Leica Fanboy

Bold and italic and even bold italic alert

OK - I think I have probably held back long enough on this one, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better, so here goes.

Like a raw open wound, the art and hobby of photography has long been both a rich man's sport and something filled to the brim with disappointment. Really. You don't believe me? Well off you pop and have a word with yourself in that cupboard and then come back to me.

Is that better? Good.

Really, it is dead sad.

You know, when you look around you, our hobby/passion is littered with the broken dreams of:

"If only I had a such-and-such" 

and

"Oh for a Super f0.2! It would make my life so much easier" 

and

"I really want one of them . . . blah blah uses one, and I know they cost a lot of money, but if I get one of those I will take great pictures".

Does this sound familiar?

Thought so. The obsession with getting 'the best' in order to make your vision better is all too common, and a lot of the time, it doesn't even have to do with that. 

Obsessed with bragging rights a lot of photographers literally have to be seen to be carrying 'the thing', the latest and greatest, and sadly, in the case of Leitz, oldest, greatest/greatest, greatest camera and lens combo they can buy.

After all it's Leica, isn't it legendary?
Well yeah, natch, goes without saying! And the thinking seems to be that surely if you use it, some of the legend will rub off on you and you too can become a legend. Seriously - you are using a legend - ergo you are automatically a legend yourself - ergo your images are simply brilliant. 
Thus are Fanboys made. Like some weird form of possession, they come to eat, sleep, breath and just plain live for the marque to the point of total obsession. After all when God calls, would you want to be found wanting?
And from this come the reviews (done that myself), details, back-patting, testing, blogging, testing again and again and again.

Man, I thought I could be obsessive, but there's some real fruit-loops out there. You can find them under any picture sharing stone.

You know, there's another expression I heard recently: "All the gear, no idea".
Hmm, dontcha think it pretty much sums things up?
Really, when it comes down to it, isn't photography ALL ABOUT self expression and making your mark in the annals?
Isn't the camera JUST a means to an end to stop a moment in time?

Well I thought so, but looking around it often doesn't seem like that. 

I know I've mentioned this before, but it is like that stupid thing on Top Gear - the Cool Wall - I won't explain it as you've no doubt seen it, but basically it was a bunch of wee lads peeing up against a wall, except it was about cars - who can get the highest (fastest); who can splatter the most (biggest engine): who can miss dribbling on his shoes (bodywork) . . . you know . . . the sort of thing you thought you left behind when you were seven.

What we are seeing in photography at the moment amounts to the same thing - nothing to do with photography at all, just endless testing and re-testing, endless droning about bokeh and sharpness and just plain boring boring boring images being posted left right and centre.

I don't know about you, but it sucks the life out of my eyes, because it seems like the more money you have to spend on gear, the (mostly) more boring images the zombie photographer inside you is forcing you to take.

Goodness knows, some dullness is acceptable - it is part and parcel of the nature of the beast - but man does it get rammed down your throat, when in reality it should just have been kept under wraps. 

I suppose the ease of creating images these days has part to do with that too . . . tis a piece of cake to scan a bit of film and then show those results to the world, or upload some images to wherever, but I ask you this:

If you had a darkroom, would you truly have bothered to print them? 

Hmmmm - thought not.

It's this casual blaséness of snapping away and then parading the umpteenth picture of a pile of leaves that gets me.

Who cares?

Who's interested?

Not me.

 ***

Don't get me wrong, I love photography and I love photographing. I love seeing other people's GOOD photographs and for myself, I love seeing compositions in a viewfinder and wondering how it will look as a print or on screen, and I feel a real hunger to keep on doing that - to try and make something that is my own unique take on the world, and to maybe make people go "Gosh!"
I also love the gear - it can be seriously beautiful and is often a pinnacle of mechanical genius, and when I look around my small photographic world I see some people who are in love with photography too. They love all the things I love, and do all the things I do, but they are doing so in a relatively humble way. They're not testing or posting pictures of nothing, they are photographing their world.

I've a Sheephousian confession to make . . . I go to meetings. Wonderful, chatty, joyous affairs with maniacs like myself, all ex-Scottish Photographers. SP by the way (the original lot, not the Facebook group, or the new bunch with a website going under the same name), wasn't a camera club or anything of that ilk - it was and is a serious and utterly dedicated bunch of people who live to photograph. I can't put it in any better way.
These people exhibit, teach, create and generally pass on the baton.
Dedication is the thing.
It is really quite something.
Were I to draw a parallel, I would say it was almost like The Linked Ring, except we aren't really breaking any new ground, and we definitely aren't all moustachioed and done up to the nines in proper removable collars and brilliantine.
Nope, the one defining thing is hunger.
Even with a lifetime of photographing behind them, the need to make images and produce work is all there is. Take for instance Peter and Aase Goldsmith, a couple who have photographed their whole lives through and still in their older years are producing essays and books, prints and presentations. They live photography. Truly. Every time I meet them, there's new projects . . . whether it be a selection of prints made with their newly acquired Holga Panoramic cameras, through to wonderful handmade books, spiral bound, with pencil marks and hand annotation detailing something that was so important in their lives that they had to photograph it. One particular book was made with a knackered Leica III and a knackered Jupiter 35mm lens and it looked like nothing I had ever seen - it was exciting and beautiful and totally individualistic.

Isn't that surely the nature of photography?

To stop that 1/125th of second and permanentise it?

To say to others:

"Look at this. What do you make of that? Isn't that just an extraordinary and exciting and thrilling thing?"

To further stretch this already stretched point, last week I met Malcolm Thompson on the bus.

Malcolm is another person who has dedicated his whole life to photography, from photographing for a living through to running Studio M (a print and process studio) through to exhibiting regularly, through to teaching the craft of photography and printing at the DCA through to print sessions at same.

Dedication is the thing, because he still lives and breathes it, despite now living with Parkinson's Disease, and rather than focus on that (as most folks would) he sadly recounted that he had just sold his 5x4 as it was just taking too much out of him, and that he felt that was a real shame, but he still was in love with his Rollei SL66 and would continue using that, and that he was finding FP4 ridiculously expensive but had recently started experimenting with Fomapan. In other words, though Parkinson's is a terrible disease and is robbing Malcolm of his physicality, his photographic flame still burns as bright as anything I have ever seen.

***

I know that was a wee meander, but it is to draw a point.
Dedication, craft and a love of producing good images; a willingness to try the new, and retrench in the old if necessary, but above all the hunger to photograph the world, to inform, to present to others that which you find interesting surely has to be your whole raison d'être as a photographer.

Surely Shirley.

SHIRLEY?

Well, were I being naive I would say that is the case, however we move in strange times, and much as the same way my old hobby and love of guitar playing has been taken over by a billion marauding hordes with squidoons of cash to spend and not a clue what to do with the fucking instrument except post 'unboxing' videos on YouTube, the world of photography is sort of suffering the same fate.

Go on . . . I dare you.
YouTube.
Type 'Unboxing' and then your favourite camera.
Or the cracker . . the shutter/mirror movement/penny test.
Well?
Sad isn't it (I seem to be typing that a lot recently).
OK, I am ranting a bit now (what's new?) but I see people spending really considerable amounts of money on cameras and lenses and then going out and photographing the likes of this:

Or this:

Wait a minute, and as they used to say - Ayeee, carumba!
In the words of Aimee Mann:
"What a waste of gunpowder and sky"
Because those two 'photographs' were made with the same lens that made this:

Does that look familiar? 

Of course it does - its my old mate Ralph Gibson and the Leitz Dual Range 50mm Summicron - one of the greatest lenses ever made. A lens designed to make photographs and art and stunning images, now slapped on a digi-body and relegated to the new gladiatorial arena of 'testing'.

Look, just to over-egg the pudding, here's some stuff made with the lens that made Leitz famous - the 50mm f3.5 Elmar (obviously shoved on a digi-cam because they've cropped the proportions all wrong):

And this:

And then . . . there's this one:

Familiar?

Yep - it's me old mate HCB, and what a photograph!
It has everything in spades; tone, light, composition, timing - it is the utter antithesis of the two 'photos' above it. No lens testing here, just good ol' HCB, wandering around, waiting, waiting, then, making the likes of the above.
You see, that history is part of the problem (if you want to call it one) with the Leica -  sadly its caché and all the baggage it brings with it is so huge and almost archetypal that it is hard to get beyond it.
As a marque it has been responsible for some of the finest, most memorable, exquisite, exciting, beautiful, thoughtful and downright entertaining images EVER made, however every year I see less and less of them and more of the inane, banal, dull, bland, totally-lacking-in-vision 'testing testing 1, 2, 3' type.

When you think of what the system is capable, I think it is a fucking waste.
As an antithesis to the 'testing' pics above, look at this image made by Rax from Iceland:

I don't really need to say anything do I? It is right up there in the Leitz pantheon.
Ragnar (Rax) has a superb eye and is an all-round nice bloke to boot and if you like the above, it can be found in his superb book Faces Of The North, but the thing is, rather than standing around looking for the 'where's the leaves? testing-testing-testing' sort of image, he goes out and makes photographs. Ones you would want to hang on your wall or travel miles to see in an exhibition, and though he uses Leica I don't think he is too hung up on it - it is a tool to realise his vision, not an effet accessory.

***

Y'see (allied to the historic importance of the marque) is the Leica's perceived other-worldy qualities. There, I've said it, been there, done the worship thing, come out the other side, still in love but more aware.

There seems to be a perception that some of the magic will rub off on the user, and they'll be able to have some sort of prescient, all-seeing, magical vision bestowed upon them by the Gods of Light and Timing. That simply because Leitz lenses just 'are', anyone using one will automatically be inducted into the Leitz Hall of Fame.

In other words, simply by the act of owning a Summilux or a Summicron, YOU WILL BE GREAT.
Full stop.
No work required.

So the mania creeps in - testing central websites (you know who you are and you should be ashamed really for toting such shite where the object becomes more important than the end result); the need for the most expensive Leica objet d'art you can afford (or not). And then the hunting for subject matter (when there are photographs everywhere) and rather than training their eyes to see something that might make a decent photograph, they just go and snap at any olde shite . . . but remember . . .

It's got the glow! 

It's got the bokeh!! 

My 'Lux took this picture of some leaves by the light of one candle!!!

You know what I mean.

I do despair actually.

A photographer will do his or her best to make the most of what is available.

Granted it is wonderful to own some beautiful tools too . . . I am as bad as anyone from that point of view - my M2/Elmars/Canon set-up is a joy to me (and I've recently had the pleasure of geeing up confirmed SLR user Bruce at The Online Darkroom into enjoying using a rangefinder, and he's enjoying it because he is a photographer) but I spent my formative photographic years operating an Olympus OM10 with the standard Zuiko 50mm f1.8 (total cost in 1980, £99 . . .) and some ancient Pentax glass married with a college K1000 . . . so I was making the most of what I had available.

But more importantly, I was training myself to see.

I don't think I have got there yet, but I keep trying, and that is the thing.
Simply by acquiring something as lovely as say an M2 and a suitable lens do not a good photographer, or even a decent Leica practitioner make.
Maybe if someone had handed me a M6 and a Summilux back in day I would have gone off snapping away at uninspiring drivel too, but they didn't and that didn't happen; my hunger to produce better images than I had the week before was what kept me going, not the need to grab the best stuff I could (n't) afford.
I wanted to take photographs and I still do - that hunger still drives me, and I'll use any of my cameras to do it, but at the end of the day, I have to take photographs I am happy with, otherwise what's the point?

***

Deary me Sheephouse, you've really gone off on one haven't you?
Well yes, and far be it from me to tell you how to enjoy your hobby - after all, you have to want to aspire to something don't you - I just felt that standing back and having a look at how things are and then saying it how I see it, might put a different spin on things for people.
For my own aspirations, a DR Summicron, a nice Hasselblad and a decent Rollei are hardly cheap and cheerful acquisitions, but life is short and I feel they'll further my vision. This being said they aren't the be-all and end-all - they're fine tools for executing what I can imagine myself taking - but I can just as easily imagine myself getting good results from Ye Olde Knackered Minolta Autocord and one of my Nikon Fs.
I do know one thing though - THE IMAGE IS ALL - it is the only thing that counts.

***

Anyway, enough of me olde manne guffe - you'll see below a couple of examples of me learning my way around a lovely old gentleman.
Steady at the back . . . stop that tittering.
He's a 1934 uncoated 50mm f3.5 Elmar that I bought from Peter Loy for a very reasonable price. The history of the lens is what got me - imagine what it has seen! However it is not a lens for the faint-hearted, as I learned quickly.
You need to up the oomph.
What helped initially was the acquisition of a lovely, mint, boxed, FISON lens hood from the lovely people at Red Dot Cameras, and then the oomph was further  . . er . . oomphed by a new development regime.
Flat, low-contrast negatives are the order of the (normal) day on an uncoated Elmar . . however rate a 400 film at around EI 200 and give about 10 to 15% extra development time and you'll get some gutsy negatives that will transform it.
It still has the glow, but it also has some other character which I can't quite pin down. I love it actually. As with all Elmars I really do think they were optimised as 'People Lenses' - that is my own expression, because they tend to work best in the 4 to 12 feet range, in other words the sort of distances you'd be using to photograph people.
So there y'go, have a butchers at the photos below - they do illustrate one thing. And it's an important thing - even learning to use a new lens doesn't mean you have to take pictures of piles of leaves or monitors or dashboards or the first thing you turn your camera on - you can try and make interesting images.
Just use your head, your heart, your eyes and go out and take some fucking photographs!

Well that's crude-boy me talking . . I think it is probably more eloquently expressed by a true master - Wynn Bullock:

"The medium of photography can record not only what the eyes see, but that which the mind's eye sees as well. The camera is not only an extension of the eye, but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye, visible."

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3.

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3-4

TTFN - over and out and remember that the yellow pills make your tummy feel awfully wobbly.

The 1960 Space-Age Time Machine

Morning!

Regular readers will know that a while back I bought a rather nifty old Canon 28mm f3.5 LTM lens. I was chuffed with said lovely piece of brass, chrome and glass and said so here.

Well, since then I've been bad . . nay . . not just bad, but neglectful . . you see I've barely used it, and I can't quite figure out why, because it's lovely to use and adds a certain air of early 1960's gentlemanly charm to my Leica M2 - they look the part don't they!

Tip Top - the 1960 Space-Age Time Machine.
(OK, so the Canon is a Type IV, mid-1950's model, but it didn't have the same ring to it)

I think my problem is, that up till now, I hadn't actually printed anything properly that I had photographed with it.
Notice I say printed, because although I had scanned some of the negatives made with it and had done a few initial crumby work prints on RC paper, I hadn't actually spent a huge amount of time in the darkroom with real quality photographic materials.

Well more fool me, because as such, I was entirely unaware of how fantastic the little Canon was for (how shall we say) . . ahem . . 'vintage tones'.

There, bugger it, that's all the remaining nice ones in the world snapped up by digi-twitchers in search of the unattainable. 

Oh yeah I can hear it now, "It's a bargain in current terms  . . . blah blah blah . . . impeccable build quality . . . blah bloody blah"

And you know what, for all that the world has progressed; for all that digital photography is the be-all and end-all; for all that all but a hard-core of junkie film users even pay attention to such things, I still think there's a hankering for The Golden Age.

You know, Eugene, HCB, Ansel, Wynn, Minor, Paul, Walker etc etc etc.

Their photographs have 'that look'.

"What's that Sheephouse?" I hear you cry .. "What look might that be man, and how does one attain it?'
Well, it's the look of liquid silver.
Of greys that shimmer with depth and airiness.
Photographs of timing and composition and skill made by people that relied on their innate human creativity and not the splurge of a billion frames a second in the cause of hoping to 'capture' something . . anything . .  worthwhile.

It's THE LOOK man, and if you need an arse like me to explain it to you, then you jolly well need your eyes tested!

In short (or long) it is nothing short of why I wanted to photograph in the first place and why I don't think I have ever really achieved my goal and go on searching. (There, how's that! I've hobbled any photographic achievements I have ever achieved). But it's true.

It's also a look I don't really see at all these days and I think the reason for this (apart from the obvious one of completely different materials from then to now) is down to a certain hiccough in the world of glass: coating.

An uncoated lens as you'll no doubt know delivers flare and often low contrast (caused by the flare).

A single coated lens will deliver more contrast, and slightly less flare.

A multi-coated lens has precious little flare, but tons of contrast. True, the little Canon is I believe multi-coated, but it's 'soft' (not physically, but visually) - there's no way you'd get the same look from a modern lens . . 

And then there's coating and coating - stuff that is so soft you could just stare at it and it marks, stuff that is so hard you can smash it against a brick wall, but all of it made with the thought in mind that contrast is better than flare.

(There's a stupid caveat to this too - I recently had the chance to handle and see the results from a couple of Lomo panoramic cameras . . and you know what . . they didn't have the look, even for their so-called 'lo-fi' cache . . . and actually, thinking about it, pinhole camera results don't have the look either  . . at least they don't to my eye. I experimented in pinhole years back and found it to be a faff for something that I just thought was so-so. If you want dreamy and out-of-focus, you'll have to go LF and back to the earliest of barrel lenses (or the misuse of close-up lenses) in my humble opinion . . . anyway . . that's another story!)

So what is the dashed lens bringing to the party, given that a pinhole has no glass??
It's impossible to quantify for me - maybe if I were to read Arthur Cox's Photographic Optics, I'd understand completely, but for now, let me say that the lens acts as a (oh goodness . . . here he goes again) sort of surrogate portal to a different reality.

Now if you could just hold on a min whilst I get the sleeves of this straight-jacket sorted, I'll try and explain myself. Think about it, it does. You're shoving a three-dimensional world, down a narrow piece of metal and glass, to work its magic on a piece of sensitized material and then you are chemically altering said material, and then you are bringing what was once three dimensions into the 2D spotlight of a piece of sensitized paper. In other words, you've stopped time, and transformed 'reality'!

Hah, bet you never thought of photography like that and to me, it is all the more incredible for it.

Your print is an alteration of reality. Yes it is reality (mostly) and yet it is far removed from it.

Of course I could just be wittering a load of old shoite, but if it gets you thinking differently, then I am happy.

Ah, that's better, the tea is starting to kick in and whilst I've spilled half of it down the front of my nice new jacket, I can feel its calming properties . . . so, where were we? Ah yes, coating and contrast!
I think therein lies the problem.
The world simply isn't a contrasty place. It can be, but on the whole, no, it isn't, not really.
Same with your eyes.
Can you honestly say you see everything in razor-sharp, super-contrasty HD? Nope, me neither. Infact, centrally whilst everything is fine, peripherally, the world is a blur.

Stare at something backlit, and I have a low-contrast, flare-ridden mess with blur and my eyelashes take on sunstars!

Totally imperfect and that to me is what is lacking in most photography - that air that the world is imperfect and that light is transitory and always changing. I'm sorry, but the hyper-sharp, hyper-toned, hyper-coloured "reality" that gets toted as photography these days looks to me as fake as a plastic surgery disaster. 

It has nothing to do with how humans see the world and everything to do with the damned idealism with which we are encouraged to view everything in life. I mean, what happened to human frailty and mistakes?

You know, I almost hate "perfection", but I really LOVE real perfection.

To wit, I recently ate a Spanish vanilla cheescake at a tapas restaurant that was so good I started crying - it was perfection - you can ask Ali. Honestly - it sounds daft but it is true and gives you an idea of the sort of person you're letting inside your head with all these thoughts.
I'm thinking about it now, and I'm also thinking this picture by Mr. Edward Weston from 'The Family Of Man' exhibition and book, this too is perfection:

If there is one picture in the world that has made me want to sell everything and purchase a 10x8 camera, it is this. When I first encountered it in an original copy of 'The Family Of Man' book, I was gobsmacked - the composition and the tones, the artful 'looseness', the light and simply everything about it states "Master Craftsman At Work". It looks casual but is anything but; there's contrast, yes, but it's not too contrasty. You don't get the full measure from the screen, but there's suitable detail in the shadowed trouser area, from correct exposure, and there's also flare, but skillful processing and printing have rendered that a pleasing part of the whole - it's pure craftsmanship - the contrast is provided by the light and the processing, not the lens.

I wish I could make something as powerful

This by Mr. W.Eugene Smith, this is perfection too:

NYC Harbour. July 1956. Nun waiting for survivors of SS Andrea Doria

To me this is up there as one of the finest 35mm photographs ever made.

Look at is closely - it isn't sharp at all, anywhere, and yet, Oh Goodness - WHO CARES?!

It speaks to the soul in a way that is hard to define - pure genius.

Imperfections besiege us as photographers, and that is part of the fun to my mind. As I've said many times before, developing a film is like paraphrasing Forrest Gump 'you don't know whatcha gonna git', because your technique can be down pat and perfect, but for all that, there is still room for mistakes and wonder, for happenstance and joy. For surprise. For humanity and glitches and weirdness (like the reflections that I wasn't aware of in the third print below).

And so, sorry to say, it is on to me and my stuff, after all that's the whole point of these exercises isn't it . . me, me, ME!

These were grab shots off of two different films made whilst away in Edinburgh for a bit. Film was TMX 400, developed in 1:25 Rodinal. I reckon I was shooting at about 1/125th at f11 or f8 with the tiny Canon 28mm and the M2 combo.

Strange to say, I think they almost look made up, set up and contrived and yet these were as they happened and totally disassociated from each other. The only parameters being time and walking around in different places.

See what you think.

?

??

!

I might be marking my card here and putting myself up for criticism, but to my eye, they sort of have that look. Again, you are hard pushed to get it off the screen, but in real life handling the prints, the highs sparkle a bit, the mids are creamy and dreamy and the blacks contrasty, but not overtly so. I am happy with them, which I suppose is the main thing.
They were printed on some ancient 10x8" Adox Vario Classic - a variable contrast, museum weight paper that hasn't been made for a few years now - and developed in Fotospeed print developer and then toned in Selenium for archival purposes. It's a nice combo, and I've filed them away as a sequence in some archival print sleeves. I am a happy bunny.

Here's another print from the same films, this time made in (if I remember rightly) St Andrews - can't remember what the occasion was though . . . 

Hungry?

Again, this is filed away archivally - I am chuffed, and do you see what I mean about the look from the lens? I am delighted with it and how it has interacted with Kodak TMX 400 (a bloody fine film) and with 1:25 Rodinal. This is a seriously good combo - grain is remarkably well controlled and (with some judicious gentle agitation) very unobtrusive to my eyes.

What I like about this photograph and print is the silveriness of everything and also that the machine by the door of the 'van, looks like an abandoned robot from the 1960's. It was probably made at 1/125th at around f16 (the exposure you fool . . not the robot). Detail is great too so I am asking myself why am I not using this lens more?

Well, I suppose the 90mm Elmar supplanted it (having been bought in haste at a bargain price) and I have really enjoyed using that, but for now and maybe into the Summer, I am heading out with the Canon. It's a testimony to the quality of Japanese engineering.

Happy days!

And that's it, so till next time, take care and get yourself out and take some photographs, and if you can, if you truly truly can . . please make some prints on real 'wet' photographic paper. 

You might well get a surprise.

Caveat Emptor - The Leica Sniff Test

Well shipmates - 'tis time to keelhaul your dandos, because the Old Grey Mare is a grungin' in the meadow . . 

Yes, it's time to clamber aboard the Happy Shippe FogBlog and set sail on the seas of improbability!
And what a week it's been . . .
Start of week:
Quiet. Too damn quiet. Somethin' was brewin'

Midweek:

Sheephouse clambered up onto the deck shouting,
"It's all about photography!" 

He was clutchin' some sheets of paper, and he'd spilled his lunch all down his shirt, so I thoughts to meself, Oh yes, it's got him bad.

Later in the week:

We's discovered that there was a stowaway on board. 

Firsts I thought it was another cat. 

Mog was acting funny and we chanced to see a slinky figure sulking around the galley. 

But luck was with us and we trapped it with a barrel o' good salt Herring.

'Twas a strange creature - it ate a great mouthful o' Herring, chewed and then spat the whole lot back out on deck, proclaiming,

"Nassty, salty fishes. Not sweet. No. Ruined, ruined!"
and ran off.

We couldn't find hide nor tail o'him, but on Friday we had him.

He must have been powerful hungry, for Matey Mate (the Ship's Mate, believe it or not - what a happy happenstance o' namin' that was for his parents) said we should use some of the remnants of the Ramen disaster from last week, to trap him.

We shoved a bucket of Prawn/Beef/Chicken/Kimchi flavoured noodle-bilge into a quiet corner and stayed on watch. 

It worked.

"Hmmm. Nices wormses. Wormses good. Sso tassty for nice Smeagol. Happy Smeagol. Nice food. Plenty too. Not nassty, like nassty, salty fishes."

He slurped away some more, and spoke some more.

"More than enough here Precious, Plenty for us. 

But we don't like that nassty catses, oh no! 

Not catses. Catses eat fishes. 

Smeagol loves fishes more. 

Nassty catses eat Smeagol's fishes. 

Maybe nassty catses has to go! 

Maybe when it's sleeping Precious. 
Maybe when it's dreaming of mices, we creeps up and throttles it. 
Hmmm, then no more nassty catses"

I'll tell ee mates, that was enough for me. I broke cover with the burlap sack I had, popped it over his head and lashed it tight. 

It was a struggle to get him onto deck, but I managed.

"Threaten my Mog would ye!" I shouted as I held him over the waves.

"No, no, Nice catses, nice catses. Maybe share nice fishes with nice catses!"

I didn't wait to hear any more but pulled off the sack and dropped him over the side, shouting,

"There's plenty o'fish for you in there matey!"
and we sailed on, for it was a strong wind and we was makin' good time. 

I used my spyglass and saw him lithely clamber aboard some flotsam and start sculling off in the opposite direction.

A curious creature and that's no mistake.

Anyway's me hearties, we arrived back in time for Mr.Sheephouse to dash into the printers and set the type and pull a few copies of his broadsheet.

Oh yes, an eventful week and no mistake!

***

This week's FB is all about photography, which is a relief because I thought I had lost it!
Anyway, I chanced upon a copy of the 1974 Leica Manual in my local Oxfam recently - it was a decent price so I bought it.
If you've never read a copy, I can recommend it! There are lots of different ones out there, but they do seem to be climbing the charts with regard to pricing . . . anyway, in trawling through its pages I encountered a picture of a Japanese gentleman doing something rather extraordinary . . .
Here he is.

"Hmmm - smell like it hasn't been aired in long time."

Curious isn't it.

Reading the text, I discovered that as well as the usual visual and aural inspections that one should normally make when purchasing a new secondhand camera, there was another . . the olfactory test!

Yep - I was a bit astounded, because I have never heard of such a thing. Sniffing a camera? That's a bit, how shall we say . . . deviant, isn't it?

I say I say I say sir. 

Wot 'ave we 'ere.

A little illicit camera sniffing?

Oy say Sir. 

That's illegal 'round these 'ere parts. 

Aven't you read By-law 136, Subsection B, Paragraph 2?

It cleary states:

"Anyone involved in, or indulging in, the nasal inhalation of camera air for such purposes that are outwith the normal olfactory motions of product purchase, will be prosecuted"

In uvver words Sir:

If you are are caught havin' a nifty snortle of your camera, you are deemed to be in breech of said by-law and as such will be asked to face the correct consequences of such actions.

In uvver words Sir:

You're nicked.

Something along those lines.

The only reference to sniffing cameras I can find is more akin to that new car smell thing where people go and luxuriate in acres of tanned leather, so for instance, you unbox your camera and sniff the new smell. Nowhere have a I seen it being an essential part of the used camera buyers armament.

Well folks, here it is, right now. Buying a secondhand camera?

Take the lens off and sniff the bloody thing!

Have a really good snort, savour what you smell and sniff again. **

Why?

Well, readers of FB will know that I recently purchased a very nice Leica IIIf RD DA (serial number 72****) - it was made in 1954 and you know what, in the short period of time I have owned it I have become rather attached to it . . wanting to buy it little treats like a case and a new strap and so on. I am glad I didn't though.

Its 3 month guarantee ran out this week, and I thought last weekend, I had better give it a quick going over just to make sure there was nothing untoward that was going to show up (typically) the day after the guarantee ran out. It has had a hazy finder since I bought it, and I accepted what the vendor said about it being a little hazy . . it didn't bother me that much and didn't seem to be too bad. To be fair, he had offered to get it cleaned at a discounted price, but I opted to pay what he was asking with a Russian lens chucked in to the bargain.

Lieca IIIf RD DA RF 'Haze'.
Don't just take such descriptions at face value my friends.

Anyway, in checking it out last weekend I did something I hadn't done originally. I used my small Photon torch to shine a light through from the rear of the camera, through the viewfinder and rangefinder windows, fully expecting them to just be hazy. I donned a pair of reading glasses, because to be honest, working with computer screens all week, my eyes are fast becoming shot. Anyway, what did I see? Hmmm. Curious. Hmmm. Bloody hell! FUNGUS!!

Was I annoyed and upset? YES. How can haze be fungus? Well, it can and was.
And to this I will say: Caveat Emptor.
Check and double check everything. In fact treble check everything.

My brain is funny sometimes. Illogical and then all of a sudden, everything drops into place.

A Japanese man doing something deviant jumped into my head. And so did my own actions when I purchased the camera. I had unmounted the Jupiter 8 lens it was supplied with and my nostrils were tickled with quite a 'musty' smell - you know the sort - it just smelled like it hadn't been aired in a long time. It wasn't too bad, but it was there, and I (in my naivity) just thought it was the smell of a camera that had been unused for a while and that it would dissipate fairly soon. Of course, eventually putting 3 and 3 together I realised that the reason it smelled 'musty', was because there was fungus growing inside the camera.

Re-reading the text of the Leica manual again, sure enough, it clearly stated the very same thing:

"Now a word to those of you who would stick your noses into a Leica. Do it! The telltale odor of mildew or fungus growth is hard to mistake. If you detect it in a used camera it means trouble."

There, writ large in black and white.

Sniff your camera!

Why on earth have I never read this anywhere else?
I have read screeds about buying cameras, and yet this very obvious and seemingly silly piece of advice is missing.

Well, I exhort you now:

Go forth and SNIFF.

I have gone over all my others with a fine tooth comb, however what I am more bothered about is that I have had a vastly infected camera nestling up tight with my (not exactly slight) collection. I have also recently purchased a nicely ancient uncoated 1934 50mm Elmar which has been mounted on the IIIf's body, so I will have to watch that too.

I am rather cheesed off to be honest - the whole thing has been a waste of time and postage and expectation, however the vendor has accepted it back no questions asked and I have scraped together some more money, and hopefully should receive a nice little 1960 Leica M2 soon.
But back to sniffing - it is as basic a check as anything - probably the most basic thing you can do when checking a camera - I exhort you to do it!
If you've read about fungus, you'll know that fungal growth in cameras doesn't just appear overnight - it often takes months and years to establish itself, so it was pretty obviously there when it was described as 'haze'.

The importance of a torch test

Shelob's Lair

Can you spots me in there my Precious?
Nasty smelly caveses - we hates them.

Even innocuous bits inside a camera viewing system can mean trouble

Strangely when viewing normally through the VF and RF windows, this was all just apparent as 'haze', it really was - to my naked eye it looked a bit iffy but nothing drastic - it has taken the power of the mighty Photon II torch to bring it out in its full, nasty glory.

So there you go - Sniff Sniff Sniff.

In the words of me old mate Gollum:

Bests to check your nasty caveses my darlings.

Curse us and crush us - nasty stuffses inside.

Bad surprises for the unwary. Poor Precious, poor Smeagol!

Oh yes.

Goblinses and nassty black beasties and webses

But we're not going back. No. We're not. 

Some nice fishses and cool water away from the burning torchses.

What's it got in its camera Precious?
Not fair.
What's it got in its camera?

If this has interested you at all, I have done a wee squinty pdf of the original article by Norman Goldberg. It is a wise selection of advice, which, whilst Leica oriented, is actually of use to anyone buying a secondhand mechanical camera.

Feel free to download it here

Obviously the Leica Manual is copyrighted material. The publishers were Morgan & Morgan of New York, however in checking around they don't seem to exist any more, also Mr.Norman Goldberg who wrote the piece obviously owned the copyright, however he died in 2006. You can find an intersting article about one of his inventions here

So to conclude and wave goodbye to my IIIf, I thought I would include a photograph from the last film I put through it - Ilford HP5 at EI 320, developed in HC 110 Dilution G for 20 minutes.

I still have the 1934 Elmar lens though (which I purchased from a different vendor) - that I am keeping, and I am trying to negotiate a semi-swap/trade-in for another Leica.

Hopefully this one won't smell musty.



Beyonce And The Imagination Witch

So that is farewell to my 1954 Leica IIIf - a real shame as I don't think I have enjoyed using another camera quite as much. And before you ask, yes I could get the vendor to clean it all up and get it back, but can they really eradicate everything? The seeds of doubt would be sown and would grow into an expensive paranoia, so it has gone out of my life. I hope someone else finds it as nice to use as I did.

As usual, thanks for reading, and God bless.

** Camera Sniffers and Camera Sniffing are ® Sheephouse Inc. 2012