cameras are tools...really?

a camera is a means to an end. with over 50 years behind me, me behind a camera, it is still the brush of the painter, the voice of the singer, the tool of the image maker. i rode in a Bugatti once. it got me from where we started to where we started all over again. it was an uncomfortable, noisy, bumpy ride and it did the round trip. point A to point B. but it was a Bugatti, so i thought at the time. i have a lot of cameras: all tools, brushes, voices, rugged motor cars. they all take pictures of differeing qualities, fomats, frames. different pictures. different tools. different means to different but still the same ends.

dd
 
My cameras are some of my tools. (I like to make photographs from shooting through framing)

My cameras are also my jewels. (I like a little bling while I do my thing)

The "bling" goes hand-in-hand with the style of photos I enjoy making: old style B&W silver gel prints using retro looking film/paper & gear. What better than an LTM?
 
Sure they are tools. But I don't mean that in the slightly/wholly dismissive tone I see used on occasion.
Like any other tool they can be fetishes (fetish-ized?)--anyone priced a vintage Stanley tool lately?
I don't run my knives through the dish machine and I don't leave my wrenches laying on the garage floor.
I do take care of my tools; partly because that's what my dad instilled in me and partly so I don't have to replce them as often.
Rob
 
A Leica M3 was created as a tool to take photographs, not as an object of lust to be dressed in a leather skirt and kissed goodnight each evening. When it is fondled and polished and protected from the tiniest scratch, it is no longer serving it's purpose. Believe it or not, Leitz did not start out making high priced collectible cameras. The Leica was created as a tool.
Click to expand...

Nicely put, Sitemistic.

This, in a nutshell, is why Leica is in trouble today. This is why its users are compelled to retreat to ever more remote reaches of the internet.

The original Barnack Leica had functional advantages as a photographic tool that changed photography forever. The Leica M3 was the refinement of that idea. Those cameras were innovative and had an immediate, instinctive appeal to photographers. But not today. Today, Leica users gather like wine-tasters and compare the 'bokeh' of their lenses, their special paint finishes, and discuss the relative merits of each model like so many Trekkies trying to choose which Captain Kirk they like best.

Which is fine. That's what middle-aged men do, and it's harmless enough, within reason. But it's gone beyond reason to the point where it's quite honestly getting to be laughable. And it's going to kill the company. Unless their business is now making pretty, pricey collectible 'investments' that just happen to take pictures.

The purpose of a tool is to do a particular job and not get in the way. Once you've found a tool for the job you want to do that doesn't get in your way, you're there; any time spent discussing the finish of the tool or its place in history is a diversion from that job or a pastime for your 'golden' years.

The Barnack Leica of today, in spirit, is the Ricoh GR-D more than anything Leica produces. How about that: A Ricoh GR-D competitor from Leica with the functionality of the M? Is there any market for an interchangeable lens digital P&S? with analog manual controls? 😀
 
I think the people who object to the use of cameras as anything but a tool to get a particular job done are not really thinking things through.

Why do cars come in different colors? Why do we buy clothes in different styles, different colors, and so on? How many people NEED an SUV or 4-wheel-drive? What purpose on earth does a Hummel figurine or a Star Wars collectible plate have? Who ever needed a set of praying hands on top their telly? And somebody for God's sake explain the requirement for thousands of copies of that painting of dogs playing poker.

There is more than utility involved.

A camera is a tool, like a hammer. True enough.

But there are hammer collectors as well, who are not carpenters.

They are interested in the history of tools, perhaps.

Or they are intrigued by the multiplicity of types of hammers made, each for a different purpose.

And they find that it is a relatively inexpensive and enjoyable pastime, collecting these hammers.

Sometimes they find they like one type of hammer style more than others, and they find other people of like mind, and they form a little online community to talk about the type of hammer they like. Call it www.ballpeenhammerforum.com or something like that.

They might even go out and pound a nail now and again, and compare notes on how well their hammer did.

Silly?

Sure, if you choose to think of it that way.

But what harm does it do?

And more to the point - how is it any of your business to condemn them?

If you believe cameras are only hammers, each suited to a particular job and to be used only for that job - then do go forth and hammer away. And leave the camera-fondlers alone. They harm no one.

And remember when you get into your SUV wearing your clothes that are not just like everyone else's that everybody makes choices based on things that don't matter - like vanity and style and just plain personal taste. You don't make those kind of choices about cameras? Groovy. But you took to time to think what you'd wear today, or what kind of aftershave you like, or what color you wanted your car to be. We all do it.

So maybe judge a little less about camera fondlers.

As to Leica - if you think that Leica survives selling cameras to people who have a utilitarian use in mind for them, you may be wrong. My own opinion is that those who still use Leica cameras strictly as tools are in the minority, and frankly, that Leica cameras still exist because of the inveterate and well-heeled collectors who obsessively buy everything Leica makes. You should thank the Leica collectors.

And not to put to fine a point on it:

Which is fine. That's what middle-aged men do, and it's harmless enough, within reason. But it's gone beyond reason to the point where it's quite honestly getting to be laughable. And it's going to kill the company. Unless their business is now making pretty, pricey collectible 'investments' that just happen to take pictures.
Click to expand...

Who decides what 'within reason' is, my friend? You?

I also collect wristwatches, vintage audio gear, and firearms. Would you care to come over to my house and tell me how much I can have, and how much is not 'within reason'? If I seem angry, it is because I've heard that crap before. "What do you need twenty watches for?" Because I want them, I can afford them, and they make me happy. NEXT QUESTION from a person whose business it isn't, please?
 
Last edited:
Does Stanley Tool Co. listen to the needs of the hammer collector market and tailor production to suit their fancy? Of course not. That's the rub here. Not that people collect Leicas, but that Leica collectors dictate current Leica production.

It's made the cameras irrelevant and it's killing the company on the installment plan.

Would you care to come over to my house and tell me how much I can have, and how much is not 'within reason'?
Click to expand...

Collect away. I couldn't care less what you do in your own home. I just sent a Canon VI-T away to be CLA'd partly for sentimental reasons, myself. The "within reason" part only applies when you bring your hobby into daylight and drag the most storied name in camera making to their ruin.
 
Last edited:
kevin m said:
Does Stanley Tool Co. listen to the needs of the hammer collector market and tailor production to suit their fancy? Of course not.
Click to expand...

If the 'collector market' were sizable enough, they'd be fools not to.

In the absence of that, they certainly do have a marketing team, and they do research into what makes a man reach for hammer brand A versus hammer brand B. And if they find it is shinier chrome, then they up the chrome. If it is a particular color handle, then they switch to that color handle. And so on.

It isn't all utilitarian - not even for hammers. Else they would all come in a white box with black letters that said "Hammer."

That's the rub here. Not that people collect Leicas, but that Leica collectors dictate current Leica production.
Click to expand...

That statement doesn't make sense. If not that many collect Leicas, how do they dictate Leica production? If Leica listens to a tiny minority, then Leica is stupid. I don't think they are stupid.

It's made the cameras irrelevant and it's killing the company on the installment plan.
Click to expand...

My opinion is that without collectors and fondlers of Leica, they'd have been gone a long time ago.
 
kevin m said:
Collect away. I couldn't care less what you do in your own home.
Click to expand...

Oh, but you do. And by that, I mean not 'you' personally but the generic 'you' out there who feel you know how many cameras are 'reasonable' to own and how many are not. You've each got your own mental number - something that makes sense to you personally - anything beyond that is something you can't quite comprehend, and you're against it.

The world is full of people who don't smoke - and think no one else should be allowed to either. Aren't fat, and despise fat people. Drive a Brand A car and looks down on anyone who drives a Brand B car. And so on.

Very few people can keep their noses in their own business and out of other people's.

In recent months, I've endured lectures by a friend on why anyone would carry a camera now that she has a cell phone camera that takes 'perfectly good' pictures, and why I drive a foreign car when I'm killing America, and why I insist on wearing a different watch every day when a $30 Casio keeps better time, and people who get wrapped completely around the axle about the idea that I might own a couple of cameras for no other reason than I like them.

Even photographers ask why I'd take a photo of 'that' (whatever that is, usually something they would never consider photographing) or 'don't you have enough pictures of barns by now?'

None of the things I do affect anyone else's life, safety, checkbook, or morals. All my little foibles and problems and affectations are strictly my own. I hurt no one by collecting cameras, watches, or guns, or taking photos of barns or whatever I enjoy taking photographs of. I do it because I like it.

Until someone opens their yap to tell me how wrong I am for wanting to do that.

Then I get a trifle ticked off. And tired of it. I don't tell anyone else how to live, but there's a whole herd lined up waiting to tell me what's wrong with my life.
 
kevin m said:
...that Leica collectors dictate current Leica production.

It's made the cameras irrelevant and it's killing the company on the installment plan.
Click to expand...

You are a little behind the times. Hermes isn't in the driving seat anymore.

Regards,

Bill
 
To me cameras are not just tools to make photos, but also medication to keep me sane in that computerized nightmare which keeps me busy from Mondays to Fridays and sometimes even the weekends.
 
yoyo22 said:
To me cameras are not just tools to make photos, but also medication to keep me sane in that computerized nightmare which keeps me busy from Mondays to Fridays and sometimes even the weekends.
Click to expand...

Amen, brother. As I write code all day, it is quite nice to occasionally hear my wristwatch going tick, tick, tick; and to know that it was made by a man now long dead, whose contribution continues. While the code I write will be useless in five years if not sooner, he (whomever that nameless craftsman was) built something that could quite well run for centuries, if maintained.

I do the awful things I must, then I retire for the day and admire a well-made camera. And that is wrong how, exactly?
 
Bad choice of an example...
Click to expand...

No, Fred, it's an excellent example.

Is Stanley Tool Co's entire production capacity cranking out vintage levels? No, it isn't. They innovate; they put the goods on Home Depots' shelves that meet the current needs of builders and contractors. People who actually use the tools to work for a living.

Leica should do the same.
 
tool

n.

1. A device, such as a saw, used to perform or facilitate manual or mechanical work.
2. The cutting part of such a machine.
3. Something regarded as necessary to the carrying out of one's occupation or profession: Words are the tools of our trade.
4. Something used in the performance of an operation; an instrument: “Modern democracies have the fiscal and monetary tools . . . to end chronic slumps and galloping inflations” (Paul A. Samuelson)...

http://www.answers.com/topic/tool-4?cat=technology


"Tool" has many meanings. A camera certainly falls under category "3". As cited above, a "word" is clearly a tool and a "report" can be a tool. A "camera" it a "tool of the trade" of the photographer. This can be extended to amatuer.
 
kevin m said:
No, Fred, it's an excellent example.

Is Stanley Tool Co's entire production capacity cranking out vintage levels? No, it isn't. They innovate; they put the goods on Home Depots' shelves that meet the current needs of builders and contractors. People who actually use the tools to work for a living.

Leica should do the same.
Click to expand...
Leica does the same. You can innovate in a hammer only so much.
 
Leica does the same. You can innovate in a hammer only so much.
Click to expand...

Really? Leica makes tools for professional use? How many photographers have nothing but a Leica M, film or digital, in their camera bags?

And, to continue the hammer analogy, do you opt not to make pneumatic nail guns out of a misguided nostalgia for hickory handles and ball peens?
 
kevin m said:
And, to continue the hammer analogy, do you opt not to make pneumatic nail guns out of a misguided nostalgia for hickory handles and ball peens?
Click to expand...

If management thinks there is more money to be made competing for the dollars of the misguided hickory handle crowd than the pneumatic nail gun folk, then they will generally do so.

And other than making the pneumatic nail gunsters apoplectic with rage, I fail to see the downside here.

Rolex stopped making watches that filled a strictly time-keeping role a long time ago. They have discovered a niche that suits their capabilities nicely, and therefore why should they compete with Casio for timepieces?

Leica makes toys for the well-heeled, which are incidentally exquisitely well-made machines that are extremely well-suited for a particular type of photography. But if they had to depend upon those who purchase them strictly for their photographic capabilities, it is my opinion they would be gone.
 
sitemistic said:
Wow. You spend most of your life doing "awful things I must?"

Why?
Click to expand...

Most working people actually do not really enjoy their job and that awful world usually does not permit changing fields of work unless one is some kind of genius. Also most parents/spouses do not appreciate paracidal, hedonistic lifestyles of their children/partners unless they are so incredibly rich not to care at all.
Therefor the only option is to go through hell on the working days and hope that in the free time one can forget work for some moments.
 
kevin m said:
Really? Leica makes tools for professional use? How many photographers have nothing but a Leica M, film or digital, in their camera bags?

And, to continue the hammer analogy, do you opt not to make pneumatic nail guns out of a misguided nostalgia for hickory handles and ball peens?
Click to expand...

...and do you only have a hammer in your toolkit?

I can think of a number of tools that haven't changed in their basic design or shape for many years, because they are optimal for their intended use.

Regards,

Bill
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom