Leica, please immediately terminate your 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China special edition cameras, crush them, and donate the crushed remains to Reporters Without Borders as paperweights.
Commemorating the 60th anniversary of a régime with a scandalous human rights and information freedom record is not compatible with the ideals of the Leitz family, who operated the Leica Freedom Train during the 3rd Reich era in Germany.
Seriously, it’s in very poor taste.
There’s a rather interesting open Letter to Leica on Luminous Landscape; well worth a read.
(Via http://leicarumors.com/.)
But I can’t say I quite agree.
Part of the reason I don’t quite agree is because I am a recalcitrant traditionalist; I would rather not have some ‘future-minded’ Engineers tamper with a fundamentally well-evolved camera system, in the same way that I would rather not have any zealous-minded dipshit cause Morgan to cease production of the +4 because it doesn’t conform to modern “standards” (whatever those are).
Another reason is that I’m not convinced that the M system is necessarily a dead end.
Quite aside from the small, but noticeable resurgence in the use of film, even in a professional context, there are roles that a manual focused rangefinder camera (digital or not) can fulfill that DSLRs and EVILs cannot (though the EVIL cameras are closer to the M aesthetic than a DSLR will ever be).
The Leica — initially the “Barnack” Leicas, and later the M family — became a mainstay of photojournalists because it was simple, compact, very reliable and robust, with excellent lenses and other accessories. It’s clear that Leica is marketing the M9 by appealing to the “behold how awesome Ms have always been” trope, and Mr Reichmann is right to point out that that is not enough.
I would submit that the future M series needs to be re-thought not in terms of making it more “current” or “modern”, but in terms of making it more useful to professional photographers, in particular photojournalists, by adding and enhancing features that make it easier for a skilled photog to take pictures, and stripping away nonsense and fluff.
Safe in the knowledge that nobody who reads this blog works for Leica, here are a few thoughts.
The Lenses
Leave the damn lenses alone. Seriously, they’re perfect. OK fine, do R&D, make ‘em better, smoother, tougher, sharper. But leave the attitude alone.
Extend the 6-bit coding to embrace every lens Leica has ever produced.
In fact, perhaps open up the 6-bit system (perhaps making it a 7- or 8-bit system to allow for more information), or modify it to allow for 3rd party lens manufacturers. If Olympus can get a couple of other players on board the 4/3 system, then Leica can cut a deal with Zeiss and Voigtländer.
That way, if it should occur to Zeiss or Voigtländer (i.e., Cosina in both cases) to produce a digital M-compatible system, the users of this system can aspire to Leica lenses.
One thing I’d personally like is a return to 11-bladed aperture diaphragms. 5-blades? What are you, cheap? No you aren’t, so stop acting cheap.
Autofocus can’t be done with the M system, so let’s forget about that. Lots of PJs shoot wide angles hyperfocal anyway.
The Bodies
The basic form factor, which makes the Leica what it is, should also be basically left alone, at least from the front.
But instead of adding fluff, make it useful.
PJs shoot under stressful situations, often needing to remain very discreet. The shutter needs to be even quieter. The cocking mechanism, even if delayed by the ‘discreet mode’ of the M9, is still teeth-grittingly noisy when you’re trying to take a furtive pic.
What’s stopping us from researching alternatives to physically moving a cloth or metal curtain back and forth across the sensor? Does a digital sensor really need a shutter in the conventional sense?
How about a shutter made from some kind of glass that can control its translucency, perhaps with liquid crystals?
Thumbrest, please. The Epson RD-1 even had a real shutter cocking lever, which might be a useful alternative to a noisy motor!
The baseplate
Everybody agrees that making the user pull the baseplate off a digital camera in order to swap the SD card is completely brain dead, and possibly even dangerous.
Let me elaborate.
PJs sometimes need to hide their SD cards from officials/militants/insurgents/obsequious cops preventing “terrorism”/your mom, so that they don’t confiscate pictures of things the public viewability of which PJs and the above-mentioned people don’t see eye to eye about.
So it would be a killer feature to have a substantial internal buffer, and two SD card slots; One is easily accessible and ’sacrificial’, the inner one is the backup, and the internal buffer is backup-backup. Maybe even a user-accessible un-delete function!
An option for the baseplate is a Leicavit-style battery pack. I’m envisioning superior battery endurance, the various SD slots and possibly a bluetooth transmitter or similar for tethering to a small storage device off-body.
The display
Finest quality, please, and cover it in anti-glare sapphire glass, and please let me operate the camera without the display at all if I need to; if I’m in the dark somewhere, I don’t want an expensive camera to give away my position.
To sum up
I haven’t really been as coherent as the Luminous Landscape article, but I have voiced a few thoughts. That counts for something. I’ll write a more concisely-argued version of this another time.
Berg
- Omatako
- Brandberg
- Tafelkop
- Erongo
- Spitzkoppe
- Omuhonga
- Waterberg
- Moltkeblick
- Kaiser Wilhelm
- Fingerklip
- Vogelfederberg
- Blutkuppe
Pflanze
- Welwitschia
- Baobab
- Köcherbaum
- Akazie
- Marula
- Makalanipalme
- Dollarbusch
- Euphorbia
- Bergaloe
- Flechte
- Mopane
- Moringa
Fluss
- Swakop
- Kunene
- Kavango
- Huab
- Oranje
- Ugab
- Fish
- Nossob
- Kuiseb
- Hoanib
- Zambezi
- Chobe
Volk
- Herero
- Owambo
- Ovahimba
- Nama
- Baster
- San
- Südwester
- Afrikaner
- Otjimba
- Damara
- Kaprivianer
- English Namibian
On Speed Limits
Dr K Shangula here argues that the speed limit of 120km/h on Namibian roads should be reviewed. He asserts that,
The speed limit of 120 kilometres per hours was set many years ago. It was appropriate and in line with the technology at that time. The speed of 120 km/h is most probably equivalent to 160 km/h according to the current technology. The maintenance of the 120 km/h speed limit on a highway makes drivers unnecessary traffic offenders. A law which the majority of citizens do not observe is not necessarily a good law.
He’s right, to an extent, in that the safety features of cars have become much more advanced and safer in recent years. Part of that drive towards improved technology has been adaptation to harsh high-speed European, East Asian and North American traffic.
The fabled German Autobahn even has no posted speed limits in places, leading speed demons to argue that if it works there, then surely if these modern sedans are so safe, then we must introduce higher speed limits — and even minimum speeds — on Namibian roads.
I can think of no idea more foolish.
Offhand, I can think of the following good reasons to stick with 120km/h limits:
- Most Namibian highways have two lanes only. This is generally no problem on more remote roads where traffic density os low, but on stretches where density is relatively high, such as the stretch between Okahandja and Windhoek, higher speeds for sedans are irresponsible and dangerous.
- The main danger derives from speed differentials. The higher the difference in speed between two vehicles on a road, the less predictable the situation rapidly becomes, leading to exponentially higher risk.
- Impunity is a problem. If someone is willing to speed by travelling 140km/h in a 120km/h area, then what is to say that they will still travel 140km/h in a 150km/h area? Won’t they be tempted to travel 170?
- Animals, both wild and domestic, don’t care how safe your suspension and brakes are, and remain dangerous. This would be fine if it remained between the driver and the animal, but the driver takes not only their life in their hands, but also the lives of any passengers, and also the lives of other road users. The horrific crash on the Rundu road a few years ago, where a truck his a minibus, was caused by one of the vehicles swerving to avoid a donkey.
- Travelling at a higher speed requires a higher level of concentration, leading to more fatigue. If I choose to travel at a lower speed because it’s more relaxing, then that is my prerogative. The only way I cause an ‘unsafe obstruction’ when I travel at 120km/h is if the driver behind me is driving aggressively, impatiently, becoming emotionally involved, and (frankly) driving unsafely. Nobody is making (for example) Dr Shangula overtake me in a dangerous place, except Dr Shangula himself. Patience is a virtue, especially in traffic.
- Travelling at a higher speed requires more fuel. I guess it’s unproblematic if the driver isn’t responsible for the costs of his own petrol; I observe that Dr Shangula is an employee of the State. If I choose to travel at below the posted speed limit in order to conserve fuel, that is my prerogative.
- As Dr Shangula correctly observes, the rules, laws and etiquette of traffic interaction are not well grasped by many Namibian drivers. There is no guarantee that a ‘training programme’ will change this; the problem is systemic. More rigorous traffic law enforcement — without even singling out taxi drivers — is definitely in order.
- Many Namibians can’t afford the kinds of cars which permit safe travel at over 100km/h, let alone 120km/h.
- Higher average speeds on a road require more maintenance to the road. How that works out can be seen on the Okahandja – Wilhelmstal road.
Please don’t think I’m simply panning Dr Shangula’s suggestions; I think it’s good that people are thinking about the problems facing the Namibian driver.
I really like the idea of a compulsory traffic interaction course that goes beyond book learning, and I think a we could avoid re-inventing the wheel by looking at how European countries handle these things.
But do I think that travel will become safer by increasing speed? No, I do not.
So there’s a Mac version of GnuPrivacyGuard (aka GPG, which is quicker to type).
Sadly, the current GPGMail plug-in is, out of the box, not compatible with the current version (as of this writing) of the OS, 10.6.2. This is a problem in a society in which the government has decided that it’s OK to monitor communications as a matter of course.
Short tangent:
I feel strongly that my communication with others is strictly between myself and the other party; no third party should have the right or ability to snoop on that; if the State feels that my communications are interesting enough to warrant further investigation, it can fucking man up and get a fucking warrant. Which will be contested. I do not consent to being ruled by sniveling, secretive people who feel that it’s acceptable to pull weird shit behind my back.
I pay these peoples’ salaries and I would remind them of this!
Rant over.
This isn’t going to be a GPG tutorial; there are plenty of other resources for that. But what I’m going to do is document, in brief, the hoops I jumped through to get GPG and GPGMail working.
First off, quit Mail, ensure that your stuff is backed up and that your software is otherwise up to date; then say to yourself in the mirror, “I’m the architect of my own fate; this worked for the blogger at lidlesseye.wordpress.com, but I’m not going to be a pansy or a litigous shitbag if it doesn’t work for me; I have backed up my data and I am confident that I can read.”
- Ensure that Apple’s Developer Tools are installed on your system, and current. The installer is located in the ‘Optional Installs’ folder on your 10.6 install DVD; double-click the Xcode.mpkg to set yourself up there.
- Follow the instructions here in order to download and install GPG from source.
- You should then install all the appropriate accessory software from the MacGPG website — this is just a quick writeup, so it’s up to you to figure out what you neet. Caveat Emptor.
- So far so good. Now get GPGMail.bundle from here. Drag it into your Mail Bundles folder, the path to which is generally: [~/Library/Mail/Bundles] (create this folder if necessary)
- The bundle will not work as-is; it needs to be patched. Follow the instructions here to patch the bundle to be compatible with Mail.app version 4.2
Voilà! — you should be all patched, hacked and ready to go. If it breaks, it’s because you broke it by following instructions you found on some website about which you know next to nothing.
If this all seems scary, either take courage — you’ll need all the moral fortitude you can get in these ‘interesting’ times — or use a commercial encryption solution.
Very, very gradually, I’m starting to stretch my portraiture.
There are more photographs from this session, which I am obliged not to post online.
They were taken electronically, with a Nikon D700, rocking a Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85/1.4 ZF lens. Fucking stunning.
I still want a Leica M9 for this kind of thing though.
This is a shout-out.
I made Flickr-contact with a fine gentleman who goes by the name of Andre Easter. His Photostream is here.
My girlfriend commented, judging by the picture above, that I would look like that in 20 years. Perhaps I will.
Our precise methods are not 100% similar, but I am obliged to compliment him for a fine taste in cameras — particularly the Rolleiflex — and a good eye for portraiture.
But in the meantime, I’m going to continue enjoying this fine gentleman’s photographs. Perhaps I shall share a whiskey with him one day.
My Leica outfit has grown, to an extent where I’m comfortable calling it an “outfit”, or, possibly, and “arsenal”.
Here’s what’s there:
Bodies
- MP Classic (black)
- M6 (chrome)
- IIIc
- Zorki 4
Lenses
- Summicron-M 90/2
- Leitz Elmar 90/4
- Summicron-M 50/2 (Part of the “classic” set; modern lens with retro styling)
- Elmar-M 50/2.8 Collapsible
- Leitz Summitar 50/2 (M-39)
- Jupiter-8 50/2 (M-39; USSR Zeiss Sonnar clone)
- Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35/1.4
Both of the M-bodies have been ‘anonymised’ by the use of black cloth tape, giving both of them a faintly ‘beater’ vibe. The M6 is currently on the end of a cheap-ass wrist-strap in the interests of keeping it easily ’streetable’.
The IIIc was obtained in Windhoek for a modest outlay, CLA’d for a reasonable price, and now finds itself in good working order, taking darn nice pictures.
The Zorki 4 was a gift from a friend, and it will one day be used in some capacity; though I have to say that the ergonomics and haptics suck with that camera. The lens, the Jupiter-8, is another kettle of fish, and I look forward to using it on a real Leica for some comparisons.
I’d like to get hold of a wide, or a superwide. I’ve been looking at the Zeiss C-Biogon 21/4.5 and the Voigtländer SW-Heliar 15/4.5, even to the extent of shooting a few frames, but part of me wants the Leica Super-Elmar-M 18/3.8 ASPH.
Maybe when I buy my M9. 
For now, I’m happy, and I wouldn’t change anything; for each main focal length I’ve got at least one ‘crisp’ lens, and one or more oddballs. My mainline shooter is generally the M6, usually with the Elmar-M 50/2.8. While the viewfinder in the MP is far better, I’ve become lazy and I like the light meter in the M6.
That said, I feel a hardline week of discipline coming on, where I shall use the 50mm ‘cron and nothing else.
