Leica and other compact cameras in street photography! Show your best!

Photography again - not gadgetry

I don't make a living with a camera so I can shoot whatever I want. My first camera was a an Olympus rangefinder, which I used for 6 years, and then supplemented with a Nikon F3, which I used for 14 years. . . so far (it is still going strong). I have cycled through several DSLRs including the D70, D2Xs and 5D. They are handy tools. Sucking down photons at 8 frames a second, hammering away with the D2Xs. . . shooting usable shots in dark theaters at ISO 1600 with image stabilized lenses. .. I'm in awe of the technology but I wasn't having fun taking pictures any more. I went back to scanning film, but didn't like being dependant on a lab. So I bought an M8.

Actually, 3 M8s in a week before getting a sound copy - but that is another story.

And, I'm enjoying photography more than I have in years. I was shooting my giant DSLRs on manual and using a tiny percentage of their computing power. Now I'm using 100% of the Leica, which is basically as close as you can get to a handheld sensor whilst remaining in the digital domain.

There are technical details worth discussion, to be sure. Software color profiles that try to correct for color shifts are a mixed bag, for one. ACR mangles colors in the .DNG files, so I've had to learn Capture One.

All in all it's worth it. My DSLR will be handy if I need a long lens (which I seldom do). Otherwise, I'll be using the elegant little camera from Germany, which my architect wife refers to as being "graphically beautiful," whatever that means.

That's my "user review" - more about the user than the use of the camera, but I think that my experience will resonate with anyone who grew up with manual cameras and black and white dark rooms. Camera technology is amazing. The new Canon will have dual processors. But for me, photography is more satisfying when I get to exercise the computer between the ears.


Phone Booth © 2007 Nat Burgess

Thanks Nat for joining us and sharing your experience. I think your wide is correct about the "graphically beautiful" observation. I have been amzazed by the richness of colors, especially of plants and the robustness of the files to manupulation.

To me your arrival here is nothing less than manna from heaven! I am so looking forward to all the Lecia experience you can put down in these pages, graphically beautiful or not!

Let me know how you are hgoing with processing too. Jamie Roberts is keeping an eye on things here as well in case we have questions. I will post more of my M8 pics. Just with the 28mm lens!

Asher

Toronto, On. @ The Distillery District. Looking down Mill Street, CN Tower in back

and one in b+w



Trier, Germany - May 2008

Leica M8 the king of the street narrative picture?

Hi Harold,

You've a good eye for getting the essence of street moments. The special nature of the Leica rangefinder cameras, of which the M8 is one of the greatest forms, is the ability to enter an urban or social scene with the least perturbation.

These are pictures not of beauty but of narrative. But where is that narrative written? That's the work we have to do! We must bring our imagination to these interesting pictures and explain to ourselves what really is going on! Like this, we are looking into other folks' lives without any guilt or opprobrium.



This first M8 picture with a 50mm lens, is of that time after a show or restaurant dinner with friends where one delays goodbyes and wonders, "What next? A club", or "We're all tired!” "I have a presentation tomorrow!" or "Maybe the two of us grab the cab over there and you go to back to the hotel and we'll see you tomorrow". Note how carefully the picture is set with everything as orthogonal as possible for such a hand-held picture. Note that it appears as is if the observer is there, behind the car in the foreground, taking the picture. That's how Harald designed the shot for that impression. Does it work for you?



This next picture, with the wider 35mm lens, grabs a group of tourists no doubt. Some discuss the sites, one person snaps a memento picture and a tall striking guy, hands in pockets, takes it all in. Hopefully for him, the woman on his right is his lady and he doesn't need to find someone! Many of these folk have traveled a lot and have stories to compare.

This is almost like parts of a giant Brueghel (Peter Brueghel, The Elder) picture with many subjects doing their own private things.

Thanks for sharing!

Asher

Thank you Asher for the kind words.

I do like your Brueghel analogy very much. It is indeed what i was thinking when taking the photo. Had Rembrandt in mind (The Night Watch) in the sense to how the people in this large group are interacting with each other yet at the same time it's obvious sheer coincidence put them together.

harald

This thread kinda fell asleep. Here are some more of my M8 photos. Maybe this will help get things rolling again. Btw, all shots = available light only.

Harald Benz said:

This thread kinda fell asleep. Here are some more of my M8 photos. Maybe this will help get things rolling again. Btw, all shots = available light only.

Click to expand...

These pictures are very welcome. There really are tw different subjects. This first picture is a close up portrait shot of a woman, looking perhaps like a "Madonna" (the material girl) and yet there is something unusual about it as is it is a picture of a photograph.



The next two pictures appear to be some stealthy street journalistic style.



Here we have an oblique shot of a poster with a bearded denizen leaning against the wall as if it's the same place one might find him tomorrow or a year from now.



This last picture is the most interesting and puzzling too. At first it's untidy and we wonder why we cannot see one important subject well. I realize now that we are looking between the foreground structures to a street musician playing on the other side of the road. This picture attempts to grab some sense of the ambiguity of the street without making a claim to clarity. It's as if either the scene is so rich and full of meaning that we'd "get it" or else that it's not important to define what's there.

I find this type of photography hard to take in more ways than one. Shooting on the go, grabbing a scene is what I do a lot, much to the chagrin and distaste of most anyone with me. However, I do a lot of planning and self-training so that I do try to achieve an image which can be interpreted.

I'd love to hear your own commentary on your pictures. I am interested in how you approach this type of photography (that is the last two pictures) and what does it mean to you. The last picture I do like and would like to see more in the series but with your own thoughts as a guide.

The girl is interesting too but I have a problem relating her to the street pictures. Do they belong together?

In any case, thanks for sharing.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

........This last picture is the most interesting and puzzling too. At first it's untidy and we wonder why we cannot see one important subject well. I realize now that we are looking between the foreground structures to a street musician playing on the other side of the road. This picture attempts to grab some sense of the ambiguity of the street without making a claim to clarity. It's as if either the scene is so rich and full of meaning that we'd "get it" or else that it's not important to define what's there.

I find this type of photography hard to take in more ways than one. Shooting on the go, grabbing a scene is what I do a lot, much to the chagrin and distaste of most anyone with me. However, I do a lot of planning and self-training so that I do try to achieve an image which can be interpreted.

I'd love to hear your own commentary on your pictures. I am interested in how you approach this type of photography (that is the last two pictures) and what does it mean to you. The last picture I do like and would like to see more in the series but with your own thoughts as a guide.

..

Click to expand...

Hi Asher,

You have almost voiced my own thought process on PJ and street photography. I have been thinking such thoughts a lot recently, also because it is one of my areas of photography.

Would it be a nice idea to copy this discussion into a new thread in the street photography forum?

Cheers,

I believe that the reflex mirror of DSLR's interferes with social imaging. The bulk and noise makes the camera an interloper! The Lecia and the G7 are less obvious and don't create a barrier. The Leica or Bessa or Zeiss or other rangefinder camera, allows us to observe the subject and the world in which the subject is placed.

Yes, a long zoom lens on a DSLR can reach across the street. However, you will find it hard to get the intimacy of the simple rangefinder.

Asher