Who was that shooter??

[MISH]

****, i always heard and figured that a nice Leica will get you loads of attention amongst females. I know the Hasselblad SWC i regularly use attracts men. But come to think of it, i have never seen anyoe shooting a Leica...

when i was single I thought having a great camera would be a great atraction to women but in my case it never materialized...... granted there might have been other factors invoved... Now that I am married my wife says i look hot with a leica or contax in hand ( strangely she is not encouraging me to buy more)

Most of my Leica sightings have been in NYC ...don't think i have ever seen one around here
my daughter was with me once when a guy asked me about the bug eyes on my M3 and to hear her tell it, it was quite a experiance the way we both lit up
with excitement while talking Leica

My rarest sighting was in 1990 I ran into a guy with a Contax IIIA in a park, I did not know it at the time that fifteen years later I would have embraced the Contax rangefinder system with a exstensive IIa collection .... still the only contax rangefinder I have ever seen other than my own🙄

 

[Brad Maestas]

On Labor Day I spent much of the day shooting a big street fair that was happening right outside my apartment here in Astoria. I had my M6 in my hand and a DSLR strapped on in back for most of the day. I made several trips throughout the day and the last time, I only grabbed my DSLR. I took my shots and was walking back to my place when I noticed a fellow taking pictures with an M. I started walking in his direction and was considering engaging him in conversation but he started making his way across the street and I decided not to bother him. For the split second that I had a glimpse of the front of the camera I noticed that he had a 35mm Summicron (probably a IV) on it although I didn't get a clear view of the windows and whether it was an M3 or an M2. While I didn't get a shot of him from the front I did manage to snap a shot of him before I went home. From the looks of it, not many people get shots of their RF brethren in the wild!

He's in the blue shirt
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fodera6/3904575729/sizes/o/in/set-72157622199294349/

I reckon that in my time in NYC I've only seen one other M besides this one. That same day I was actually spotted by one guy that I always see with a sidewalk stand selling knick-knacks like cheap imitation leather cell phone cases. He just said, "Hey nice camera! A Leica!" Not sure if he was a photog or not but being that I see him at his stand all the time, I highly doubt it. I suppose there's also the slight possiblity he could be like the guy Harvey Keitel played in Smoke that takes a picture of the same corner every day before (or after) he went to work but that's a stretch too!

 

[alexz]

2 days back I was at the wedding (as a guest of course), I took my M6 with 50mm cron and intended to shoot a roll of two Tri-X pushed to 1600.
Obviously, no any other RF shooter around, however a pro photog who was shootig huge Nikon DSLR beasts approached to me and in excitement shared with me his opinion that the camera I hold in my hands (actually he meant Leica in general) is the only real camera in his opinion and he has (or used to have in some past ?) Leica at home. He even shared with me his secret that he have chosen Nikon system only because in his opinion it may be the closest match in SLRs to the toughness of Leicas..🙂

 

[Turtle]

I bumped into a Getty PJ in the stairwell of a drug rehab clinic in Afghanistan. She saw my Ms and asked what i thought of the M9. She said she had sold her Ms but kept the lenses and was annoyed the M9 was so expensive. I could just sense that she missed the small Leicas but said she was ore than happy with her 5DII. An interesting morning for lots of reasons.

Last week I was photographing at a historic site in Afdhanistan and chatting to some young Afghans flying kites. After about 20 mins, one of which said, "Oh,wow, I only just noticed, you have a Leica! Very old cameras and very expensive. My father owns a camera store in Pakistan so I know all about Leica; he talks about them a lot." His friend's father turned out to be an Afghan photojournalist. So it seems the apperciation of the Leica brand is quite widespread! This all took pkace shortly after another of their friends looked at my camera and asked me if my camera could take decent pictures, adding that I would be better off with a bigger professional camera with long lens rather than what he obviously regarded as a toy! This place never ceases to amaze me!

 

[dfoo]

In Shanghai, I saw a few photographers using rangefinders on the street, although never a Leica. I've seen lots of fellow Leica shooters in the camera market though 😉

 

[giellaleafapmu]

It seems I had a lot more chances than most here.

I saw somebody with an M6 in Rome a few years ago. He was speaking German with his wife/gf and we didn't say a world (I had a Leica R3 with me and we both looked at the other guy's camera), somebody else with some kind of Nikon rangefinder in Kyoto taking pictures of a shrine. Also no verbal contact (he was a japanese man probably well above the 60's and looked very concentrated in what he was doing). An American tourist in Oaxaca Mexico who come to me (I was with a Nikon F) asking if he could see my camera and was using a IIIf with a 50mm Canon lens. All these meetings really did not make any impression but a few mouths ago I went to a party and a person I did not know asked to me and a friend whether I would mind if he got a picture including us. When he grasped an incredibly beaten up M6 with a 28mm lens I was really amazed but this somehow did not count as real encounter because even tough I did not know the guy the organizer of the party was a pro photographer and I knew other people were also professionals (yep, the guy with the M6 too).

GLF

 

[Al Kaplan]

On a rare occasion I run across somebody who reccognizes My Leica M or Rolleiflex and bemoans the fact that he'd sold his. More frequently I get in a conversation with a highschool or college who is full of questions and wants to hold and look through the finder. They've never before used a rangefinder or TLR, or seen one close up.

Prices of used TLR's in general seem to be shooting up recently and new Seagulls ain't cheap.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com

 

[Ezzie]

Norway is a boring place. Norwegians need to conform, (being different is dangerous) and obvious wealth has led to everyone either having POS cameras, or DSLRs. Rangefinders are few and very far between. Last time I saw someone other than myself using one, was the former owner of the R-D1 now in my possession! 😉

 

[MartinP]

They've never before used a rangefinder or TLR, or seen one close up.

Prices of used TLR's in general seem to be shooting up recently and new Seagulls ain't cheap.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com

This is surprisingly so. I even noticed that "mind-blowingly sharp" Lubitels, a not-so-great FSU copy of a very old Voigtlander(?) design TLR, were going for 249 euros ($350) from a stockist in NL. That is enough to buy a Rolleicord, or a set of Flexarets with one per film type. Possibly these Lubitels are Lomo Chinese copies of the copy, even so they can't cost much more than the Lomo Fisheye (less than 70 euro/$100 retail) to make. But at least all the buyers will be using film for a while I suppose.

 

[Tsai]

I was out shooting last night in Vancouver Downtown, and happened upon two shooters, one with a large Canon DSLR and another with a handsome black M8 and leather strap to match. I kinda wanted to get a closer look on the M8 but our reactions were like..

Me thinking "WHOA! M8! No Way!"

Him thinking "WHOA! RD-1S! No Way!"

but just an passing glance no real words exchanged

 

[martin s]

I see M shooters a lot. On Thursday at the Kudamm (Berlin) - Dude had read hair, m6 ttl / 28mm Minolta. Italian dude in Munich, silver m7 + 50mm chrome summicron. Sophienstraße in Berlin, 2 black M's and something very similar to a Billingham in black.

There are more, but usually I talk and stay in touch with those guys.

martin

 

[mike kim]

I only encountered a rangefinder shooter once, a couple of years ago, at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. I was shooting with an old and battered Rolleiflex 3.5F, and a man carrying his mother in a wheelchair and with a chrome M6 hanging on his shoulder came to me saying "...excuse me, is that a Rollei? Wow, can I take a look at it? It's beautiful!", and then he proceeded to take his mint Rolleiflex 2.8 GX. I was shocked. I had never seen such clean cameras, and it was also the first time I had ever seen a Leica closely.

 

[Kent]

I live about one hour driving away from Solms where I go to twice a year to attend the Solms Camera Fair. Maaaaany RF shooters there. 😉

(In case you wonder, Solms is the home town of Leica.)

 

[kitaanat]

You'll also see far more digital cameras than halide, but at the exhibitions, you'll see far more pictures taken with halide than with digital...

R.

I love this sentence.