Candid photography (for the expert)

We turn again to the theme of technology transforming society, or at least one part of it.  With the invention of the 35mm still camera about a quarter of the way into the twentieth century, a whole area of life was suddenly opened up to photography.  That was not the intention of the inventor, who was only looking for a lighter-weight way to take pictures himself.

Our photographer writes:

As in most bits of history, you have to think back and forget some things you know.  Ignore the cameras I’ve already written about and consider that in 1920 photography had essentially two faces: large, tripod-mounted plate cameras (for serious work) and the various Kodak models (for everyone else).  Plate cameras took pictures on glass plates of various sizes (a “half-plate” was slightly over five by eight inches), wonderful at capturing detail and nuance.  Large-format film cameras of this sort are still unsurpassed at some tasks, though glass (heavy and breakable) has been abandoned.  Kodaks were light, simple to use, could get many pictures in a row just by winding the film, but were essentially limited to daylight. And their pictures could not compete in technical quality.

One Otto Barnack was a serious amateur photographer, but eventually found the plate-camera outfit too heavy and unwieldy.  He experimented with an arrangement to take a series of still pictures on 35mm movie film, making the camera himself.  Negatives of this “miniature” size had to be enlarged in order to see anything, so the camera’s lens had to be of unprecedented quality; as a side benefit it could be made very fast, and so it was useful in low light situations.  Otto had a light, quiet, capable camera, and the Leitz optical works decided there might be a market for the Leitz Camera–the Leica.

It was now possible to take unposed pictures in interior settings without flash.  In the hands of a master like Henri Cartier-Bresson, subjects might never notice that there was a camera there at all!  We arrive at the opposite of the selfie.

Only think of the journalistic and artistic possibilities: night pictures, indoor life.  What Paris is really like!

As befits a camera made by an expert for himself, the early Leicas are not easy to use.  They are designed for people who know what they’re doing, Linux people rather than Microsoft.  And they were expensive.  But even now they are better than more modern cameras at being unobtrusive.  Compare the 1934 Leica to the 1981 Contax, below.  The Contax (I described it earlier) is one of the smallest and quietest SLR cameras made, but it’s large and noisy compared to the Leica.  And that big lens on the Contax pointed at you can be intimidating.

To show how the Leica still performs indoors I took it to Art on Tap, an event put on by the Art League here in Alexandria, and to a meeting hosted by the Small Business Development Center.  Some of the results are posted on our Featured Gallery.