.

Anyway I also like the M system and it's still the best system for bringing with you for more spontaneous photography IMO, as long as 1. you can afford it and 2. you are good manual/scale focusing.

Tcmx3 you didn’t complete your message on Leica. Was it to say that Leica can do f2 smaller? Compact size of lenses matters a lot to me. My pre-ASPH 35s are tiny.

 

[tcmx3]

Tcmx3 you didn’t complete your message on Leica. Was it to say that Leica can do f2 smaller? Compact size of lenses matters a lot to me. My pre-ASPH 35s are tiny.

Yes.

The Voigtlander is the only lens that can really compete with Leica's new 35mm APO in M mount just in terms of objective optical quality (though unlike at 50mm theyre not as close from the tests I've seen) but whereas the 35mm APO Summicron is in between the 35mm cron ASPH v2 and the summilux FLE I, the Voigtlander is even bigger than the 50mm apo lanthar, which is about the same size as the 50mm summilux. It's so big that I am personally passing on it which is kind of a shame.

If you care about such things, and I have to admit I do for better or for worse, then it's hard not to appreciate how small Leica's offerings are for their quality. Often, there is a lens that can match what Leica is doing, but it will be considerably bigger. Zeiss themselves suffered from this problem greatly, see 35 distagon, 35/2 biogon, 28/2.8, 21/2.8, even the 50/2 planar is a bit bigger than the v5 summicron and at the end of the day mostly just a tie despite both being symmetrical 6/4s and the Leica version already having been 20 years old at the time.

Also while I appreciate that some folks might find these particular lenses "clinical", I would offer that that is not so universal. I find images taken with all 4 lenses, but especially Leica's 35mm APO, to be very beautiful in a way that I don't see with say, Sony or Canon lenses. But then, my idea of character might be different than someone else's. I don't particularly dig the obviously flawed thing, what I want is a small system that looks like medium format.

 

[Deleted member 65559]

Yes.

The Voigtlander is the only lens that can really compete with Leica's new 35mm APO in M mount just in terms of objective optical quality (though unlike at 50mm theyre not as close from the tests I've seen) but whereas the 35mm APO Summicron is in between the 35mm cron ASPH v2 and the summilux FLE I, the Voigtlander is even bigger than the 50mm apo lanthar, which is about the same size as the 50mm summilux. It's so big that I am personally passing on it which is kind of a shame.

If you care about such things, and I have to admit I do for better or for worse, then it's hard not to appreciate how small Leica's offerings are for their quality. Often, there is a lens that can match what Leica is doing, but it will be considerably bigger. Zeiss themselves suffered from this problem greatly, see 35 distagon, 35/2 biogon, 28/2.8, 21/2.8, even the 50/2 planar is a bit bigger than the v5 summicron and at the end of the day mostly just a tie despite both being symmetrical 6/4s and the Leica version already having been 20 years old at the time.

Also while I appreciate that some folks might find these particular lenses "clinical", I would offer that that is not so universal. I find images taken with all 4 lenses, but especially Leica's 35mm APO, to be very beautiful in a way that I don't see with say, Sony or Canon lenses. But then, my idea of character might be different than someone else's. I don't particularly dig the obviously flawed thing, what I want is a small system that looks like medium format.

It is a small system, but i'll counter that the results may be sharp, but resolution doesn't tell the entire story. They don't "look like medium format" to anyone who has used medium format.

 

[tcmx3]

It is a small system, but i'll counter that the results may be sharp, but resolution doesn't tell the entire story. They don't "look like medium format" to anyone who has used medium format.

I literally did not say that it did. I said that's what I want.

 

[chuckroast]

It is a small system, but i'll counter that the results may be sharp, but resolution doesn't tell the entire story. They don't "look like medium format" to anyone who has used medium format.

Well .... maybe. In a head-to-head comparison of the same subject at the same time, you're right - the MF will generally have far better rendering power and smoother tonality.

But, if you shoot 35mm on a tripod, with very fine grained monochome film, and find the sweet spot of aperture on the lens, you can produce images that start to rival medium format in quality. It depends a lot on how much the negative is enlarged and the viewing distance.

I have some 11x14s shot on 35mm Agfapan APX 100 you'd swear were made from 6x9 negs. It would be obvious they were not only if you had an equivalent 6x9 shot right next to them. Perception is a funny thing. We see things one way when they stand alone, and another when they stand in juxtaposition to another object.

In the end, what I have learned over and over and over (and over) again is that the worst pictures you take are the ones you don't take at all. I am now in the habit of carrying something with me most of the time - a Leica, a Nikon, a Fuji GA ... something, so I don't miss that once in a lifetime shot getting out of my car at the store. Better that on 35mm than not at all on 4x5 ...

 

[Deleted member 65559]

Well .... maybe. In a head-to-head comparison of the same subject at the same time, you're right - the MF will generally have far better rendering power and smoother tonality.

But, if you shoot 35mm on a tripod, with very fine grained monochome film, and find the sweet spot of aperture on the lens, you can produce images that start to rival medium format in quality. It depends a lot on how much the negative is enlarged and the viewing distance.

I have some 11x14s shot on 35mm Agfapan APX 100 you'd swear were made from 6x9 negs. It would be obvious they were not only if you had an equivalent 6x9 shot right next to them. Perception is a funny thing. We see things one way when they stand alone, and another when they stand in juxtaposition to another object.

In the end, what I have learned over and over and over (and over) again is that the worst pictures you take are the ones you don't take at all. I am now in the habit of carrying something with me most of the time - a Leica, a Nikon, a Fuji GA ... something, so I don't miss that once in a lifetime shot getting out of my car at the store. Better that on 35mm than not at all on 4x5 ...

Chuck i do agree with the gist of your post. I have decades of using a Leica behind me, long before i used LF. What i object to is the sometimes self-righteous proclamations of some people...".with this Leica/Zeiss lens quality i can...."
Sharpness is not = to tonality.
I also agree the photo not taken is an opportunity missed. I've gone to the extent of carrying an 8x10 and 4x10 a lot of difficult places. (photo contact print on Azo). But here's my outfit for the Dolomites this upcoming summer.

 

[chuckroast]

Chuck i do agree with the gist of your post. I have a decades of using a Leica behind me, long before i used LF. What i object to is the sometimes self-righteous proclamations of some people...".with this Leica/Zeiss lens quality i can...."
Sharpness is not = to tonality.
I also agree the photo not taken is an opportunity missed. I've gone to the extent of carrying an 8x10 and 4x10 a lot of difficult places. (photo contact print on Azo). But here's my outfit for the Dolomites this upcoming summer.

View attachment 4838333View attachment 4838335

Yes, I have a trip in the works to the Amalfi Coast and Rome. It's long into the future, but I am agonizing on what exactly to carry with me, as photography will be a very low priority for my traveling companion. I want to bring my Nikon digital because the colors there look spectacular, though I don't think I will bring the 28-300 zoom canon. I suspect I will bring a few manual focus primes.

What what to do for film, I wonder? An M? A Barnack? Something in a medium format (large format is completely out of the question). Currently, I am leaning toward a GA645-Zi and a IIIf with a 50 'cron and a 21 Skopar as backup. My thinking may evolve.

Do share your Dolomite pix when you get them sorted.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I have one Leica lens left. I had several, but it was no reason to have them all and acquire more.

The APO lenses argument is very theoretical to me and most of here.
Leica current prices even on trashed, old lenses is speculative insane.

My photography sucks because I don't have APO and another two-three Leica lenses?
Not at all.

I could count at least three well known, published and so on photogs who didn't used Leica lenses.
One is known as color photography master. And his lens isn't APO.

This is the compactness of non Leica lenses. 21/4, 35 1.4 and 50 1.5. Affordable to almost anyone.

 

[Richard G]

The M Monochrom gets close to MF, depending on subject. It seems to be finer gradation of mid-tones.

Deardoff38: deep analysis rationalization in that kit. Is that the little Summaron M?

CR: If your companion is like my wife I can recommend the IIIf. Lenses, you’ll know what you can do with the 21. I missed it in the tight streets of the old city in Nice. I reckon Rome is more of a 28 city.