Is... is that really a LEICA you have?!?!?!

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RdEoSg

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So I am in the Apple store checking out iPhones and one of the store employees walks up:

Apple Employee Manny: Is... is that really a LEICA you have?!?!?!

Me: Yep it is indeed...

Apple Employee Manny: I've always wanted to see one! It is a dream of mine just to be able to feel one!!

At this point I took the strap off my neck and handed it to him, I figured the odds were pretty good that the Apple employee wasn't going to try to run out of the Apple store with my camera in hand and 200 people jammed in the place!

Apple Employee Manny: 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

Me: Ok now you have to tell me about the iPhone!

I found the whole thing kinda funny! I'm like, it's just a camera man! We discussed it for a while. He wanted to know if I'd ever used the digital one, meaning the M8, I said yes I'd used one but couldn't afford to own one. We chatted a bit more about the virtues of a Leica vs my digital Canon gear etc.

Now I am debating an iPhone 😛 Too damn expensive for what they are I think!
 
I had a similar situation at a nice restaurant. The waiter saw my camera and recognized it. He gushed over it and interogated me about its age, what I photograph, why I am using such an antique camera and why its not on a shelf with a security system, etc. It became quite awkward.

I totally agree. The iphone is outragously expensive for something that will be replaced with the ipod 2.0 in 6 months.
 
Nice story. I was walking downtown a few days back when I came upon a scene...a lady hit by a car crossing the street. She was bleeding from her nose and ear, non-responsive, eyes rolling. I was doing what I could till help arrived when this dude with a Nikon in his hand tapped me on the shoulder and said "dude, you shooting a Leica". It was all surreal, I didn't even know where my camera was, I wasn't sure what to say.

BTW, I remebered I was shooting with a Pen FT, I had put it in my pocket.

Todd
 
Heh. I had the same experience from a random photo student here at my school while I was walking through the park shooting people enjoying their day.

he stopped me and was like "is that a leica????" pretty much the same responses...

As far as the iphone goes... no way in hell I'm ever going to buy one of those unless the prices come do a ton. The only thing i really care about in a phone is the ability to make a call, text message, and other basic functions.

I dont need to check email or other garbage while i'm out and about. If it does the basics, i'm satisfied. Much better things to spend/waste my money on. Such as film or lenses or whatever.
 
The photographer at a wedding spotted me using my RD1S and asked if it was a Leica. He was even more boggled when he realised it was digital 😀
 
Back in the 1980s a grey haired man approached me and said, "I read about the M3 when it came out. Would have bought one, but by then there was no point." He held up his right arm: there was nothing below the wrist. Over coffee he told me that he had used a II and a IIIa before the accident.
 
I was shooting in London's Covent Garden with my IIIf when three different guys -- all of a certain age -- came up to me and asked, "Is that a Leica"? One wasn't sure if it was a Zorki, which surprised me because even I barely know what a Zorki is. One said the old cameras do last and told me all about how he once found an old Rollei in a garage sale for £5, which he still used. One just said, "Now that's a REAL camera." He's right, of course.
 
I had a couple of young blokes ask "is that a Leica?" as they wandered past me having brunch a couple of weekends ago. "Yes" was the answer, so the next question was "so why does it cost so much?" As the confusion, um, cleared they realised that my M3 wasn't (shock!) digital. So I pointed out that all my printing is digital - I just scan the negative and go from there.

As you can imagine, I was rather losing my audience at this point. The final question was "so why don't you buy, like, a digital camera?" so I noted that I own many thousands of dollars worth of Canon digital gear, but for some things I find film and rangefinders just better - and they just wandered away.

No doubt they were wondering at the causes of such mental debility.

...Mike
 
Last edited:
overheard this past weekend:

dudette: [after a long tracking look] ooh...classic camera.

dude: yeah..must be a leica.

of course it was my humble hexar rf!
 
I had a similar experience at my local Apple Store. I was taking a few shots of the place on the day it opened when one of the staff walked up to me and said "hey, is that a Leica?" Turns out the guy uses one of the little D-Lux models but had never seen a film one, so I let him have a play with my M6. Like all the other people I've met who recognize the Leicas, he was a really pleasant guy and very enthusiastic about seeing one in the flesh.
 
infrequent said:
my humble hexar rf!
Click to expand...
It may be "humble" in the brand-awareness stakes, but hardly needs humility when it comes to performance. Hexar RFs rule, OK? (And even if its not OK, they still do.)

Not that I'm showing any bias at all...

...Mike
 
There are just so many of these types of incidents for me. The two that stand out in my mind are. While walking through the central plaza in downtown Medellin, Colombia. There is a collection of statues by the famous Colombian artist Botero. Being a touristy type area there are allot of photographers that work the area taking polaroids. One of these chaps noticed that I was carrying a leica and called all his friends over to inspect the camera. I remember that they continually said the same thing over and over again, "that is a jewel, that is a jewel."

Another time I was taking some pictures in Boston, some personal touristy type shots to pass the time with a good friend of mine. A young couple passed my friend and I, the lady turned and looked at my camera with such lustfull eyes that it drew the attention of my friend. My friend later stated that a look like that was such "Gear Lust". I thought it was very funny though.
 
I have this studio in Milwaukee where I got a job at a magazine last June. The rent is cheap. It's this old warehouse. The third floor, is all artist space painters/photographs and such. The second is commercial businesses mostly, and the first floor are all band practicing spaces. I was once walking up to my studio and passed by these band guys walking to their studio with a photographer carrying a nikon DSLR and various large lenses when the photographer asked me "is that a Leica?" I was holding it in my hand with my camera bag over my shoulder. I said yeah. He said "Which is it?" I said it was an M7. He then asked me if I'd seen the new digital one and I said yeah, it's in the bag. He was all like "oh man, I really want one of those."

Oh, another time I was sitting around Union Square. And holding my M7, and some guy asked me if it was an M8, I said no and he just walked away. At the time I didn't own an M8. Now, I'm considering selling my M8 as it just sits unused most of the time.
 
Last year I was stopped several times by people who had spotted my MP, mostly at outdoor art fairs and by photographers who were all carrying some sort of digital camera. A few weeks back at the Detroit Institute of Arts, some gal came up to me and asked me about my "nice old Leica." I told her it was a "nice new Leica" that I had purchased in 2004. She was genuinely surprised that Leica still made film cameras.

Jim B.
 
Unless the asker is a very attractive woman (plenty in NYC who like old cameras), having this type of conversation horrifies me, and I duck and run.
 
At the Blues Festival in Chicago, some three years ago, a young girl (Leicas seem to be chicks-of-an-artsy-nature magnets) turned to me and asked point blank: "Is that a manual camera?" It was one of my M6TTLs.

I said "Yes, you set the aperture and the shutterspeed."

"Wow..."

In Barcelona, in 2004, a young woman stared with evident gear lust at my M6TTL... or probably the weird look of the camera with a 1936 Elmar lens caught her eye. Also in Barcelona, my wife overheard two guys in the Market of Sant Antoni, where Barcelonians congregate to buy books, whispering something like "Did you see that guy with the camera? Is that a Leica?" "Yep, that's a Leica" said the other, and then both nodded approvingly.

Two years ago, in the local annual festival in DeKalb, aka Cornfest, another girl walked by me, looked at my silver M6TTL, and then tugged at the arm of the guy next to her and said to him, pointing at my camera "I want a camera like that one!"

Weird, huh?
 
M. Valdemar said:
Unless the asker is a very attractive woman (plenty in NYC who like old cameras), having this type of conversation horrifies me, and I duck and run.
Click to expand...

Thanks god (or whoever/whatever), most of the time, those ARE actually attractive women, that are interested by mine 😱 :angel: 😛
 
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