THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Or
Cameras That Have Owned Me
By Jerry Page
When I reached my twelfth birthday, my
father presented me with an Argus A, not because he felt I was mature, not to
celebrate my imminent manhood, not for anything other than
self-preservation. He had often noticed,
when emerging from the darkroom, negatives on freshly developed strips that he
could not recall taking. Of course not…
As long as I can remember, I have been
obsessed with recording everything I could see, hear, taste, or touch. I don’t know why; I suppose it would take a
psychiatrist specialized in manias to figure it out, but no matter. The sensation of having to “make sure” that I
really did see a particular scene, really did hear a particular sound, has
always been with me.
And one day while my father was at work
and I at home, I discovered where he kept his Argus C-2. Eureka!
I found it! Surreptitiously I
began taking the C-2 out to record: the apartment, the new Philco radio which
stood 3 ½ feet high and had push buttons, the tops of cars as they passed in
the street below. My Argus A was my
father’s defense against the clutter on his film strips, and clutter I had
done, rapidly. Everything interested me,
and anything particularly appealing (like a tree branch heavily bent with
leaves, shimmering in the sun) I photographed from as many angles as possible.
Mind you, “Art” was not on my mind. I harbored no secret desire to be a photo
journalist like Clark Gable in “Too Hot to Handle”, I just needed to be sure I
could really prove to myself that I had seen what I had seen.
And so I passed a number of pleasant
years. By and large my parents indulged
me, with only occasional rumblings about the cost of panchromatic. We lived in Flatbush, a section of Brooklyn,
New York, which was about equidistant from everywhere; I pointed out to them
the money I was saving by walking, not spending carfare.
And so I am probably the only (then)
sixteen year old who knows precisely where he was on December &, 1941, when
Pearl Harbor was attacked: I was
shivering on the beach at Coney Island (a brief five mile walk from the
apartment) racing up and back on the sand trying to frame a tanker lumbering up
the Narrows dead center in the sun’s rays streaming from a broken cloud
formation. I got the picture (one of my
better ones right up to the present) and wound my way home, ducking into
apartment house basements each time I heard airplane engines, since I guessed
that after Pearl Harbor, Brooklyn was next.
I was eventually drafted, and I found
myself at Fort Dix one cold February morning with my “quarter” moccasins
(pennies were for girls), my Argus, and three rolls of film. At some point in the following years I
discarded the loafers, but the camera went all through the war with me. Security in the Combat Engineers seemed to be
confined to knowing the day’s password; no officer ever objected to the
presence of the camera – and some of the scenes I recorded are moving up to
this day.
The Argus survived the war, but not the
return home. Three days after I
returned, the girl I was with dropped it and cracked the bakelite casing. That ended the romance, as I mourned my
friend’s passing.
But I also discovered that other cameras
existed, and so did camera stores. It
was quite a revelation, and the beginning of a six month quest.
I had no intentions of replacing the
Argus with another. I really missed the
rangefinder on the C-2, as a number of fuzzy prints showed, but what I really
wanted was a Contax II. I settled for
the C-2 and vowed the Contax would be mine eventually.
I eventually did get it, and it was a
great disappointment. It had a 50/2
Sonnar; I was fascinated with the increased print contrast, and the opportunity
to shoot in murkier light (f/2 was FAST) – and of course, it handled like an
exquisite machine. But the hair in the
sweet cream proved to be the rangefinder; I could adjust the focus for what
seemed like minutes until I was “dead on”, then find the scene had
changed. Candids were out of the
question. I couldn’t yet afford the
28/2.8 Tessar which, I was told, I could leave at f/8, preset the distance to
15 feet, and voila! Everything would be
in focus. But, I asked myself, if I
could do that, why do I need a rangefinder in the first place? There was something wrong with either the
argument or the camera, and I wouldn’t pierce the argument.
Someone mentioned that he’d tried a
Voigtländer “Prominent” and was impressed.
So what do you suppose I bought next?
With the Prominent I gave up some shutter speed, but gained and (ever so
slight) improvement in the rangefinder.
The problem with the Prominent was the 100mm lens – the reflex housing
weighed a ton and was very awkward.
I changed to a Robot Royal 36S. Scenes couldn’t keep up with the spring-wound
motor, and every time I pressed the shutter release, all cats within 50 yards
would arch their backs and wail to the winds - it was fingernails on the black
board. The Royal 36S had only a few
interchangeable lenses, and the rangefinder spot was still minuscule.
The first of New York’s Camera Barns
opened one balmy spring day in 1959, on Liberty Street across from the building
where I worked. I wandered in and met
Fred, affable owner and ace salesman; after a few minutes of well-wishing on
both sides, I erupted with my constant complaint, the shortcomings of 35mm
cameras.
Fred (that marketing genius) suggested
that I might try one of the new 35mm reflexes that were finding their way to
market, but the black-out during exposure left me afloat in the ether, and the
noise equaled that of the Robot. Fred
continued the erosion of my soul and gave me a look through the current Canon
and Nikon rangefinder models, probably aware that my disappointment was only
increasing.
And then he reached way back on the
shelf, turned to me and murmured quizzically (I’m positive the snake knew all
along the nature of the Adam he had to deal with),
“Well, this just came in. I don’t know if it’ll please you more than
the others; its called an M3…”
The instant my right eye opened through
the viewfinder, that electric shock of recognition hit me. I KNEW I was going to leave the store with
this camera. I didn’t know what it cost,
whether it was new or used, not even who made it. But it was mine, and that was all I really
needed to know. The rest was peripheral.
Some periphery. When my feet finally touched earth, I learned
the camera with its 50/1.5 Summarit was used, cost $400, and was made by E.
Leitz, Wetzlar, Germany. So this was a
Leica! Where had I been the last 34
years, to remain oblivious? Ignorance,
thy name is Page! At last I had discovered that Leicas existed.
To ease my anguish at the thought of
having to sell my wife to a white-slaver and put my son up for adoption, Fred
maneuvered my plastic, covetous soul away from the Summarit to an f/3.5
Elmar. He convinced me that with
improvements in film emulsions, I really didn’t need the speed of the Summarit
– as long as I had that marvel to hold and transport the film. And, he assured me, he’d always be able to
get me all the other great Leitz lenses.
Leica M3 with 50/2 Summicron
Did he ever!
In time, as Leitz produced new lenses, there I was with my hot little
hands out, gleefully grabbing up a 135/4.5, a 90/2.8 Tele-Elmarit, a 50/2
Summicron (I really did need the speed – Kodachrome was still ASA 10).
And fortuitously, I got an unexpected
benefit from the discovery of Leica, the benefit that to this day puts Leica
atop Everest: the glass up front. My
concern had always been focusing, the view in the finder; the Leitz lenses,
beginning with that Elmar, changed all that – rapidly. From the first roll of film I was getting the
sort of separation between planes in the pictures, the snap and contrast that I
assumed only professionals with their paraphernalia could get. Instead of one or two pleasing pictures per
roll, I could count fifteen or sixteen that had enough impact to make me go
back and look at them again and again. I
have an idea of what kids mean when they talk of a “high” – I can feel like
that with almost every roll of film I get back.
Depth, realism, whatever term you use to
express the essential of photography for you, is what those Leitz lenses
deliver time after time, more consistently than any others I’ve tried, and as I
look back I realize I have tried most.
So while I was pleased to discover that I could truly “see” through the
viewfinder, the greater pleasure took place when I projected those slides: what miracles those lenses were, and
are.
Of course this is quite similar to my experience as well. Only one thing....Heinz Richter sold me the used Leica M3 as my first and best camera. I have him to thank for getting things perfect at the get go!
ReplyDeleteIt is nice to start at the top, isn't it. This way you never had to wonder if you wouldn't have been better off with another camera.
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