By José Manuel Serrano
Esparza
The Leica M3D-2 Black Paint number series M3D-2 was manufactured at the Leitz Wetzlar (Germany) factory in 1955 for the famous war photojournalist David Douglas Duncan, who asked the camera to feature a Leicavit and a 50 mm lens with special focusing lever.
The Leica M3D-2 Black Paint number series M3D-2 was manufactured at the Leitz Wetzlar (Germany) factory in 1955 for the famous war photojournalist David Douglas Duncan, who asked the camera to feature a Leicavit and a 50 mm lens with special focusing lever.
It´s essentially a
preproduction Leica MP optimized for its use for photojournalists and in which
the self-timer has been eliminated, as well as adding a frame counter identical
to the one sported by the Leica M2.
After having started his
photographic career in early thirties as a freelance photojournalist for the
Kansas City Star and National Geographic (using a 4 x 5 - 10 x 12 cm - Graflex
large format camera ) , from 1941 he became a war photographer for the U.S
Marines War Department (using a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 - 6 x 6 cm medium format camera
for most of his reportages, in addition to a Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta B/532/16
with identical film format, with which he often got pictures from inside fuel
tanks of Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft refurbished for aerial photography providing
them with Plexiglas on their forward area).
Subsequently, during the
Korean War (1950-1953) David Douglas Duncan used a Leica IIIC with Nippon
Kogaku lenses delivering remarkable sharpness and particularly optimized for
contrast, beating in global image quality the best Leica lenses of the time
(with the exception of the Leitz Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 and the sixty-five
prototypes of the retractable chrome 7 elements in 6 groups and ten blade
diaphragm Leitz Summicron-M 5 cm f/2 — with two small fluted knobs on its
middle area and concentric ones on the upper one — designed by Professor Helmut
Marx with highly refractive lanthanum optical glass lacking radioactive thorium
and created by Dr. Weissenberg and Heinz Brömer, manufactured in Wetzlar in 1952
and 1953) in addition to being more luminous.
The Leica M3D-2 was used
by DDD with 28, 35 and 50 mm Leitz M series lenses, all of them photojournalistic
par excellence primes, and was sold at Westlicht Vienna (Austria) on November
22, 2013 coupled to a 7 elements in 5 groups and 12 diaphragm blade serial
number 2028874 Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4, black anodized aluminium version,
designed by Walter Mandler at the Leitz factory in Midland, Ontario (Canada),
made in 1964 and used by David Douglas Duncan above all in Vietnam.
On top right
area of the Leica M3D-2 is the shutter release button, with a shutter lag time
of only 12 ms, a side in which this mirrorless with rangefinder camera built 59
years ago clearly outperforms superb professional digital full frame present
dslr cameras like the Nikon D800, Nikon D800E, Nikon D4, Nikon D4s, Nikon D850,
Canon EOS 1DX, Canon EOS 5D Mark III, mirrorless full frame digital cameras
without rangefinder like the Sony A7III, Sony Alpha 7R III, Sony Alpha 7S, Sony
Alpha 9 and others, Fujifilm mirrorless X series cameras like the Fuji XT-2, X-Pro 2, XH-1
featuring excellent APS-C X-Trans sensors and mirrorless Micro Four Thirds top of the line
cameras like the Olympus EM-1 Mark II, E-M5 Mark II, Pen-F, Panasonic Lumix
DC-GH5K, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4K, Panasonic Lumix DC-G9 and many others.
This incredibly short
shutter lag (time elapsed between the instant in which the photographer presses
the shutter release button and the exact moment when the exposure is made ) has
been one of the historical hallmarks of the Leica M mirrorless with rangefinder
System and a trait (among many others) of invaluable help which has enabled a
high percentage of the best photographers in history to get with them many iconic
images having defined the evolution of XX and XXI centuries, with a commendable
transition from 24 x 36 mm format analogue models to digital ones with
identical philosophy, handling, very small dimensions and weight for their full
frame sensors and beautiful timeless classicism of lines like the Leica M9,
Leica M9 Titanium, M9-P, Monochrom, Leica M Type 241, Leica M10 and so forth.
On the other hand, as well
as being used by David Douglas Duncan for his coverage of Vietnam War
throughout sixties along with the other three ones made by Wetzlar for him
(M3D-1, M3D-3 and M3D-4),
The eyes of a genius. This
picture created in 1957 was one of the many made by David Douglas Duncan of Pablo Picasso at La Californie, the studio residence in the south of France in
which the American photojournalist met the universal man from Málaga in 1956,
setting up a deep friendship and empathy both with him and his wife Jacqueline
that would last many years.
the Leica M3D-2 was the
camera used by the well-known photographer to get plenty of images of Pablo
Picasso´s life with exceedingly high levels of discretion, a sphere in which
the Leica rangefinder cameras are the ideal choice, thanks to their lack of
swiveling mirror, the extremely low and barely perceptible noise generated by
their horizontally travelling focal-plane shutters driven by springs (whose
unutterable operating smoothness and vibrationless mechanism based on the very
light weight of the curtains made with special cloth and relatively moderate
acceleration — linked to a very efficient damping system — while they cross the
film gate, make up a miniaturized expansion of the gear theory set forth by
Filippo Bruneleschi and Leonardo da Vinci four centuries behind, together with
the use of drawing as a tool to resolve problems, in synergy with the invention
of specific components, and it makes possible to shoot handheld at 1/8 s
without trepidation or need of any image stabilizer), their masterpiece
rangefinders featuring more than 150 high precision parts and with a 0.92x magnification in
the Leica M3D-2, a true optomechanical jewel able to accurately focus even
under the lowest light conditions, and their lenses of great luminosity,
boasting extremely small and compact size, in spite of being objectives for 24
x 36 mm format and having proved to be the benchmark in image quality.
It should be added that
inside this entirely mechanic horizontally travelling focal-plane featuring a
speed dial lacking any turn (whose basic tenets appareaded already in the
patent 645856 K1. 57a Gr. 28 of 1934), with the aforementioned amazingly short
shutter lag of 12 ms, Dr. Ludwig Leitz (research and development director of
Ernst Leitz Wetzlar since 1939 and one of the greatest experts in the world
regarding the invention and manufacture of high precision optical and
mechanical devices) and Willi Stein, their main creators, also applied ( in
combination with a far-reaching mathematical groundwork carried out by
Professor Riede), relying on the relatively scarce volume and utter control of
moving masses, revolutionary dynamic principles enabling the independent path
of each curtain, without limiting the slit width, using highly accurate
measures of the dynamic working cycles making possible that the two successive
borders of the shutter curtains keep the same time interval among each other in
every point during thewir trajectory across the 35 mm film gate.
It meant an outstanding
technological achievement, because to be able to preserve the concept of Leica
M camera featuring very small size, they had to overcome the bias to non
uniform exposure of negatives (the left side of the image received less light
than the right one) on using the fastest shutter speeds, avoiding lengthening
the initial stretch of the slit travel (since it would have resulted in a
bigger camera body) through the insertion of specially designed transmission
springs, it all complemented by fast shutter speeds generated by means of a
control cam and slow shutter speeds (1/60 s and below it) brought about by a
small gear train which for all intents and purposes is a delaying mechanism.
The Leica M3D-2 was
auctioned at Westlicht for an astronomical price, due to the great fame of the
photographer, the fact that only four types of this camera were made for David
Douglas Duncan (MD3-1, MD3-2, MD3-3 and M3D-4, whose manufacture was personally
supervised by Willi Stein, Head of the Photographic Design at Leitz Wetzlar
during fifties and sixties and main creator of the Leica M camera along with
Hugo Wehrenfenning, who invented the Leica M bayonet and designed the first
Leica M lenses) and the huge resale value of the analogue historical models of
the mythical German photographic firm, nowadays a very safe economical
investment with first-rate future projection.
But in my opinion, the
most important thing is that it is a very meaningful example of 35 mm photographic
camera oozing a very high optomechanical constructive standard of quality,
David Douglas
Duncan, one of the most important and influential war photographers in history,
on the brink of exhaustion in February 1968, during his coverage of the fight
in Khe Sanh (Vietnam). Beside his left hand you can see the Leica MD3-2 Black
Paint coupled to a 6 elements in 4 groups Leitz Summaron-M 35 mm f/3.5, while
next to his right hand appears a Nikon F attached to a 4 elements in 4 groups Nikkor-Q
Auto Non-Ai 20 cm f/4 with a focusing ring sporting a festooned design, a
built-in collapsible shade and blue tonality simple coating, last evolutive
link of the anti reflective one layer optical coating invented in 1935 by the
Ukrainian genius Alexandr Smakula from Zeiss (which made possible to fight against the luminic and contrast loss because of stray reflections and light ),
that was painstakingly studied by Japanese lens designers and used by Nikon
until 1971, year in which it began using its NIC (Nikon Integrated Coating)
multicoating featuring a number of layers, indicated with the " C "
letter
conceived for its
professional use under the most extreme conditions and
Detail of the 7
elements in 5 groups and 12 blade diaphragm Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 serial
number 2028874, black anodized aluminium version, designed by Walter Mandler at
the Leitz factory in Midland, Ontario (Canada), made in 1964 and used by David
Douglas Duncan above all in Vietnam. The famous photojournalist asked the Leitz
Wetzlar (Germany ) factory to provide it with a special focusing lever made in
stainless steel and visible in the image. This lens was the opto-mechanical
reference-class standard 50 mm f/1.4 prime during nothing less than 43 years,
between 1961 and 2004, year of introduction of the 8 elements in 5 groups
Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH designed by Peter Karbe, who made use of every
technological breakthrough in the scope of aspherical lenses manufacture and
keeps on being a stellar performer, only beaten by the 12 elements in 10 groups
Zeiss Otus 55 mm f/1.4 Apo-Distagon T* from 2013 and the 11 elements in 9
groups Summilux-SL 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH from 2017, though both stratospheric
performance lenses were built with no compromises as to weight (very heavy,
roughly a kg) and size (rather big), so the Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH is a
more praiseworthy design with its much lower weight of 335 g, and its much
smaller dimensions of 54 x 53 mm turn it into a more convenient, efficient and
consistent lens in handheld shootings, particularly in dim light environments,
where its rate of pictures with accurate focus and without trepidation will be
clearly superior. But Mandler´s design
was one of the greatest optical feats in history, since he approached a
great deal to the limits of the scientifically feasible without using
aspherical elements, and besides, he significantly reduced the production cost
without lowering image quality, through the insertion of some simple coatings
with different colors in the forward and back elements of the optical cell
that he could design because he was a tremendous pundit on the chemical and
optical properties of the different materials and optical glasses available,
which he combined with astounding prowess and efficiency, to such an extent
that even the most modern version with 46 mm filter and telescopic built-in
hood of his Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 without aspherical elements (featuring the
same optical formula as the two previous ones) and made between 1992 and 2004 went
on without needing any multicoating whatsoever, an accomplishment resulting in
a reduction of costs while preserving an excellent image quality that he also
developed with its fourth version of the 6 elements in 4 groups Summicron-M 50
mm f/2 from 1979 in which he applied common radii with preestablished curvature
along the whole lens barrel, managing to get the uniform obliteration of Newton
rings and any possible deviation and introduced SF10 dense flint in the first
large size element, obtaining identical resistance to vignetting than
lanthanum, and in addition, he replaced the expensive optical glasses of some
internal elements (wisely chosen, with varieties of SF2, BASF6 and SF11
flints), in such a way that only the two last ones are lanthanum.
tailor made according to
the specifications and guidelines of a highly experienced photojournalist who
has used all kind of cameras and lenses in different formats, and who would
have likewise created great images with a 100 dollars camera, because in the
scope of photojournalism the intrinsic quality of a picture and the relevance
of the moment captured together with the information stemming from it, are more
important than the technical aspects of the obtained image, so being at the
adequate place at the timely instant, the photographer´s experience and
intuition, his skill and accuracy when it comes to pressing the shutter release
button at the precise moment and being as near as possible from the action to
depict the defining moments, along with the ability to previously make a
rapport with the subjects, are the key factors, a realm in which David Douglas
Duncan has been one of the greatest ever.
An impressive image of an
American soldier engrossed in his thoughts in Con Thien (Quang Tri Province
(South Vietnam, in the nearest area to North Vietnam). This is an iconic image
in which David Douglas Duncan shows his mastery, wisely pressing the shutter
release button of his Leica M3D-2 rangefinder exactly at the most defining
instant, with a commedable timing, photographing the G.I. from a very near
distance, though in spite of it, he has managed to captured him being unaware
of his presence. As a matter of fact, however incredible it may seem (it is an
utterly perpendicular vertical shot almost from point-blank range), the soldier
with helmet is not looking at the camera and David Douglas Duncan has been able
to go unnoticed, in a wonderful example of every photojournalist´dream come
true : to become invisible at the moment of the photographic act, here in
seamless symbiosis with the very small size and virtually imperceptible
exceedingly low noise produced by the shutter release of the Leica rangefinder
camera to preserve discretion.
Though the image can be
dimmed as a portrait in which the acclaimed American photojournalist has made a
sensational use of the true short tele lens nature of the non aspherical
Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 coupled to his Leica camera, it is very dramatic, since the
soldier´s eyes reveal an eerie war context : he has been here for nine months
of fierce fightings, with average temperatures of 30º C but thermal feeling of
45-50º and sweating buckets because of the tremendous levels of humidity,
constant attacks by Vietcong Units trying to assault the position and frequent
accurate mortar, rocket and artillery fire whose shells flew over the
demilitarized zone and the Ben Hai river with north south trajectory, exploding
in Con Thien area and bringing about very high levels of stress in the American
defenders of the location (which was a key enclave to prevent the Vietcong
forces from making incursions across the demilitarized zone), something very
apparent on the shocked G.I. ´s countenance, whose hands fingers are fidgety
rubbing each other.
And undoubtedly, the
symbiosis between David Douglas Duncan´s talent and a first-class photographic
tool like this, boasting an utterly mechanical operation, maximum reliability
in extreme conditions, lacking any programmed obsolescence, featuring a
Leicavit
The Leicavit MP
is a completely mechanical device, designed and manufactured by Leica to attain
the fastest possible speed in the film advance and shutter cocking without
having to use any energy coming from batteries, so its reliability even in the
most extreme photographic contexts, is huge, being able to endure an
uninterrupted professional use for decades. It is attached to the lower area of
the camera in the place of the standard cover and it benefits from the fact
that the reception axle of the metallic spool with 35 mm film roll is
longer in the Leica MP than in the M3 — not being possible to use it with the
latter — and has a coupling for the Leicavit. Made up by 51 metallic components
and four springs, its superb constructive quality and mechanical precision
result in a very smooth and silent working, making possible that the
photographer being in the middle of the action hasn´t to separate the camera
from his eye and can make up to two shots per second, strongly and quickly
moving towards the left — with the middle and annular fingers of his left hand —
the Leicavit Lever, which will make advance a frame per every half a second the
24 x 36 mm format film roll in perfect synergy with the shutter release button
of the camera, which will simultaneously be activated and will keep on being
the one enabling a exposure every half a second. In the image can be seen the
black lacquered Leicavit MP black paint Type 1 of David Douglas Duncan´s Leica
M3D-2 with its lever in folded position and which has to be totally drawn until
remaining in vertical position on far right of the grooved space holding it, to
be able to start using this laudable contrivance having its heir in the modern
Leicavit M.
Leicavit M (for
Leica M6, M7, MP, M6 TTL, M4-P and M4-2), a compact, manual quick-wind gadget
designed for its integration into the camera body, increasing its height only
to 9.1 mm and its weight to 150 g. It fulfills its labor connected to the
reception axle of the metallic 35 mm film roll spool inside it, producing a
very whispering sound intensity, thanks to its film advance driving system
based on five high performance straight cylindrical metallic gears (cut with
special milling machines and subsequently enduring a mechanic treatment solving
any geometrical error in the manufacture of the gears and minimizing noise),
located behind the letters Leica, three of them connected among each other (two
crowns and a pinion) and two being activated by a small toothed drive belt made
with special plastic boasting very high antifriction properties, working as a
rack and being mounted on a stainless-steel spring.
and coupled to 28, 35 and
50 mm lenses, yielded impressive images like the extraordinary ones made by
David Douglas Duncan in
This
breathtaking picture created in Khe Sanh (Vietnam) in February 1968 by David
Douglas Duncan faithfully sums up the horror of a war that cost the lives of
58,000 American soldiers and 2,000.000 Vietnamese (between combatants and
civilians).
Khe Sanh and Con Tien
(Vietnam) in 1968 (where he also used a reflex 35 mm format Nikon camera with
medium and long focal lengths) for Life magazine, in addition to the
aforementioned photographs of Pablo Picasso, with a top-notch optomechanical
level camera, built with noble metals (brass, aluminium and stainless-steel),
designed for professional photojournalists and which 63 years after its
manufacture, goes on working flawlessly at all shutter speeds and diaphragms,
without needing any batteries and with an admirable reliability.
For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
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For other articles on this blog please click on Blog Archive in the column to the right
To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.
All ads present items of interest to Leica owners.
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