© jmse
By José Manuel Serrano Esparza
Throughout XX and XXI
centuries, there have been a number of groundbreaking photographic cameras like
the Leica 1 (Model A) from 1925, the Leica II (Model D) from 1936, the Zeiss
Ikon Contax II from 1936, the Zeiss Ikon Contaflex TLR from 1935, the Ihagee Kine
Exakta from 1936, the Rolleiflex Old Standard from 1938, the Peacemaker Speed
Graphic from 1947, the Exakta Varex from 1950, the Leica M3 from 1954, the
Nikon SP from 1957, the Hasselblad 500 C from 1957, the Nikon F from 1959, the
Zeiss Ikon Contarex from 1960, the Rolleiflex 2.8 F from 1960, the Olympus Pen
F from 1963, the Nikon F2 from 1971, the Olympus OM-1 from 1972, the Rollei 35T
from 1974, the Asahi Pentax K1000 from 1976, the Olympus XA from 1979, the
Canon New F1 from 1981, the Minolta Maxxum 7000 from 1985, the Canon T90 from
1986, the Mamiya 7 from 1995, the Nikon D1 from 1999, the Olympus E-1 in 2003,
the Canon EOS 5D from 2005, the Nikon D3 from 2007, the Go Pro Digital Hero 3
from 2007, the Leica S2 from 2008, the Panasonic Lumix G1 from 2008, the Leica
M9 from 2009, the Olympus OM-D EM-5 from 2012, the Sony RX1 from 2012, the Fuji
X-Pro 1 from 2012, the Nikon D800 from 2012, the Nikon D800E from 2012, the
Sony Alpha 7 from 2013, the Fujifilm XT-1 from 2014, the Pentax 645Z from 2014,
the Hasselblad X1D from 2016, the Leica M10 from 2017, the Fujifilm X-H1 from
2018 and many others.
All of them landmark
designs and devices able to deliver great image quality in the hands of
professional photographers and advanced amateurs.
© jmse
But however amazing it may
seem, the Ur-Leica created by Oskar Barnack in 1914 (104 years ago) has been by
far the most influential photographic camera ever made in the whole History of
Photography, not only as a hugely revolutionary photographic tool boasting a
slew of optomechanical solutions oozing ingenuity to spare, but also in the
designing scope, where this jewel, undoubtedly the most iconic camera of all
time and fetish per excellance, has had a far-reaching influence for more than
a century and will keep on having it in future, already in full digital age.
CONCEPTUAL ORIGIN OF THE
24 X 36 MM FORMAT Ur-Leica
Though the Ur-Leica was
produced in 1914, its conceptual origin harks back to 1905, when a very young
25 years old Oskar Barnack hiked the slopes of the Thuringian Forest (central
Germany), getting pictures with a bulky 5 x 7 (13 x 18 cm) wooden large format
camera which was rather cumbersome to transport and needed to be used on a
tripod.
It was then when he
started thinking about the possibility of creating a very small and lightweight
photographic camera which could be comfortably taken anywhere, used tiny
negatives (compared to the very big ones featured by the large format and
medium format cameras of the time, which were rather slow to use) and was able
to get high quality pictures shooting handheld.
Years elapsed and after
having displayed an uncommon talent for mathematics and the assembling and
dissassembling of all kind of intricate mechanisms (including small
clockwork-driven tellurians and planetariums with stars, moon, sun and planets
remaining stationary or orbited, appearing and disappearing, used in astronomy
classes with which he excelled during his two years and a half stage as
apprentice to Master Lampe in Lichterfelde, borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf in
Berlin, and a subsequent phase in a small village of Saxony where he worked for
a man who built calculating machines, doing their overhauls as well as
displaying his boundless gift to piece together the great quantity of gears, springs,
wheels and levers featured by these contraptions), during the season 1899-1900
Oskar Barnack decided that he would be a Mechanik Master, a job for which he
felt an unswerving and utter passion, revelling in it and devoting many daily
hours to both the study of all kind of mechanical appliances and the fulfilment
of his innate craving for unusual and innovative fixings of optomechanic
metallic widgets made up by a lot of components.
In 1901, Oskar Barnack
went to Jena (a city in which a thriving optical industry had developed from
mid XIX Century with Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott) and began working
at the Carl Zeiss Optical Works Factory, in the Microscope Development
Department.
Then he travelled to the
Italian South Tyrol, trying to recover from his chronic colds and asthma
spending some months in the surroundings of Bozen, after which he went to
Vienna.
In 1908, his friend Emil
Mechau, an expert in movie projectors using rotating prisms went to work at
Ernst Leitz Wetzlar.
In 2010, Oskar Barnack
marched to Dresden, where he worked at the IKA factory for two months.
And a few weeks later,
Emil Mechau knew that a mechanik meister was needed at the Ernst Leitz Wetzlar
for the experimental workshop of its Microscope Department, so he recommended
his friend Oskar Barnack to the board of the firm.
Initially, on being
offered the job, Barnack rejected it, writing a letter to Ernst Leitz II in
which he stated that his frail health would be a problem for the brand, because
he would need one or two months a year to rest, trying to cure.
But Ernst Leitz II
insisted and convinced Oskar Barnack, who arrived at Wetzlar on January 1,
1911.
From then on, Barnack
showed his prowess designing diamond lathes for the polishing department of
Ernst Leitz Wetzlar, in addition to striving after making an aluminum movie
camera being different from the wooden ones available until then, and whose aim
was to shoot footage to test Emil Mechau´s cinematographic projectors.
Throughout the second half
of 1911, 1912 and 1913, Oskar Barnack used the metallic movie camera he had
created and coupled to a Zeiss Kino Tessar lens to make a number of motion
pictures tests with a constant exposure time of 1/40 second.
He made enlargements of
some specific frames shot with his movie camera and realized that the quality
was far better than with the black and white photographic chemical emulsions of
the time featuring a lot of grain.
© jmse
PRODUCTION OF THE 24 X 36
MM FORMAT UR-LEICA CAMERA
The 18 x 24 mm format
cinematographic film, optimized for its projection on large screens, featured
much lesser visible grain than the photographic ones of the time, and results
on making enlargements up to postcard size (roughly 13 x 18 cm prints) on black
& white photographic paper were much better.
It dawned on Oskar Barnack
that the scarce grain of the movie film could enable the fruition of his old
project of very small and light portable camera fed by tiny negatives, enabling
the photographers to conveniently shoot handheld and yield very good image
quality even in big enlargements.
But Barnack didn´t settle
for it. He knew that to make his new camera prototype feasible it was utterly
necessary to get top-notch image quality in enlargements up to 8 x 10 "
(20 x 25 cm) and even more made from those original tiny black and white
frames, so it was apparent that the 18 x 24 mm cinematographic format was too
small for that aim.
Therefore, on realizing
that it wasn´t possible to make the movie film wider because of the
standardization, he opted for doubling its length up to 36 mm, giving birth to
the 24 x 36 mm format with 2:3 golden proportion.
The time to build this
completely new and breakthrough camera had arrived, and Oskar Barnack began to
design the camera for 24 x 36 mm format film in 1913, completely free from any
directions or guidelines by any department, mostly as an amusing and passionate
hobby.
This way, the UR-Leica was
created in 1914 without any focal plane shutter with variable slit width, but
with a 4 cm wide fixed slit and some spring tensions.
And when he made 20 x 30
cm enlargements from 24 x 36 mm film exposed with this new prototype, results
were really good, taking advantage of the larger negative surface in comparison
to the cinematographic 18 x 24 mm format.
There weren´t any daylight
loading cassettes, so the 24 x 36 mm format film had to be inserted and removed
in a darkroom.
© jmse
But it already boasted a
host of very important features:
- Rounded and sleek contours of the thin sides of the
camera bestowing it its impressive minimalist beauty of lines and design, a
true milestone for the time.
- Unlike the 35 mm cine
cameras of the time in which the 18 x 24 mm format film ran vertically, the 24
x 36 mm film ran horizontally inside the Ur-Leica.
- A focal-plane shutter with constant slit
width of 4 cm and only two speeds available by altering its tension: the 1/40 s
of the cinematographic cameras of the time and a further one of 1/20 s, something
which nine years later would evolve in the pilot run of Leica 0 Series from
1923 to a shutter integrated in the camera and featuring adjustable slit width
allowing the selection of five different exposures times from 1/20 s to 1/500 s.
- The coupling of film and
shutter advance.
- It was small, simple,
reliable and able to expose 36 frames with a 35 mm film loading.
© jmse
- The retractable
Mikro-Summar 42 mm f/4.5 lens, calculated for Leitz brass microscopes and designed by Ernst Arbeit, a key factor in
the fulfilment of the Ur-Leica, since such a small and light camera needed also
a tiny lens with good optomechanic performance getting satisfactory results on
making enlargements from original 24 x 36 mm miniature format negatives.
- The large release
shutter button in the middle of the knurled knob.
- The screws that fasten
the film spool mechanisms on both sides.
© jmse
- The hotshoe for an
external viewfinder.
- Focusing from one meter
to infinity by means of an adjusting screw located in the lens and which can be
rotated up to approximately 260 degrees.
- A knob placed beside the
hotshoe for an external viewfinder and which must be turned to modify the
spring roller tension.
- Metallic knobs
protruding on both sides of the camera to attach the carrying strap.
© jmse
- Exposure counter up to
50 shots. It had to be manually set after slackening the screw placed at the
center.
- A knob for changing the
spring tension in the spring roller.
- A bearing for the axle
of the spring roller.
- Holding screws for film
spool supports.
- The bearing for the
ratchet pawl.
- A framing viewfinder
located on the hot shoe.
- Removable baseplate film loading, with a
bottom cover that can be coupled or drawn by means of a knurled nut featuring a
similar size to the knob for adjusting the spring roller tension.
On the other hand, the
black metallic cover with a big screw on it, is not for protecting the lens,
but to prevent the light from entering through it every time the film advances
after the shutter having been cocked.
And on the back of the
camera there are four screws holding a cover (which can be removed to enable an
accurate adjustment of the lens) on which the Leitz Wetzlar firm logo is
engraved.
Regarding the film, it was
guided between the back side of the sheet metal guide and the back wall of the
housing, beyond the 24 x 36 mm picture window, from the right film spool to the
left film spool.
© jmse
A MECHANICAL WONDER OF
MINIATURIZATION FOR THE TIME
The simultaneous film and
shutter cloth transport of the Ur-Leica are product of a highly sophisticated
for the time mechanism working on turning the knurled knob, which brings about
that the toothed wheels which are mounted on the same shaft transport the
double perforated 24 x 36 mm film, while the shutter rubberized cloth is rolled
up on the shutter cloth roller activated by the pinion gear.
On the other hand, the
spring roller has a spring that generates the tension and the joined transport
of film and shutter cloth keeps on until the stopping pin prevents it from
advancing more.
On pressing the shutter
release button, the cloth roller is liberated and a slit travels along the
image frame back to its original location, with the spring position controlling
its speed.
Furthermore, the shutter
cocking is made through the advancement of the film transport, in such a way
that the shutter cloth featuring a fixed slit can run beyond the picture window
at one of the two different speeds selectable (1/40s and 1/20 s), thanks to the
tension of the spring roller that can be changed turning the knob beside the
shoe for the viewfinder.
And the counterforce for
the shutter release is provided by a steel spring covering both the bearings of
the three adjacent shafts and the end of the stop pin.
Anyway, Oskar Barnack
realized that the 24 x 36 mm negative placed behind the picture window was
unevenly exposed, since the fixed slit moved beyond the image window faster at
the last stretch of the travel than immediately after the shutter was
released, and besides, the metallic black lens cover had to be put on the lens
during the shutter cocking and the movement of the slit to its original
position.
Both hitches would be
solved by Oscar Barnack with two shutter cloths getting a covered return of the
slit in the 25 units of the Leica 0 pilot run of 1923, the Leica 1 (Model A)
from 1925 and the rest of LTM39 24 x 36 mm format Leica cameras designed by him
until his death in 1936.
© jmse
Therefore, from a
mechanical viewpoint, the UR-Leica camera from 1914 designed by Oscar Barnack
was the first technological step to establish a new reference-class engineering
standard, based on the symbiosis between an exceedingly small and light
photographic camera using 24 x 36 mm format film and a breakthrough
technological device simultaneously advancing the film and cocking the shutter,
whose release is the climax of a whole series of utterly mechanical operations
in which take part a number of different components painstakingly manufactured
and inserted within the very little inner space of the camera: pins, springs,
gears, pinions, levers, cams, winding knobs, shafts (for cloth roller, spring
roller, film transport roller and intermediate pinion gear), clutches, bearings
(for the spring roller shaft and the pawl of the ratchet), rollers, etc.
As a matter of fact,
already in the Leica 0 pilot run cameras made in 1923, Barnack replaced the
focal plane shutter with constant slit width of the Ur-Leica (enabling only the
use of 1/40 s and 1/20 s) by a focal plane shutter featuring adjustable slit
width and allowing the selection of six different shutter speeds from 1/20 s to
1/500 s, a focal plane shutter and maximum top speed (increased to 1/1000 s in
the Leica IIIa from 1935) which would be preserved in the Leica 1 (Model A)
from 1925.
Consequently, though
limited in its performance, the focal plane shutter of the Ur-Leica was in 1914
the launching pad for the increasingly improved focal plane very reliable
shutters featured by the Leica screwmount rangefinder cameras manufactured from
1923 onwards (Leica 0 run pilot units, Leica 1 Model A from 1925, Leica 1 Model
C Non Standard Mount from 1931, Leica Standard Model E from 1932, Leica II
Model D from 1932, Leica III Model F from 1933, Leica IIIa from 1935, Leica
IIIb from 1938, Leica IIIc from 1940, Leica IIc from 1948, Leica Ic from 1949,
Leica IIId from 1939, Leica IIIf from 1950, Leica IIf from 1951, Leica If from
1952 and Leica IIIg from 1957) and which would be steadily bettered by Oscar
Barnack until his demise in 1936, and subsequently from August 1936 by Ludwig
Leitz, Willi Stein and Adam Wagner.
© jmse
A TURNING POINT IN THE
HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHIC CAMERAS AND IMAGE CREATION
Albeit being a prototype
lacking any built-in rangefinder or the possibility of using interchangeable
standardized lenses, the Ur-Leica was undoubtedly the beginning of a new breed
of revolutionary and tremendously influential photographic camera which
nineteeen years later would result in the birth of the first really efficient
and reliable 35 mm system camera in history: the Leica II (Model D) from 1932,
featuring a built-in rangefinder, standardized interchangeable lenses (whose
pioneer had been one year before the Leica 1 Model C Standard Mount from 1931)
between 35 mm and 135 mm (unlike the early screwmount Leicas made between 1925
and 1931 which had to use lenses matched to each individual camera body),
traits which were very wisely complemented in 1933 with the introduction of the
special dial for slow speeds between 1 second and 1/20 s located on the camera
front of the Leica III (Model F), which likewise boasted an increased
rangefinder magnification up to 1.5x significantly improving the viewing for
photographers.
© jmse
The Ur-Leica was the
beginning of the landmark entirely metallic miniature camera concept featuring
outstanding constructive precision as well as sporting very small dimensions
and exceedingly light weight, being coupled to also tiny and first-rate lenses
delivering great image quality in big enlargements up to 20 x 30 cm and even
more on photographic paper.
Besides, the choice of a
horizontal-travelling shutter by Oskar Barnack for its Ur-Leica prototype
camera was very important, because it fostered its durability and reduction of
blur and image skewing in comparison to the vertical travelling shutters of the
time, so all the Leica rangefinder cameras manufactured from 1925 onwards used
this type of shutter.
On the other hand, the
collapsible nature of the Summar 42 mm f/4.5 lens calculated for Leitz brass microscopes (with its aperture numbers
measured in milimeters and supplied with a metal cap to be used while advancing
the film and cocking the shutter, because there wasn´t a second blind to
prevent the film from fogging during the operation) designed by Ernst Arbeit and
coupled to the Ur-Leica was a further bonus to get unmatched levels of
compactness, since it can be pushed into the camera body until it only
protrudes 3 mm outside it, paving the way for future retractable Leitz lenses
like the 4 elements in 3 groups Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 from 1925.
Evening of May 23, 2014.
Rittal Arena Wetzlar during the Centenary of Leica Photography. A 24 x 36 mm
Leica rangefinder camera user is beholding a king size enlargement of the
mythical picture made in 1914, a hundred years before, by Oscar Barnack with his
Ur-Leica camera at Eisenmarkt in Wetzlar. This huge 2 x 3 meters image featured
a superb image quality seen from the adequate distance and was printed and
installed in the first floor at the behest of
Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of
the Supervisory Board of Leica Camera A.G, main shareholder of the firm and the
key man in the thriving digital Renaissance of Leica in XXI century, currently
with four major highly successful lines of products (the Leica M Monochrom, the Leica M10
rangefinder, the medium format Leica S and the Leica SL), complemented by a
greatly expanded assortment of reference-class highly luminous aspherical
lenses designed by Peter Karbe and delivering second to none optomechanical
performance, without forgetting the CW Sonderoptik range of Summilux-C cinematographic
lenses (with optical formula made by Iain Neill and mechanics by André de
Winter), the best ones ever made and which were bestowed the Hollywood Academy
Scientific and Engineering Award on February 8th, 2015 in Los Angeles. It all
in the middle of a widespread worldwide economical crisis, which makes up an
unprecedented entrepreneurial feat accomplished by a man perfectly grasping the
huge historical significance of Oscar Barnack´s photographic and cultural
legacy, along with the traditional values inherent to Leica in terms of
superior craftsmanship, excellent quality, uniqueness, ancestral heritage,
gorgeous aesthetics, creativity, art and history, aura, tradition, timeless
design and proportions, individuality, elegance and many others.
© jmse
The Ur-Leica brought about
a new fundamental approach to photography as a much more versatile, dynamic,
free and spontaneous means to comfortably get pictures handheld with available
light (in comparison with the mostly static previous photography epitomized by
the very large and heavy large format and medium format cameras, very difficult
to transport and needing a tripod to be used), particularly in the
photojournalism, street photography and artistic photography fields, where
different models of screwmount Leica rangefinder cameras excelled ( from the
very introduction of the Leica 1 Model A at the Leipzig Fair in 1925) in the
hands of such world-class photographers like Ilse Bing, Walter Bosshard, Otto
Umbehr, Kurt Hutton, Tim Gidal, Felix H. Mann, Paul Wolff, Harald Lechenperg,
Erich Salomon, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Gerda
Taro, Hans Namuth, Georg Reisner, David Seymour " Chim ", George
Rodgers, Friedrich Seidenstücker, Roman Vishniak, Andre Kerstész, Fritz Block,
Agustà Centelles, Tom McAvoy, Alexandr Rodchenko, Max Alpert, Gisèle Freund,
Arthur Rothstein, Maurice Tabard, Walther Benser, Helen Levitt, Izis
Bildermanas, David Douglas Duncan, Werner Bischof, Franz Hubmann, Eugene Smith,
Herbert List, Ludwig Schricker, Walter Vogel, Dennis Stock, Jürgen Schadeberg, Andreas Feininger,
Milt Hinton, Toni Schneiders, Yevgeny Khaldei, Dmitri Debabov, Georgii Zelma,
Simon Fridland, Lisette Model, Harold Feinstein, Peter Magubane, Robert Frank, Micha Bar-Am and
many others.
All of them were
captivated by the compactness and smooth operation shooting handheld of cameras
like the Leica 1 (Model A) from 1925, the Leica II (Model D) from 1932, the
Leica III from 1933, the Leica IIIF from 1950, the Leica IIIG from 1957 and
others whose forefather had been the Ur-Leica created by Oskar Barnack in 1914.
Approximately thirty-five
years bounteous in meaningful images selected by world-class picture editors
like Simon Guttmann (Dephot), Roy Strickland (Farm Security Administration),
Maria Eisner (Alliance Photo), Stefan Lorant (Picture Post), Edward K. Thompson
(Life), John G. Morris (Life) and others.
Dr. Knut
Kühn-Leitz (grandson of Ernst Leitz II and son of the legendary Dr. Elsie Kühn-Leitz, one of the most
important figures in the history of Leica firm, who devoted her life to get the
maximum feasible welfare for Leitz employees, providing top-notch medical
assistance and physicians, as well as giving them valuable Christmas presents
that she personally wrapped inside Haus Friedwart) holding a 10 x 15 cm print
of the picture made by Oscar Barnack in 1914 with his Ur-Leica prototype in
Eselstreppchen street in Wetzlar. This is an exceedingly meaningful image clearly
indicating that the genius was getting pictures in many different places and
photographic contexts, some of them with very difficult light conditions,
trying to attain the best possible detail in shadows, something which was extremely
difficult between 1914 and 1920, because the 24 x 36 mm black and white films
he used featured a very low sensibility and very limited tonal range, something
which would be greatly solved from mid twenties onwards thanks to new chemical b
& w emulsions and the introduction of the extraordinary for the time Leitz
Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens designed by professor Max Berek, which clearly
outperformed the Leitz Summar 42 mm f/4.5 microscope lens designed by Ernst
Arbeit and attached to the Ur-Leica.
© jmse
The Leica camera was a
very small and light photographic tool enabling to get pictures with unmatched
levels of discretion thanks to its exceedingly little dimensions and the
whispering noise of its shutter release button on being pressed, aimed to
create lasting images that stood the test of time, eliciting emotional
responses from observers.
A philosophy which would
be also enhanced and developed by the Leica School throughout XX Century by
Heinrich Stöckler (Director of it between 1931 and 1947 as well as being a
great scientist creator of two-bath developers optimizing clever contrast
control and low tones for 24 x 36 mm films, avoiding the overdevelopment of
high tones), Theo Kisselbach (Manager of the Leica School, Head of the Leica
Technology Department between 1947 and 1971 and a seminal figure in the history
of Leica, in addition to being the driving force who created a unique global
competence center for applied 35 mm photography), Walter Heun (former director
of the Leica School and Technical Director of E. Leitz, Inc. New York), Günter
Osterloh (Director of the Leica School between 1980 and late nineties, the greatest
expert in the world on Leica M System along with Stefan Daniel, product manager
and member of the German Society for Photography DGPh) and others who used
their experience in darkroom technology and photographic gift to foster Leica
Photography worldwide.
Rolf Fricke, a living
legend of Leica History (Past President and co-founder of the Leica Historical
Society of America in 1968, Leica Historical Society of U.K in 1969 and Leica
Historica Deutschland in 1975, as well as former Regional Director of Marketing
Communications at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, (personal friend of
Rudolph Kingslake, Julius Huisgen, Dr. Günther Wangorsch, Theo Kisselbach and
James Lager) holding a page of a
Leica brochure with the image of the Ur-Leica created by Oskar Barnack in 1914
and the famous picture he made with it in Wetzlar during the floodings in
1920. The painstaking research of many
years carried out by Rolf Fricke enabled to discover that there wasn´t any
second Ur-Leica, and the prototype used by Oscar Barnack in Wetzlar and Ernst
Leitz II in New York and Niagara Falls was the only one Ur-Leica in existence.
© jmse
It had meant the genesis
of a completely new kind of photography, a departure from the bulky and slow
large format and medium format cameras to enter a new era of fast and efficient
picture taking, which was particularly boosted by the golden era of
photojournalism between mid twenties and late fifties, a historical period in
which the Leica rangefinder cameras greatly reigned supreme until the arrival
of the also formidable reflex Nikon F System in 1959.
Oscar Barnack´s mirrorless
Leica cameras enabled to portray with revealing insight the subtleties of human
condition ranging from quiet interludes to violent episodes, and photographed
the full assortment of human events, behaviours and emotions, taking advantage
of their immediate readiness which opened new fields for photography.
In 1914, a
few months before the beginning of the First World War, Ernst Leitz II
travelled to United States with the Ur-Leica prototype camera created by Oscar
Barnack, who on seeing after some weeks the negatives exposed in New York and
Niagara Falls and the 24 x 36 mm contact sheets made with them, realized that
there were sometimes lack of homogeneity of illumination on specific areas of
the frames, along with sporadic veilings and vertical white strips. Id est,
though being a masterpiece for the time and a revolutionary technological
breakthrough, the horizontally travelling focal plane shutter of the Ur-Leica
miniature camera simultaneously working with the film advance mechanism had a
lot of margin for improvement, a task to which Barnack would devote the
following 22 years of his life, steadily bettering it until turning it into a
real mechanic tour de force in the Leica II (Model D) from 1932, Leica III from
1933 and Leica IIIA from 1935, frequently explaining to Julius Huisgen (the man
who developed Barnack´s negatives, as well as making the contacts and
enlargements for him) that his Leitz shutter was better and more reliable than
the one featured by the Zeiss Ikon Contax I, which was true, and it seems
apparent that if this genius would have lived more years (he died on January 16,
1936) he would have fought to equal or even increase the 1/1250 s top shutter
speed of the Zeiss Ikon Contax II rangefinder camera launched into market in
1936 and designed by Hubert Nerwin.
© Leica Camera A.G
An unobtrusive type of
camera that allowed the photographer to become a part of the environment, with
people not being aware that pictures were being taken, in addition to
highlighting the great deal of significance provided to images by small
details, resulting in the development of a certain sense of design, order and
composition, with a top priority goal: to create meaninful photographs.
The Leica screw mount and
M rangefinder cameras as evolution of the Ur-Leica created by Oskar Barnack,
are not universal all-around performing photographic devices to fulfill all
kind of assignments, because the range of focal lengths that can be accurately
focused with the rangefinder is limited (roughly between 21 mm and 135 mm).
But they are stellar
performing devices for pictures in which human interactions take place, id est,
they are highly engineered precision instruments enabling the photographers to
share both space and feelings with their subjects and create picture essays
teeming with life, as well as fostering the creative and artistic photographic
potential, always understanding that a worthy photograph results primarily from
the photographic skills and talent of the photographer.
© jmse
MASSIVE INTERNATIONAL
EXPANSION OF THE BARNACK 24 X 36 MM FORMAT FILM
Therefore, the offspring
of the Ur-Leica (embodied by the aforementioned Leica screwmount rangefinder
cameras) had spawn since mid twenties a worldwide spreading of legendary top
quality illustrated magazines like Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Münchner
Illustrierte Presse, Life, Vu, L´Illustration, Regards, Ce Soir, The
Illustrated London News, Picture Post, Weekly Illustrated, Time, National
Geographic, Collier´s Weekly, etc, selling millions of copies and including
articles featuring excellent black and white pictures mostly made with these
tiny and very light mirrorless Leica rangefinder cameras (without forgetting a
smaller percentage of them made with 24 x 36 mm format Contax II rangefinder
cameras and above all with the 4 x 5 large format Graflex Speed Graphics).
Those were times in which
there weren´t televisions whatsoever inside homes, so these lavishly
illustrated magazines were for big audiences all over the world the visual
reference of what was happening on earth, and Oscar Barnack´s genial invention
of Ur-Leica in 1914 was greatly the conceptual origin of it all, in diachronic
synergy with the decision of Ullstein Editorial Group (specially two of the six
brothers: Rudolf, who had a great experience in image visualization and
controlled the printing and technical division, and Hermann, manager of the
editorial business) in Germany from mid twenties of promoting above all the use
of good pictures inside the pages of its illustrated publications, which gave
rise to the birth of modern and agile photojournalism, whose gist was to be at
the adequate place at the adequate moment, to approach as much as possible to
the center of the action going unnoticed and as accurate as possible timing on
pressing the shutter realease button of the camera to photograph the most
meaningful instants, getting pictures conveying one or more messages and making
the observer think.
Axel Rosswog, President of
the Leica Historica Deutschland, holding a 10 x 15 cm print of the picture made by Oscar Barnack in
1914 of the Köln Bridge with the cathedral visible in the background. It is
likewise apparent that Barnack made a lot of experiments using different depths
of field, trying to attain a very good image quality, specially in the sphere
of sharpness, something epitomized by this image probably made at f/8 to assure good depth of field. One decade later, albeit Leica had in 1923-1924
more than enough optical prowess and expertise to make a 50 mm f/2 lens, a
maximum aperture of f/3.5 was chosen by Max Berek for his Leitz Elmar 50 mm
f/3.5 lens, to guarantee enough depth of field enabling the photographers to
get excellent for the time optical performance.
© jmse
On the other hand,
Barnack´s visionary photographic keynote "small negatives, great pictures" made photography less expensive, because unlike large format cameras
which needed very big glass plates or medium format cameras using big negatives
on 120 rolls, the miniature 24 x 36 mm format film enables to make many
photographs of the same situation to subsequently make a selection of the best
images on seeing the contact sheets.
Image created by Oscar
Barnack with his Ur-Leica prototype in May 1914, probably shooting at f/8 very near
the Wetzlar cathedral, visible in the background.
This picture proves once
more that Barnack was a good photographer who had an excellent sense of timing
on pressing the shutter release button of the camera, having managed to capture
the two men in the lowest middle area of the photograph in full motion: the one
on the left (clad in dark jacket and hat) just at the moment in which he is
forwarding his right leg while strolling ), and the second one on the right
(wearing white a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, dark trousers and a
grey beret) stretching his left leg while walking towards the camera, though
the genius has been successful going unnoticed and becoming invisible, giving
birth to a decisive ingredient of the golden era of photojournalism which will
start ten years later thanks to him. Two little girls leaned on a large street
lamp are standing beside both men, while behind them, a carriage drawn by two
horses and a group of children can be seen.
Oscar Barnack knows that the picture he has created is simply acceptable, with barely detail in shadows and highlights, counterbalanced by the good acutance and visual perception of sharpness of the roughly Weston 16 (equivalent to approximately ISO 20) sensitivity of the black and white bulk loaded film he is using, enhanced on being developed in Agfa Rodinal at 1:50 dilutions. But he doesn´t surrender. Barnack is a living computer who constantly analyses all data in his prodigious mind. He grasps that the ultimate aim in photography is the making of good prints, a goal for which a wise selection ot the film to use along with a correct exposure and an accurate development are fundamental. The genius also strives after obtaining not dense negatives (particularly in the highlight areas) with shadow zones not utterly transparent but preserving enough detail to be transferred to prints, since long exposure times are needed when making them.
Oscar Barnack knows that the picture he has created is simply acceptable, with barely detail in shadows and highlights, counterbalanced by the good acutance and visual perception of sharpness of the roughly Weston 16 (equivalent to approximately ISO 20) sensitivity of the black and white bulk loaded film he is using, enhanced on being developed in Agfa Rodinal at 1:50 dilutions. But he doesn´t surrender. Barnack is a living computer who constantly analyses all data in his prodigious mind. He grasps that the ultimate aim in photography is the making of good prints, a goal for which a wise selection ot the film to use along with a correct exposure and an accurate development are fundamental. The genius also strives after obtaining not dense negatives (particularly in the highlight areas) with shadow zones not utterly transparent but preserving enough detail to be transferred to prints, since long exposure times are needed when making them.
Therefore, while getting
this picture in the proximity of Wetzlar Cathedral in 1914, Oscar Barnack is
laying the foundations of modern, agile and dynamic photojournalism (which will
have its halcyon days between mid twenties and early sixties with such 35 mm b
& w films like the Eastman Kodak Nitrate Panchromatic, Kodak Super-XX,
Kodak Plus-X, Kodak Tri-X 400 and others) and street photography of moving subjects with a handheld camera.
Furthermore, Barnack´s
Ur-Leica prototype original idea became a major mainstay of the photographic
industry, notably reinforcing it from mid twenties onwards, to such an extent
that apart from Ernst Leitz Wetzlar manufacturing a lot of different models of
Leica rangefinder cameras, other firms started making 24 x 36 mm format cameras
during thirties, like Zeiss Ikon with its Contax I from 1932, Contax II and III
from 1936, Ihagee with its Kine Exakta in 1936, the Hansa Canon Satndard Model
(a 35 mm format Leica rangefinder imitation made in Japan and whose RF optics
and focusing mount were made by Nippon Kogaku) in 1936, the Fed 1
"Fedka" from 1934 (a copy of the Leica II Model D with Industar-10 50
mm f/3.5 lens virtually identical to the uncoated Leitz Elmar 50 mm f/3.5) of
which more than 700,000 units were produced, Kodak with its Kodak Retina I Type
117 from 1934, Kodak Retina II Type 122 from 1936, Kodak Retina II Type 142
from 1937, the Argus C3 from 1939, etc.
Picture made by Oskar
Barnack with his Ur-Leica in Wetzlar during the floods of 1920. In comparison
to the images created by Ernst Leitz in New York and Niagara Falls in 1914 and
the ones made by Barnack that same year, there has been an increase in image quality,
enhanced by the remarkable acutance of a better and a bit more sensitive black
and white film (attaining an improved differentiation of shadows) developed
with Agfa Rodinal which makes up for its visible grain, to such an extent that
even the face profiles and contours of the two women in the background,
watching what is happening from the windows of their homes in a first floor,
can be distinguished. The picture has got great depth of field, was probably
made at f/11 looking for maximum sharpness and the level of attained detail is
very good for the time, something particularly discernible in the small vessel
and three oars beside the carriage drawn by horses, the textures of the
background building walls on right half of the image, the two very small and
thin ornate balconies surrounding the woman wearing a hat and the large
metallic lamp in the upper mid area of the photograph.
On the other hand, the
evenness of illumination on the whole image area is better than six years
before. There are hints clearly suggesting that Oscar Barnack assembled and disassembled
the Ur-Leica prototype different times between 1914 and 1921, in a constant
effort to improve the accuracy of the horizontally travelling focal plane
shutter as well as staving off any light leak.
On their turn, the other
great Japanese photographic firms had done the same thing since early fifties,
like Asahi Pentax with its 24 x 36 mm format Asahiflex (first Japanese SLR
camera) from 1952, and Olympus had already manufactured the Ace and Ace-E 35 24
x 36 mm format rangefinder cameras in 1958 and would keep the Barnack format in
its extraordinary OM-1, OM-2, OM-3 and OM-4 slr cameras during seventies and
eighties.
Regarding the German
photographic industry, it had already also massively embraced the Barnack 24 x
36 mm format since the late forties with cameras like the Contax S from 1949, the
Voigtländer Prominent from 1952, the Voigtländer Vito B from 1954, the Praktica
FX from 1952, the Zeiss Ikon Contaflex from 1953, the Leica M3 from 1954, the
Agfa Silette Ansco Memar from 1953, the Zeiss Ikon Contarex from 1958 and many
others, something that also happened to cameras manufactured in United States
like the Univex Mercury II from 1945, the Argus C-4 from 1951, the Bolsey Model
C twin lens reflex camera from 1950 and others.
The Ur-Leica
was exhibited at Vienna Leica Shop in 1994, and scads of people from all over
the world attended to the venue to watch live Barnack´s first model, which
pioneered a new kind of photography, departed radically from conventional
camera design and embodied many of the essentials of the 24 x 36 mm format
Leica rangefinder cameras of today, both in the analogue and digital scopes.
Here we can see the cover of number 2 of Leica Shop Wien magazine from 1994 with
Peter Coeln holding the Ur-Leica between his hands.
Image courtesy of Zoltan
Fejér.
And from early sixties of
the XX Century until the first five years of the XXI century, the analogue 24 x
36 mm format cameras dominated the photographic industry, something that is
continuing to a great extent already in full digital era after the highly influential
moves carried out by Sony (with its Alpha 7 and Alpha 9 series of full frame
profesional cameras), Leica (with its Leica SL mirrorless full frame
professional camera) and Pentax (with its Pentax K-1 and Pentax K-1 II dslr
full frames cameras), though there has also been the eclosion of also
extraordinary APS-C format mirrorless professional cameras from Fuji (Fujifilm
XT-1, Fujifilm XT-2, Fujifilm XH-1, Fujifilm X-Pro 2) and Micro Four Thirds
format cameras from Panasonic and Olympus (Panasonic DC-GH5GA, Panasonic
DC-GH5S, Panasonic DC-GH5LGA, Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Olympus OM-D E-M5 MARK
II, Olympus Pen F), which in spite of their very small sensor are also able to
deliver superb image quality up to 50 x 70 cm enlargements on photographic paper
and even more, as well as boasting outstanding compactness, the best
electronics by far in the photographic market and a host of impressive
technological advances significantly helping to get the pictures in virtually
every photographic environment, so the arrival of these highly sophisticated
very small and light APS-C and Micro Four Thirds format digital cameras has
been very good, in such a way that photographers have available a wide
assortment of top-notch models and formats to choose according to their
specific needs, tastes and idoneous image aspect ratios for their pictures.
THE SUBJECT OF THE "
BEST PHOTOGRAPHIC FORMAT "
35 mm cameras have become
ubiquitous in our culture, both in the XX Century with very famous analogue
film models from a myriad of firms and in full digital era with likewise
well-known profesional dslr and mirrorless cameras like the current Canon EOS
5D Mark IV, Canon EOS 1DX MKII, Canon EOS 5DS, Canon EOS 5DS R, Nikon D800,
Nikon D800E, Pentax K-1, Pentax K-1 II, Sony A7RII, Sony A7RIII, Sony A7SII,
Sony A7 III, Sony A9, Leica SL, etc.
Does it mean that the 24 x
36 mm format is " the best " ?
Certainly not.
Each photographic format
has got its strong and weak points, its advantages and disadvantages.
And the image legacy of
pictures that were created with photographic cameras featuring formats
different to 35 mm is also huge.
To name only a few
examples:
- The wonderful images of
landscapes made by Ansel Adams with 4 x 5 (10 x 12 cm ) and 8 x 10 (20 x 25 cm)
large format wooden cameras on tripod. Many of his pictures of Yosemite
National Park like the sublime El Capitán Winter Runsise and Monolith, The Face
of Half Dome are among the best ever made, oozing an uncommon gift for
composition and sensitivity for tonal balance, in addition to the fact that his
prints reveal mastery of darkroom craftsmanship with a penchant for begetting a
realistic approach through exceedingly accurate exposure, enhanced contrasts
and sharp focus.
- The images of people
suffering The Great Depression in United States made by Dorothea Lange with a
Graflex RB D Series 4 x 5 (10 x 12 cm) large format camera, like the iconic
picture of the thirty-two years old Migrant Mother and two of her seven
children at a camp for seasonal agricultural workers in Nipomo (California) in
March 1936.
- The extensive series of
pictures on Flea Markets made by Edna Bullock (personal friend of Ruth
Bernhard, Morley Baer and Ansel Adams) with a 18 x 24 mm format Olympus Pen F
with Zuiko Auto-S 38 mm f/1.8 lens, which she often used in overcrowded
contexts where discretion and going unnoticed was a key factor, along with the
acutance featured by the black and white 35 mm films she used (getting
seventy-two 18 x 24 mm half-frame format shots with each one), making up for
the apparent grain delivered by the very small negative surface.
- Robert Doisneau´s
mythical images taken in the streets and cafés of Paris with his 2 1/4 x 2 1/4
(6 x 6 cm) medium format Rolleiflex Old Standard 622 during thirties, forties
and fifties, like Café Noir et Blanc (1948), Mademoiselle Anita (1951), La
Derniere Valse du 14 Juillet (1949), Picasso and the Breads of Vallauris (1952)
and others.
- The images created by
Brad Weston with his Rolleiflex SL 66 medium format camera coupled to a Carl
Zeiss Planar 80 mm f/2.8 lens and a prism finder, developing a remarkable sense
of form and fascination with abstraction, in addition to a great talent to
reduce his subjects to pure form, like his black and white nudes with model
Claudette Dibert in 1982.
- The wonderful colour
images of birds made by Eliot Porter with his 9 x 12 cm large format Linhof
Technika camera and gorgeous Kodachrome 4 x 5 sheets between 1939 and mid
fifties. Unique images featuring impeccable technical quality, fruit of many
hours of patient wait and with which he made extraordinary dye transfer prints
boasting a richness, depth and fidelity unmatched by any other kind of
photographic prints, showing peerless subtlety of tone and hue, combined with a
brightness range of more than 500:1 from blackest black to whitest white and an
almost boundless potential regarding the many ways to control the exact nuances
and contrast of each final print.
- The black and white
pictures of a high school prom in a Mahattan hotel taken by Mary Ellen Mark
with her 6 x 7 cm format Mamiya rangefinder camera coupled to a Mamiya 50 mm L
4.5 wideangle lens, Kodak Tri-X film and two flash units for the New Yorker
magazine in 2014.
- The great essays made by
David Burnett during the John Kerry´s Presidential Campaign in 2004, the
Aftermath of Katrina Hurricane in 2004 and the London Olympic Games in 2012
with a 4 x 5 (10 x 12 cm) Graflex Speed Graphic large format camera coupled to
a Kodak Aero Ektar 175 mm f/2.5 lens, taking advantage of its very limited
depth of field to draw the viewer´s eye to the subject and its exceptional
bokeh.
- The black and white
iconic pictures made by Werner Bischof with a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 (6 x 6 cm )
Rolleiflex Automat medium format camera, particularly his iconic images
Shintoist Monks Walking Under a Snowfall by the Meiji Temple in Tokyo in 1951
and Going to Cuzco in 1954 depicting a Peruvian boy wearing a straw hat on his
head and walking on a mountainous area while plays the flute.
Bischof, a master with both 6 x 6 cm
Rolleiflex and 35 mm Leica rangefinders, had a huge gift for photography,
superb technique and once and again accomplished sublime compositions, in
adition to imbueing his images with an outstanding photojournalistic compromise.
- The colour pictures made
in England in 2015 by the landscape master photographer Charlie Waite,
displaying his painterly approach of lights and shades with a medium format
Hasselblad 503 CW with PME90 prism finder on it and coupled to a CFV-50c
digital back with a Sony 43.8 × 32.9 mm size 50 megapixel CMOS sensor, using a
Carl Zeiss Planar 80 mm f/2.8 CFE T* standard lens and a chrome Carl Zeiss
Distagon 60 mm f/4 C wideangle lens from sixties with a Lee Filter, and
shooting with a shutter release cable and the camera on a tripod.
- The fashion pictures and
portraits made by Irving Penn (a perfectionist magician of black and white
photography and lighting, exhibiting a mixture of classic elegance and modern
minimalism) for Vogue magazine with his 4 x 5 " and 8 x 10 " large
format Deardorff view cameras in his studio, taking advantage of the movements
to control the effect of light on the films and adequate image sharpness and
depth of field depending on the lenses used, creating true masterpieces in
which he was successful revealing the personality of his subjects, drawing
their souls.
From 1979 onwards, he also
used a big 12 x 20 inch (30.5 x 51 cm) format banquet camera to do still life
photographs, with whose huge contacts he made gorgeous platinum prints.
- The landscapes and
details of vintage rusted metallic objects across a Nevada State road made by Jim
Gally with an Eastman Kodak 2D 5 x 7 " (13 x 18 cm) large format camera in
December 2004.
- The colour photography
of travels and weddings made by Jonas Peterson with 6 x 4.5 format Contax 645
camera and Kodak Portra 800, Fuji 400H and Kodak Portra 400.
- The great pictures of
birds made by Scott Bourne with a 20.3 megapixel digital Lumix DMC-GX8
mirrorless camera attached to an Olympus M Zuiko Digital 300 mm f/4 IS Pro ED
(equivalent to a 600 mm lens in 35 mm format, but much smaller and lighter)
super telephoto lens featuring 17 elements in 10 groups and delivering
astonishing sharpness and contrast.
It is a very good example
of the mileage an experienced photographer can obtain with the adequate gear
for his specific assignment when it comes to getting good pictures with a
lightweight and packable size.
- The images of travel
photography made by Jay Dickman with Micro Four Thirds format Olympus E-M1 Mk
II cameras coupled to Olympus 12-40 mm f/2.8 (equivalent to 24-80 mm in 35 mm
format) and Olympus 40-150 mm f/2.8 (equivalent to 80-300 mm in 35 mm format)
pro zoom lenses.
- The spectacular
panoramic images of different areas of New York, Oscar Niemeyer´s Brasilia and
Rio de Janeiro made by Andrew Prokos with a Fuji GX 6 x 17 cm large format
camera loaded with Fuji Velvia colour slide film and coupled to a Nikkor SW 90
mm f/4.5 lens (equivalent to a 22 mm superwideangle lens in 35 mm format), masterfully
incorporating architectural elements and the use of long exposure times.
- The black and white
contrasty pictures made by Tatsuo Suzuki in the streets of Tokyo using Fujifilm X-100F, Fujifilm X-100T and Fujifilm XPro-2 APS-C format mirrorless digital
cameras with Fujinon Super EBC 23 mm f/2 Aspherical Lens (equivalent to a 35 mm
lens in 24 x 36 mm format), approaching very much to his eclectic subjects
(frequently using a small flash and slow shutter speeds), displaying an innate
gift for photographing them unaware in defining moments, as well as a very good sense of composition and a
remarkable ability to capture frantic environments and places of the chaotic
city of Tokyo and its masive urban context, together with the way in which it
affects to its inhabitants, with a getting pictures style reminiscent of the
great Bruce Gilden´s one.
© jmse
But the 24 x 36 mm format
has been by far the most popular and widespread in the whole history of
photography, boasting a remarkable versatility to deliver second to none
stellar performance in photographic genres like photojournalism, street
photography, travel photography, documentary photography, wildlife photography
and sports photography, in addition to having proved its potential to get very
good results in other photographic scopes like portraits, landscapes,
architecture, microphotography, macrophotography, product photography, fashion
photography, aerial photography, food photography and others in which it was
always and goes on being clearly beaten by larger formats.
On the other hand, a very
high percentage of the most iconic photographs ever made were taken with 24 x
36 mm format cameras during the XX Century, in which Oscar Barnack´s "
small negatives, great pictures " fundamental keynote dating back to 1914
with his Ur-Leica prototype, greatly prevailed all over the world, being by far
the most influential one.
© Leica Camera A.G
OSCAR BARNACK´S "
LITTLE NEGATIVES, BIG PICTURES " MOTTO PROMINENCE IN DIGITAL ERA
But however incredible it
may seem, the arrival of digital photography in XXI Century has brought with it
a similar influence of Barnack´s revolutionary concept, not only in the 24 x 36
mm dslr and mirrorless full frame professional digital cameras but very
specially in the Micro Four Thirds and APS-C format professional ones.
It is really amazing the
image quality that these very little and light mirrorless cameras with
electronic viewfinders and featuring so small sensors can deliver in big
enlargements up to 50 x 70 cm on photographic paper, as proved by flagship
models like the Olympus EM-1 Mark II, E-M5 Mark II, Pen-F, Panasonic Lumix
DC-GH5K, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4K, Fujifilm XT-2, X-Pro 2, XH-1 and others,
many of them featuring a slew of breakthrough technological advancements like
exceedingly fast continuous AF up to 18 shots, more than one hundred focusing
points, highly sophisticated electronic viewfinders, Full HD and 4K Video, dust
reduction systems, AF through phase detection and contrast detection, OLED Live
View Finders, wi-fi, efficient image stabilizers enabling to shoot handheld at
really low shutter speeds, great image quality at very high ISOS, ultra fast
motion detection and focus, splash and dust proof rugged designs, film
simulation modes, etc.
But in spite of their
state-of-the-art technology of XXI Century, these extraordinary very small and
light professional mirrorless digital cameras featuring so tiny APS-C and Micro
Four Thirds digital sensors are conceptually highly related to Oscar Barnack´s
Ur-Leica, because the most important raison d´etre of their design, manufacture
and launching into market is absolutely linked (though now with awesome digital
sensors as a core instead of chemical film) to the fundamental principle "
small negative, big pictures " historically defined above all by five also
very small and light analogue cameras: the 24 x 36 mm format Ur-Leica prototype
created by Oscar Barnack in 1914, the different models of 24 x 36 mm format
screwmount Leicas made between 1925 and 1960, the 18 x 24 mm Leica 72 from 1955
- 1963 (of which 150 were made in Midland, Ontario and 33 in Wetzlar), the 18 x
24 mm format Olympus Pen designed by Yoshihisa Maitani in 1959, the 18 x 24 mm
Nikon S3-M from 1960 and the 18 x 24 mm Leica-H incepted by some engineers and designers of Adam Wagner's department in 1965.
It mustn´t be forgotten
that already in 1914, Oscar Barnack´s starting goal was to have created an
Ur-Leica photographic camera using 18 x 24 mm format cinematographic film, but
it wasn´t technologically possible at that moment, because results on making
enlargements were only barely acceptable up to a size of 13 x 18 cm, so he had
to increase the horizontal area of the movie format up to 36 mm, generating the
24 x 36 mm format which enabled enlargements with good image quality up to 30 x
40 cm until mid twenties and up to even 60 x 80 cm from early thirties onwards,
© Westlicht
Photographica Auction
as proved by the famous
picture of two lions at the Frankfurt zoo made by Wilhelm Schack with a Leica 1
(Model A) coupled to a Leitz Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens.
It could be achieved
thanks to the symbiosis between:
a) The increasingly better
24 x 36 mm format black and white Agfa panchromatic films which went on
exhibiting abundant grain but whose high content in silver halides and superb
acutance enabled to preserve excellent definition in the border effects and
sharpness of contours enhanced by the use of the Agfa Rodinal developer 1 + 50
at 24º during eight minutes, making possible to discern details and the significance
of Mackie lines.
b) The superb lenses
created by Professor Max Berek, the best optical designer in the world at the
moment together with the Zeiss genius Ludwig Bertele.
Berek´s previous great
know-how and experience in the field of microscopes was instrumental for the
designing of top-drawer lenses to be coupled to the LTM39 24 x 36 mm format Leica
0 pilot run from 1923 (Leitz Anastigmat 50 mm f/3.5) and the Leica 1 Model A
from 1925 (144 Leitz Anastigmat 50 mm f/3.5 and 714 Leitz Elmax 50 mm f/3.5
during the first year, and from 1926 onwards they were replaced by the Leitz
Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 of which 56548 units were made until 1936, and two small
batches of the Leitz Hektor 50 mm f/2.5 lens, making up a total of 1330 units).
© jmse
Max Berek´s 4 elements in
3 groups Leitz Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens was throughout almost thirty years the reference-class
standard lens in the world (along with the 6 elements in 3 groups Carl Zeiss
Jena Sonnar 5 cm f/1.5 designed by Ludwig Bertele in 1932) until the
introduction of the Leitz Summicron 50 mm f/2 in 1953.
The mid fifties became a
new turning point in the history of Leica, when the German
photographic firm had to choose between the path started by Oskar Barnack with
his Ur-Leica, Leica 1 (Model A), Leica II (Model D) and Leica III and followed
by the Leica IIIG created by Adam Wagner in 1957 (id est, exceedingly small and
light cameras) or a new breed of Leica rangefinder camera: the formidable Leica
M3, which finally prevailed and whose conceptual birth took place in 1936 with
the creation of the Leica IV prototype by Leitz engineer Willi Stein, using a
focal plane shutter with non rotating shutter speed dial harking back to 1934
which would become the hallmark of the all the Leica M RF cameras.
Besides, from mid fifties
onwards, both in Midland (Ontario Canada) and Wetzlar, Leica had also been making tests
with 18 x 24 mm format black and white films to analyze the possibility of
making enlargements up to roughly 30 x 40 cm.
Even, they built the
aforementioned 18 x 24 mm Leica 72 mirrorless cameras (IIIa units modified with
a special film gate and viwfinder masking to take 72 half-frame images in a 35
mm film roll) betwen 1957 and 1963, trying to get as much image quality as
feasible.
But it wasn´t technically
viable at that time, because only with b & w films with ISOS between 8 and
25 (films from ISO 50 onwards gave too much grain on making prints from 18 x 24
mm frames beyond 13 x 18 cm) was possible to get decent enlargements up to
approximately 8 x 12 " (20 x 30 cm), so very slow speeds had to be used to
get pictures, with a high rate of trepidated images, so it wasn´t operative to
shoot handheld in most real photographic situations.
Yoshihisa Maitani (the
greatest photographic mechanical engineer ever along with Oscar Barnack) also
strived after getting the full potential of 18 x 24 mm format, creating a very
small and light camera able to yield 72 shots: the milestone Olympus Pen from
1959, also featuring 18 x 24 mm format and coupled to a very good F. Zuiko 32
mm f/1.7 lens. It was another revolutionary camera featuring a rotary shutter
synchronizing with flash at all speeds, a vertical reflex mirror moving out of
its way to expose the very small film and porro prisms which created the image
in the viewfinder, in addition to being a prodigy of design oozing elegance and
innovation, so it was a remarkable sales success being massively produced.
Between 1959
and 1967, created by some members of the Department of Adam Wagner (a Leitz
engineer, designer of the Leica IIIG launched into market in 1957), who built
three prototypes of the Leica-H, a 18 x 24 mm half format camera featuring
automatic exposure, rounded contours similar to the Ur-Leica, a 5 elements in 3
groups lens and extraordinary miniaturized mechanics.
And in 1960, Nikon created
its 18 x 24 mm format Nikon S3-M rangefinder camera.
But the superiority of the
24 x 36 mm format cameras over the 18 x 24 mm format analogue cameras on making
enlargements from the original negatives beyond approximately 15 x 20 cm kept
on being apparent, since the grain of the smaller surface frames skyrocketed
quickly, something that had been happening since the introduction in 1933 of
the Kochmann Korelle K half-frame photographic camera with interchangeable
lenses.
And differences in image
quality between 18 x 24 mm format cameras and 24 x 36 mm format ones increased
even more in favour of the latter during sixties, because of:
a) The spreading of very improved 24 x 36 mm chemical
emulsions like the Kodachrome-X colour slide film featuring ASA 64 (2 1/2 times faster than Kodachrome II and with a slightly higher contrast) from 1962, Kodak
Ektacolor ASA 100 Type S, Kodacolor-X ISO 80, Agfa Color Chrome CT18, Agfa
Color CN 17 and great b & w films like the Agfa Isopan F ISO 40, Agfa
Isopan SS ISO 100, Ilford FP3 125 ISO, Ilford HP3 400 ISO, Kodak Panatomic X
ISO 40, Kodak Plus-X Pan ISO 125, Kodak Super-XX ISO 200 and others resulted in
a clear superiority of the Barnack 24 x 36 mm format cameras over the 18 x 24
mm ones in terms of resolving power, contrast, sharpness, tonal range attained,
faithful colours, etc, particularly in 30 x 40 cm and bigger enlargements.
b) The introduction of new
top-notch lenses like the Summicron-M 35 mm f/2 (1958-1979), Summilux-M 50 mm
f/1.4 (1959-2004), Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 Type 2 (1956-1968) and Summicron-M 90
mm f/2 (1959-1980) for 24 x 36 mm format Leica M cameras; the Nikkor-S Auto 50
mm f/1.4 (1966-1974), Nikkor 50 mm Auto-Nikkor f/2 (1959-1963), Nikkor-H Auto
50 mm f/2 (1964-1979), Nikkor-P Auto 105 mm f/2.5 (1959-1971), Nikkor-N Auto 24
mm f/2.8 (1967-1972) for 24 x 36 mm format Nikon F camera from 1959; the M42
mount Super-Takumar 35 mm f/2, Super-Takumar 50 mm f/1.4, Super-Takumar 55 mm
f/1.8, Auto-Takumar 85 mm f/1.8, Super-Takumar 105 mm f/2.8 and Super-Takumar
135 mm f/3.5 for the 24 x 36 mm format Asahi Pentax Spotmatic camera from 1964;
the Carl Zeiss Biogon 21 mm f/4.5, Carl Zeiss Planar 50 mm f/2, Carl Zeiss
Sonnar 85 mm f/2, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 135 mm f/4 and Carl Zeiss Sonnar 250 mm f/4
for 24 x 36 mm format Zeiss Ikon Contarex camera from 1960; the Carl Zeiss Jena
T Flektogon 50 mm f/2.8 (1961), Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 20 mm f/4 (1961) and
Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 120 mm f/2.8 (1956-1988) for Exakta Varex IIb and VX
1000 cameras from sixties.
© jmse
A HUGELY INFLUENTIAL
PROTOTYPE CAMERA FROM 1914 WHOSE BASIC PRINCIPLES ARE BEING FURTHER DEVELOPED
BY DIFFERENT PHOTOGRAPHIC BRANDS IN XXI CENTURY
The Ur-Leica 24 x 36 mm
camera created by Oskar Barnack in 1914 keeps on exerting a remarkable
influence in the mirrorless digital cameras (both professional and amateur
ones) designed and built in XXI century.
As a matter of fact, the
first mirrorless system compact camera featuring very small dimensions,
exceedingly low weight and coupled to tiny lenses (embodied by the Elmar 50 mm
f/3.5) was the Leica II (Model D) from 1932, designed and built by Oskar Barnack,
and which meant a giant step with its built-in rangefinder.
Already 86 years ago, the
Leica II Model D (whose forefather was the Ur-Leica prototype) compact
mirrorless camera with its dimensions of 133 x 67 x 33 mm was smaller and
lighter than digital superb mirrorless cameras of XXI Century like the 24 x 36
mm format Sony A7 (127 x 94 x 48 mm), the Micro Four Thirds format Panasonic
GH5 (139 x 98 x 87 mm), the APS-C format Fujifilm X-Pro 2 (141 x 83 x 46 mm),
the APS-C format Fujifilm X-T2 (133 x 92 x 49 mm), the Fuji XT-20 (118 x 83 x
41), the Micro Four Thirds Format Olympus Pen F (125 x 72 x 37 mm) and others.
But the really most
important thing is that the amazing and fascinating digital technology, in
constant evolution, has enabled to get something which was not possible
throughout XX Century with the wide assortment of analogue half-frame cameras
built: state-of-the-art tiny digital APS-C (23.6 mm x 15.6 mm, with 3:2 aspect
ratio) and Micro Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm, with a 4:3 image aspect ratio
corresponding to the classic 6 x 4.5 analogue medium format aspect ratio)
sensors which are a technological wonder, and in spite of their exceedingly
small surface are able to deliver impressive image quality.
To name only two examples,
the 24 megapixel Fujifilm X-T2 is able to get superb 20 " x 30 " (50
x 76 cm) and very good 24 " x 36 " (61 x 90.5 cm) prints with amazing
detail, contrast and colours, always understanding that there must be a
reasonable viewing distance for the size and that previous to it, a great print
will originally depend on the photographer´s ability and technique getting a
good RAW archive from the camera, along with the image editing, without
forgetting the subject matter which can often be significant to be able to
enlarge more or less.
And the same happens with
the Olympus E-M1 Mark II with which prints up to roughly 29 x 39 " (73,5 x
99,5 cm ) from ISO 100 and 200 archives can be obtained.
Obviously, full frame
digital cameras like the cream of the crop dslrs from Canon, Nikon and Pentax
and the best mirrorless ones from Sony and Leica will be able to make excellent
prints at even bigger sizes, but every system camera and format has got its
advantages and disadvantages, so the 24 x 36 mm format digital cameras offer
very big sensors, probably more image quality advantages from a global
viewpoint (in addition to the fact that any technological improvement you can
make to a smaller sensor can also be applied to a larger sensor, and larger
sensors have inherent virtues) and truly more easiness when it comes to make
selective focus at the widest apertures, but they and their lenses are
inevitably bulky (particularly the zooms), while the APS-C and Micro Four
Thirds format cameras are much smaller, lighter and far more convenient to use
handheld and transport.
Anyway, all of them give
nowadays more than enough image quality for any photographic assignment.
It´s also important to
bear in mind that unlike the analogue era in which the binomium film/lens
delivered the image quality, the final image quality obtained by digital
cameras depends on a number of factors: the lens (which keeps on being the most
decisive one), the quality of the sensors, the dsp, the algorithms and others.
© Leica Camera A.G
A BREAKTHROUGH DESIGN
FORESEEING THE SHAPES AND CONTOURS OF A
NUMBER OF TOP-NOTCH ITEMS AND ARCHITECTURAL BUILDINGS OF XX AND XXI CENTURIES
The mythical Leica Ur from
1914 anticipated in nothing less than between 16 and 24 years to breakthrough
shapes, concepts and historically iconic objects and buildings that would mark
the decade of thirties like:
- The Cartier Paris Art
Deco Lighter With Watch 1930 made in lacquer on silver and movement
manufactured by Watch & Clock Co.Inc.
- The Clock Streamline Art
Deco designed by Gilbert Rohde for the Herman Miller Clock Company in 1933 and
exhibited during the Chicago World Fair held that year.
- The Manchester Express
Building incepted by Sir Owen Williams in 1936.
- The Beolit 39 Bang &
Olufsen valve radio from 1938, first one made in bakelite by the firm.
- The Marlin Hotel Art Deco in Collins Avenue
(Miami) built by the architect Lawrence Murray Dixon, and many others in 1939.
A conceptual design of
shapes that also foresaw with more than eighty years of anticipation future
profiles and contours of the audiophile and home theatre spheres from nineties
like:
- The media center
receiver (featuring CD player and AM/FM tuner) of the Bose Lifestyle 12 Home
Theatre from 1994 — the first one of the firm — and other subsequent CD System
and DVD System Music Center models.
- The multiband FM/MW/SW
analog transistor radio Sony ICF-F12S from 2009.
- The small personal
mobile stereo speaker Orbitsound T3 from 2010 featuring airSound technology and
linkable to iPods, iPhones, portable computers, desktop computers and handheld
videoconsoles.
- The audio docking system
base speaker + alarm clock ipod/iPhone Sony ICF-DS11iP from 2011 with digital
AM/FM tuner and stereo Megabass sound.
- The front area of the
Unison Research Simply Italy stereo integrated valve amplifier from 2011
created by Giovanni Maria Sachetti and made in black colour cherry wood with
circular inserts surrounding the dials.
- The Bose SoundLink
Bluetooth III portable speaker from 2014, and many others.
And it also foresaw with a
hundred years of anticipation contours and shapes of a number of compact
digital cameras of XXI Century like:
- The Sony DSC-RX100.
- The Sony Cyber-Shot
WX300.
- The Panasonic Lumix
DMC-LX15.
- The Panasonic Lumix
T100.
- The Nikon 1 J1.
- The Canon PowerShot
SX620.
- The Canon Powershot
A31000 IS.
- The Canon Powershot G9X.
- Leica D-Lux 3
- The Leica T and T2.
- The Canon EOS M10.
- The Olympus Pen E-PL3.
- The Olympus VG-110
- The Olympus VG-180
- The Samsung MV900F.
- The Samsung ST77.
- The Samsung TL320.
- The Pentax QS-1.
and others.
OSCAR BARNACK´S UR-LEICA
DESIGN AND " SMALL NEGATIVES, BIG PICTURES " MAINSTAY GETTING THE
UPPER HAND IN THE SPHERE OF HIGH-END SMARTPHONES DELIVERING TOP QUALITY IMAGES
If all that were not
enough, when in June 2010 Steve Jobs said during the world presentation of the
iPhone 4:
" You gotta see this
in person. This is beyond the doubt, the most precise thing, and one of the
most beautiful we've ever made. Glass on the front and back, and steel around
the sides. It's like a beautiful old Leica camera ", he was recognizing
the timeless design and beauty of lines of screwmount and Leica M rangefinder
cameras of XX Century, and hence the huge influence in XXI century in the
sphere of smartphones shapes of their common progenitor: the Ur-Leica prototype
designed by Oskar Barnack in 1914.
The CEO of Apple Inc (a
great lover of vintage objects oozing good design and elegance) displayed his
tremendous insight, conceptually relating in design a very advanced
techinological product of the digital era with a breed of photographic cameras
which was born in 1914.
And he was right, to such
an extent that after Steve Job´s death in 2011, his highly revealing statement
has proved to be even more accurate, with the progressive coming into being of
a new segment of product likewise intimately linked to Oscar Barnack´s Ur-Leica
and its " small negatives, great pictures " cornerstone: the little
and light high-end smartphones featuring very tiny digital sensors able to
deliver very good image quality, and whose current flagships are:
- The Samsung Galaxy S9
Plus (featuring oversized 6.2 inch curved screen and a 12 megapixel dual lens
camera featuring an exceedingly small 1/2.55 sensor with a variable f/1.5-f/2.4
aperture optimized for low light performance and paired with a 12 megapixel
telephoto module with a 1/3.6 image sensor and a fixed f/2.4 aperture)
- The Apple iPhone X
featuring a 1/2.0 " digital sensor and a dual camera setup with a 12
megapixel 28 mm f/1.8 lens and a 12 megapixel 52 mm f/2.4 lens, both of them
with optical image stabilizers, AF through phase detection, 2x optical zoom, 4K
video at 60 fps, and many other functions.
- The very recently
launched into market Huawei P20 Pro, coengineered with Leica Camera AG, a 1/1.7
" sensor class-leading smartphone boasting a camera module with a
Vario-Summilux H1 27-80 mm f/1.6-2.4 including three different lenses, each one
with its own sensor: a 27 mm f/1.6 wideangle lens with a 20 megapixel
monochrome sensor, a f/1.4 wideangle lens with a 40 megapixel digital sensor
and a 80 mm telephoto f/2.4 lens with 8 megapixel sensor.
Smartphone technology to
get pictures is another example of going small.
© Leica
Camera A.G
MANY MYSTERIES STILL TO BE
SOLVED
The personality of Oscar
Barnack, one of the most important figures in the History of Photography, is truly
fascinating, and his 24 x 36 mm Ur-Leica ( called Liliput camera by him)
changed the entire world of photography, giving birth to a new kind of very
small and light camera featuring robust construction, outstanding reliability
and amazing optimization for shooting handheld without trepidation, even at
very slow shutter speeds with available light, and whose first mass produced
model would be the Leica 1 (Model A) from 1925, which would be followed by the
comprehensive range of screwmount and M Leica rangefinder models.
How is it possible that
more than 104 years ago this great man was able to design and build a small and
discreet prototype camera always ready to take the next picture that has had
such far-reaching influence in the photography of XX and XXI Centuries and whose
fundamental keynote of a very little first-class camera coupled to top of the
line tiny lenses delivering great optomechanical performance has reached even
the scope of the current most advanced digital devices generating computational
photography?
Evidently, Oscar Barnack
was a genius of industrial design, mechanics and miniaturization of components,
as well as being a good photographer.
Another picture made by Julius Huisgen to
Oscar Barnack inside his office at Ernst Leitz Wetzlar in 1934. Here we can see
the genius holding with his left hand a cardboard with two 13 x 18 cm prints,
each one with its corresponding 24 x 36 mm contact, while he keeps a third
print of the same size in his right hand. From the very creation of his
Ur-Leica in 1914, Barnack realized that real photography on paper started at 13
x 18 cm or better even at 18 x 24 cm, in addition to realizing that in
photography the standard for image quality review is done with 8 x 10 "
(20 x 25 cm) prints observed from a distance of roughly 30 cm, so between 1914
and 1936 he made constant tests searching for the best possible black and white
negatives delivering the densities and complete tonal values he did pine for
and as lavish detail in low key areas as he could obtain to increase image
quality in enlargements on photographic paper, which resulted in very good 30 x
40 cm prints from early thirties. In addition, he had a remarkable photographic
eye along with great experience in the visualization of images and the messages
they convey, so he used 13 x 18 cm prints (using a working method similar to
Sebastiao Salgado´s one in XXI Century with his Genesis Project, where the Brazilian
photographer controlled from beginning to end all the stages leading to the
final prints, with haptic photography on paper as a fundamental keynote, and
creating thousands of 13 x 18 cm baryta paper reading copies chosen from
contact sheets, even currently a far better and more reliable method than
watching pictures on a computer screen) to thoroughly analyse the qualitative
standard of the images made with his screwmount Leica rangefinder cameras
coupled to the lenses designed by Professor Max Berek.
He was a tremendously
accomplished mechanik meister and designer on whose shoulders Ernst Leitz II
had the entrepreneurial talent of putting the whole future of the Wetzlar firm,
a confidence in Barnack which paid off from 1925 onwards, with the definitive
launching into market of a revolutionary lineage of photographiuc cameras which
ushered in a paradigm change in world photography and whose common progenitor
had been the Ur-Leica prototype from 1914.
The legendary maestro
Norman Goldberg (demised in 2006 and father of the Leica master camera
technician and pundit Don Goldberg of DAG Camera Repair in Oregon, Wisconsin,
the foremost expert within this scope in the world along with Sherry Krauter,
Ottmar Michaely, Gerard Wiener and Claus-Werner Reinhardt) holding the Ur-Leica
in his hands inside the Wetzlar Museum in 1980. He was technical
director of Popular Photography magazine from 1972 to 1987 and creator of the
amazing Camcraft N-5 electric motor drive for the Leica M2 and MP unveiled in
1961, as well as having incepted a number of equipment for the testing of
cameras and lenses and being the author of Camera Technology, a reference-class
lavishly illustrated book in which he displays his impressive knowledge of
mechanics and physics in synergy with uncommon practical skills, ingenuity and
proficiency in all kind of intricate technical aspects, and some of the
mechanical solutions devised by him in the sphere of micro-switches were
conceptually used by NASA in some of its space programs. He was also a friend of the Carl Zeiss world-class optical designers Hans Sauer and Erhardt Gladzel, as well as having tested some of the first MTF oprtical benches.
Image courtesy of Don Goldberg
Image courtesy of Don Goldberg
From a technical
viewpoint, the Ur-Leica was already a masterpiece, though not working 100%
flawlessly as Barnack could detect on watching the negatives and contact sheets
of the pictures made by Ernst Leitz II during his trip to New York and Niagara
Falls in 2014 and his own ones made in Eisenmarkt and Eselstreppchen in Wetzlar
in 2014 and during the floodings in Wetzlar of 1920.
Another picture made
during the summer of 1914 in New York City with the Ur-Leica by Ernst Leitz II,
using a big depth of field. The great German entrepreneur (who ten years later
pronounced his famous statement " Barnack´s camera will be produced "
resulting in the manufacture of the Leica 1 Model A presented at the Leipzig
Fair of 1925 ) has been given clear instructions by Oskar Barnack to use above
all if possible f/8 and f/11 diaphragms to get maximum sharpness on the whole
surface of the black and white 24 x 36 mm format negatives. The boroughs of
Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island have consolidated into a single large metropolis since 1895,
and New York has already turned into an international cosmopolitan, financial and
trade hub in a wide range of scopes, something which will be enhanced in
subsequent years with the creation of the Chrysler Bullding in 1930 and the
Empire State Building in 1931, in the midst of an amazing population surge with
a figure of almost seven million inhabitants. Ernst Leitz II captures
faithfully a city in which vast majority of vehicles and means of transport are
still horse drawn (as depicted by the two carriages appearing in the middle
area of the photograph), a very high percentage of men are wearing hats and their
best attires while walking across the street and the atmosphere of the scene
clearly indicates a thriving area teeming with shops and all kind of
businesses.
This image is the prelude
to a new kind of photography that will have its market launch in 1925 with the
Leica 1 (Model A), first mass produced and commercially available 24 x 36 mm
format camera, a new breed of miniature photographic tool which will enable to
comfortably shoot handheld without trepidation, getting high quality and well
focused pictures thanks to its stunning compactness and low weight in synergy
with likewise tiny first-class lenses, with the added advantage that though
coupled to manual focusing objectives, both screwmount and M Leica rangefinder
cameras can often be used getting advantage of a zone of very acceptable
sharpness based on the hyperfocal distance (id est, the calculated focusing
point depending on the focal length of the lens, the aperture used and the
needed depth of field ),
And this zone focusing
method is by far the fastest " autofocus " in existence, much quicker
than the quickest electronic autofocus of the best DSLR and mirrorless digital
professional photographic cameras, something which is even more enhanced by the
exceedingly short shutter lag (time of delay between the moment in which the
shutter release button is pressed and the beginning of the exposure) of the
screwmount and M Leica rangefinder cameras. Suffice it to say that the shutter
lag of a Leica M3 from 1954 is of only 12 ms, far superior in this regard to
superb professional digital photographic cameras of XXI Century like the Nikon
D800, Nikon D800E, Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Sony A7 RIII,
Sony A9, Olympus EM-1 Mark II, E-M5 Mark II, Pen-F, Panasonic Lumix DC-GH5K,
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4K, Fujifilm XT-2, X-Pro 2, XH-1 and others.
But throughout the
twenty-two years elapsed since his creation of the Ur-Leica in 1914 and January
16, 1936, date in which he died from pneumonia, the Leitz Wetzlar Chief
Engineer fought tooth and nail to steadily improve the accuracy and reliability
of the screwmount Leica cameras (particularly the movement precision in all the
range of speeds of the cloth curtains of the horizontally travelling focal plane shutter)
as well as expanding their photographic potential, which reached their apex
with models like the Leica 1 (Model A) from 1925, the Leica II model D from 1932 (first one to have a built-in rangefinder),
the Leica III from 1933 (first one to feature the slow speed dial on its front)
and the Leica IIIA from 1935 (first one to feature 1/1000 s).
The upshot of it is that Oscar Barnack was a great human being in constant introspection and fight with himself and his fragile health to build the best possible products for Leica, the firm that became his home since 1911 and where he would be during the rest of his life.
In 1933,
after intensive toil of some years, Oscar Barnack could create a further key
technological trait: a special dial for slow speeds (1/20 s, 1/8 s, 1/4 s, 1/2
s and 1 second that would be decisive to increase chances of getting pictures
handheld at very low speeds with available light up to 1/4 s and between 1/2 s
and 1 s if the photographer had where to support his/her back)
the Leica III from 1933 (first one to feature the slow speed dial on its front)
Michael Auer, great
historian of photography, holding an advertisement of the Leica IIIA from 1935.
Oscar Barnack, feeling the proximity of his death, made a last strenuous effort
to improve the horizontally travelling focal plane shutter of the Leica III,
managing to provide it with a new shutter speed of 1/1000 s, faster than the
previous top one of 1/500. This would mean a great advantage for sports
photographers of the time like Friedrich Seidenstücker, Lothar Rübelt and
others.
Detail of the shutter
speed dial of a Leica IIIA from 1935, where the added speed of 1/1000 s can be
seen. The level of mechanic accuracy reached by Oscar Barnack with the
horizontally travelling focal plane shutters of the screwmount Leicas he
created (all of them having the Ur-Leica as origin) was really amazing for the
time, since he was a consummate engineer and mechanik meister, in the same way
as Ludwig Leitz, Willi Stein, Peter Loseries and others, a tradition which goes
on having world-class figures in the sphere of analogue classical Leica cameras
mechanics like Don Goldberg, Sherry Krauter, Malcolm Taylor, Gerard Wiener, Ottmar Michaely, Walter Baumgartner, Gus Lazzari, Dieter Paepke, Claus-Werner Reinhardt, Youxin Ye, Steve Yo and
others.
and the Leica IIIA from 1935 (first one to feature 1/1000 s).
Picture of Oscar Barnack made by Julius Huisgen in 1934. It is a very interesting image
depicting Barnack at work inside his office at Ernst Leitz Wetzlar, with a
Leica III body next to his right hand, as well as some metallic spools, some
Filca 1B reloadable 35 mm brass cassettes, an Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens, specific
tools and a Leica IIIA removable baseplate on far lower area of the image. This
great man was a prodigy of craftsmanship and the very embodiment of a lifetime
devoted to the creation of top-notch mechanical and optical photographic devices which
Enrico Domhardt (then
Chief of Leica Camera in the Asia Pacific Region and currently CEO of Artisan
& Artist craftsmanship firm) holding the Ur-Leica in his hands at the
beginning of 2000, during a two week travel across Japan and China he made with
Peter Coeln showing the camera to Leica users from these two countries, which
have had a seminal significance in the history of the brand with such figures
like Hiroji Kubota, Jun Miki, Hiroshi Hamaya, Nobuyoshi Araki, Satoki Nagata,
Junku Nishimura, Kosuke Okahara, Lu Nan, Chien-Chi Chang, Jin Huang, Vincent
Yu, Ben Huang and others, without forgetting the recent labour made by Jane Cui
(President of Leica Camera Asia), Karin Rehn-Kaufmann (Art Director and Chief
representative of Leica Galleries International) and Siegmund Dudek (Manager
Director of Leica Camera in Greater China ).
Image courtesy of Enrico Domhardt
Image courtesy of Enrico Domhardt
The upshot of it is that Oscar Barnack was a great human being in constant introspection and fight with himself and his fragile health to build the best possible products for Leica, the firm that became his home since 1911 and where he would be during the rest of his life.
Another of the pictures
made by Oscar Barnack with his Ur-Leica during the floodings of Lahn river in
Wetzlar in 1920. Once more, he proves to be a very good photographer, shooting
at 1/20 s and f/8 and masterfully capturing a small cart drawn by two horses
through a street of the exceedingly beautiful German village, capital of the
Lahn-Dill-Kreis District. The movement of both the two horses and the left
front wheel of the vehicle advancing through the tiding water has been
truthfully depicted, so an amazing feeling of motion (enhanced by the driver of
the cart, standing on it and whose left rein is a bit loose, indicating that
the horse linked to it and receiving the main impact of the waves is arduously
moving forward, while the right strap is utterly tightened and the horse bonded
to it is making his way less cumbersomely ) is apparent for any observer of the
picture.
On the other hand, the
hallmark lack of 100% perfect focus of this photograph and its extensive depth
of field (enabling to perfectly discern all the elements in the background: the
shapes of windows, lace curtains, wooden door, large plaque and metallic closures
of the shop) makes a visible contrast between the moving animals, cart and
driver and pioneers a typical Leica image of the halcyon days of
photojournalism from mid twenty onwards, in which many great photographers will
use slow speeds and extensive depth of field with moving subjects to get as
much as possible vivid
sensation of movement, like Henri Cartier-Bresson
in his famous " Behind the Gare
Saint-Lazare " 1932 in Paris (with the railowsky letters in the left
background and a man on the right of the image jumping on a pond with his silhouette
reflected on the water ). A technique which goes on being used sometimes by
many 24 x 36 mm format analogue and digital Leica M photographers in the scopes
of photojournalism, reportage and street photography to convey dynamism to the
images, helped by the lack of swivelling mirror of their cameras, which makes
possible to shoot handheld at very slow shutter speeds with this aim.
Nick Ut
Leica Hall of Famer (one of the best photojournalist ever), working for
Associated Press Agency, winner of the Pulitzer Prize of Photography and the
World Press Photo of The Year in 1973 for his iconic picture of the nine years
old girl Phan Thi Kim Phuc running burnt with napalm and fleeing her village
after an attack by Douglas A-1 Skyrider aircraft of South Vietnamese aviation)
holds a 30 x 40 enlargement of the photograph made by Oscar Barnack to his
children Conrad and Hanna in 1914 in Wetzlar.
© jmse
José Manuel Serrano
Esparza is a member of the Leica Historical Society of America and the Leica
Historica Deutschland e.V. His articles on photography history and master
photographers have been published in different international magazines like
Viewfinder, Chinese Photography, Digitalis Foto Magazine, FV Foto-Video
Actualidad, Film und Foto and others, as well as essays on vintage aircraft in
illustrated magazines like Flugzeug Classic, Aviación General y Deportiva, etc,
being also a researcher on photographic cameras and lenses both in the analogue
and digital domains, B & W films and photographic techniques. He´s likewise
photographed a wide range of works of art, archaeology, nature and landscapes,
MotoGP World Championships, tourist resorts, classic piston radial engine
planes, modern planes, a number of cultural events and high-end technology,
along with the coverage of a number of sports competitions within the scope of
FIBA, NBA, FIFA, UEFA, ATP, FAI Aerobatics Championships and others.
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