In the M-brochure, with a graphic presentation of the famous Che Guevara picture on the cover, there is a portrait of an unkown mans face, in black&white. It looks as if it is a rather big enlargement. I have never printed a picture from a Leica and wonder if this is a typical result, perhaps a "Leica-look"? The skin in the mans face is rendered delicately, not to sharp but still penetrating, giving a depth to the skin. I like it. My darkroom experience is more or less limitied to developing and printing 6x6 film so if anyone can give answer the above question and at the same time make an educated guess regarding which film speed that was used, it would be interesting to read.

Thank you from a Swede dreaming about a lighter camera than his 6x6.

-- Peter Olsson (peter.olsson@lulebo.se), January 18, 2001

Answers

I shoot with both Hasselblad and Leica (M and R). In my opinion, Leica gives the closest approximation to 6x6 quality I've yet seen in 35mm (I have not shot Contax), but there is still a significant gap especially with big enlargements from landscape scenes. As convenient and optically superb as the Leica is, I would not think of abandoning 6x6.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), January 18, 2001.

Here is a long story that some of you may find interesting. Yes, it does relate to the posting above!

Back in the 1980's, I worked with a man named Manfred Krauter who had gone though the full Leica factory training and aprentiship.(Yes, he is the late husband of Sherry Krauter of "The Golden Touch" Leica Repair and had trained her in repairing Leicas) Manfred had told me when he was living in Sweeden and heading up the repair facility for Leica there, he happened to be an art opening for an outdoors photographer who shot mostly 35mm SLR's of that time (1970"s). Manfred was commenting to another person there (who was looking at the 16 X 20 prints) that he thought the photographer had a good eye for lighting and composition, and he especially liked the use of soft focus in many of the images. It turned out those comments made the person quite upset, as he WAS THE PHOTOGRAPHER and wasn't intentially going for soft focus. Manfred had grown accustomed to the high quality optics, focus accuracy, and vibration free shutters of the M series cameras, and the ability for the images to hold together at higher magnifications than most other 35mm ones.

Someone once asked at photo.net how can you tell if your images are really sharp, and they got a full range of answers from the insulting to the introspective. When I look at my own work that I thought was of high technical quality 20 years ago, the images do not have the quality of the current stuff I am getting with my Leica (and newer Nikon for that matter) but I was happy with them at the time. It isn't just the resolution and contrast, I feel there really is some intangeable that makes the images sometimes seem more life like than with other equipment I've used, especially the ones taken in lower light.

By the way, if any of you are interested, Manfred had told me what he had to go through in order to become a certified Factory technicion back in the 1960's. First, he worked for quite some time on the binoculars and wasn't allowed to touch any cameras. Later, he had to pass two tests. First one was where he was given an M series camera in parts and had to assemble a full working camera. The second was the hard one, where Leitz himself would sabotage a camera and he had to figure out what was wrong and fix it. Pretty cool in my mind.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), January 18, 2001.