Segment about RF's/Leica on NPR

f/stopblues

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I was listening to Studio 360 on NPR tonight and was happy to hear a whole segment with Deborah Copaken talking about rangefinder cameras. She spoke about their advantages and why she loved them so much, focusing mostly on her Leica and experiences with it as a photojournalist.

If you go to this link, you can listen to the clip of just that segment:

http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2006/11/17

It's a great show, so I encourage you to listen to the rest of it, as well as the archives too! Enjoy!
 
"It's the quality of the Zeiss lenses that make the Leica really incredible"


bwaaah?!!
the Zeiss lenses?!
Nothing against you Ikon-ites, but I thought the reason to buy a Leica was to buy Leica glass!

Ohwell, if she feels that way...
 
That show doesn't come to my neck of the woods.

BTW, I read parts of her book Shutterbabe. It was interesting, but not enticing enough to me. Oh, well...

BTW, if you have Real Player in your Mac, you can hear the show! 🙂
 
egpj said:
If you have a mac it does not work. Sounds like it was a nice show though.

I'm a bit of a Mac head and if you can describe the problem, I can try to help. Sometimes Quicktime opens media files rather than, for example, RealPlayer. If that's the problem here, just follow this link at NPR's website. It worked fine for me in the past. Now all the RealPlayer links work fine.

http://www.npr.org/help/index.html

If the problem is the Quicktime usurping the RealPlayer links, scroll down and the instructions below.

Ron
 
Works on my Mac (with RealPlayer).

Kogan is pretty engaging (met her at a reading of Shutterbabe a while back). Besides a few gaffes ("Canon FM-2s and F2s?" Zeiss on Leica, before they even deigned to make glass with M-mounts? Ow, ow, ow...), it's otherwise a decent interview. Thanks for the heads-up, Chris.


- Barrett
 
I had to read her book a few summers back because I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and this was all I had.

In instances like this the worst book becomes a page-turning piece of genius.

It was terrible, the worst aspects of ignorant people going places and causing injury and distress to others without understanding (or perhaps wanting to understand) their culture and situation.

Ach, it was a long time ago and I'm probably still miffed that the other book I'd brought and read was a Tom Clancy...
 
Deborah Copaken Kogan had made some comments in her book when it was first published in 2001 on James Nachtwey and her interactions with him.

In a 2003 article published on The Digital Journalist website (digitaljournalist.org) she either said, or was misquoted as saying, some rather disparaging comments about Nachtwey who in turn made a point to reply to her statements.

"Nachtwey Replies to Deborah C. Kogan's Remarks"
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0303/nachtwey.html

...and here is Copaken Kogan's response to Nachtwey;

"Deborah Copaken Kogan Responds to Nachtwey's Reply"
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0303/kogan.html
 
amateriat said:
Works on my Mac (with RealPlayer).

Kogan is pretty engaging (met her at a reading of Shutterbabe a while back). Besides a few gaffes ("Canon FM-2s and F2s?" Zeiss on Leica, before they even deigned to make glass with M-mounts? Ow, ow, ow...), it's otherwise a decent interview. Thanks for the heads-up, Chris.


- Barrett

Well. Barret, if one wishes to be pedantic, the Summarit is a Xenon clone...
 
erikhaugsby said:
"It's the quality of the Zeiss lenses that make the Leica really incredible"


bwaaah?!!
the Zeiss lenses?!
Nothing against you Ikon-ites, but I thought the reason to buy a Leica was to buy Leica glass!

Ohwell, if she feels that way...

Technically she is right ... though I don't think it was intended

Schott provides the glass for Leica lenses (not all the lenses, but most)

Schott is actually a subsidiary of the Carl Zeiss Foundation
 
visiondr said:
I'm a bit of a Mac head and if you can describe the problem, I can try to help. Sometimes Quicktime opens media files rather than, for example, RealPlayer. If that's the problem here, just follow this link at NPR's website. It worked fine for me in the past. Now all the RealPlayer links work fine.

http://www.npr.org/help/index.html

If the problem is the Quicktime usurping the RealPlayer links, scroll down and the instructions below.

Ron


Thats funny, I went to realplayers website and there was nothing listed for Mac, as in programs to play Realplayer feeds. I'll try again later.
 
She doesn't sound like a gearhead. I suspect she confused "Leitz" with "Zeiss" when referring to the lenses. It isn't clear to a non-techno person that Leitz and Leica are the same entity.
 
Thanks to Akalai for pointing this out. I remember that controversy well.

She made some very unprofessional comments about Nachtwey's lifestyle (being single, dedicated, almost monastic) and contrasted it with her apparently fulfilled lifestyle as a parent after quitting real photojournalism after 4-5 years. Odd comment to make about another colleague especially when their relative achievements professionally are practically on different scales of magnitude and import. She also tried to credit herself as the 'source' for a Nachtwey project on Romanian orphanages, when in fact, Nachtwey never even photographed that particular orphanage and independently did his research on the critically-acclaimed project.

She later made odd and not entirely convincing recants and various other denials about what she actually said, including accusing the Digital Journalist interviewer of twisting or flat out altering her words.

Finally her 'jounalistic' recounting of her short period as a photojournalist in her book Shutterbabe is broken down literally by chapter names of the men she bedded in various parts of the world (ie, Chapter 3: Jose in Spain, Chapter 7 Raul in Romania etc etc etc).

Somehow, I doubt Nachtwey would be uncouth enough to structure his memoirs that way.

Her comment about Leica and Zeiss demonstrates how knowledgeable she is as an authority on RFs.


akalai said:
Deborah Copaken Kogan had made some comments in her book when it was first published in 2001 on James Nachtwey and her interactions with him.

In a 2003 article published on The Digital Journalist website (digitaljournalist.org) she either said, or was misquoted as saying, some rather disparaging comments about Nachtwey who in turn made a point to reply to her statements.

"Nachtwey Replies to Deborah C. Kogan's Remarks"
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0303/nachtwey.html

...and here is Copaken Kogan's response to Nachtwey;

"Deborah Copaken Kogan Responds to Nachtwey's Reply"
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0303/kogan.html
 
Chris,

thanks for the heads-up ... amusing read 🙂

My comments were directed at Copaken obviously, not you 😉 The NPR archives are indeed usually a great source of information with great subjects.
 
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