From the very start, I needed to have Leicas. You know the drill... small, quiet, elegant, etc., etc. All the Magnum guys had 'em... all the Great French Photojournalists had 'em... I wanted 'em.

  My general, institutionalized Lack Of Resources over the years has driven me to Guerilla Warfare on the Leica-Buying Front. It's now a game... how little can I pay out, in order to have Leicas. When I figure out some way to work around The Leica Bullshit... I'll make up another page.

  First and Foremost... pretty much any camera, and any lens, will make a sharp image. All the cameras and lenses are built by precision machines... and all the lenses are designed by the same computers, running the same program, and they get their glass from the same vendors.

  Leica and Zeiss became PowerHouses in lens design, back around the beginning of the Twentieth Century, because back then... lenses were designed and built by Humans.

  Lens designs were developed by technicians sitting at desks, tracing ray paths through lens designs, with adding machines. Zeiss and Leitz had more guys, and more adding machines... so their lenses were demonstrably better.

  Now... a guy in a white lab coat presses "enter", and a 24-105 f/3.5-5.6 magically appears on the screen... along with suppliers' catalog numbers for the glass parts needed to manufacture the lens. If "Marketing" thinks that they can sell it... it's Off and Away.

  Soooo... unless you need small, quiet, and elegant, in order to effectively make pictures (as I need to do, from time-to-time)... let the Dentists buy the new Leicas, and let them join the newsgroups, to tell everyone how much sharper their Aspherical Summicrons are than your Non-Aspherical Summicrons. You know how boys are...

  There are three very effective strategies to Leica Buying, if you're more interested in Pictures than in Jewelry. One... buy from Dealers who haven't bought into The Bullshit (B.S. is worth $250-300 per camera body... and is worth $700 between an identical German 35mm f/2 Summicron, and a Canadian 35mm f/2 Summicron).

  My favorite dealers are KEH Camera Brokers in Georgia... Stan Tamarkin, in New York, and Jim Keuhl, in The Pacific Northwest. They offer good prices, and stand by their stuff. It's always better than they rate it, and they Just Wanna Do Business. No B.S.

  Two... For a LOOOONG time, there was Leica, and that was it. If you wanted a rangefinder camera, you were stuck. If you wanted a lens for a rangefinder camera, you were stuck.

  This is no longer true. Products from Voightlander, Konica, Ricoh, and some others are available at very reasonable prices. In the photo above, you can see that I am using a Canon 50mm f/1.4, a Minolta 28mm f/2.8, and a Fuji (!!??!! yes, Fuji) 35mm f/2 lens, with an M2 and an M3 Leica. These lenses are sharp, and do a great job. They didn't cost a lot.

  Three... the best time to buy used Leicas is at the end-of-summer, beginning-of-fall. The Big Dealers go on tour, at the end of August, through November. They hit Camera Shows in the major cities... not to meet the Collector Public... but to buy inventory from other dealers.

  Why? because a guy with a "Nikon Clientele" will take Leica gear in trade, and want to sell it or trade it, so they can get some Nikons from a "Leica Clientele" Dealer, that took in some Nikons in trade... A place like Del's, in Santa Barbara has to get all that Nikon stuff from SOMEWHERE. It don't just walk in the door...

  Dealers will try to raise as much cash as possible, before going out, so that they can buy what they need. Consequently, that $1600 M4-2 in the June Shutterbug becomes an $1100 M4-2, in August. The cash becomes as, if not more, important than the margin... prices go down.

  Former White House Chief Photographer Bob McNeely, at a John McCain For President Rally in Boston (that's McCain's foot and leg, at the right edge of the frame). Bob is a Stone Leica Guy, and in addition to a nifty Orange Leather Jacket, and two EOS-1 cameras, he's got three Leicas... two M-6's and an M5.

  On the M6's, he likes a 35, a 28, and the 75mm f/1.4. On the M5, he always keeps the 21mm f/2.8 Elmarit. His feeling is that the bigger camera makes it easier to focus, with less finder cut-off from the large front end of the 21mm.

  This is, of course, hilarious to Old Leica Junkies, because the "knock" on the M5... when it was new... was that you couldn't mount the (then) non-retrofocus 21mm "M" lenses on it, because the deeply-set back elements would impact the swinging arm that the camera's metering sensor was on, just over the plane of the shutter. The new Elmarit is a retrofocus design, and doesn't stick so far into the camera as the old Super Angulons did.

  If you're REALLY committed to taking sharp, clear photographs... get into bigger film. Pretty near ANY camera that uses 120 film will Beat The Sox Off any camera that uses 35mm film.

  If you're just making 4x6 color prints... don't bother. But, if you shoot for publication, or just want to make some outstanding 8x10's... Big Film Rules.

  One reason why I enjoy shooting with bigger cameras is... that you simply can't "snapshoot". You are forced to think about lighting, depth-of-field, and how few frames you can shoot to get things done. It's NOT like blowing through 108 quick motorized frames, at f/2 or f/2.8, in three 35mm cameras. You get 10-15 shots on a 120 roll (depending on format), and it takes a lot longer to get film in and out of the cameras. You gotta THINK about what you're doing.

  This Photojournalist and Man About Town was photographed with a 55mm lens, on a Mamiya 645 camera, using a table-top tripod, on Kodak Portra 160 NC film... at 1/8th of a second at f/5.6-8... in the Greater Boston Area's Mecca for all Pastry Lovers... Mike's Doughnuts, on Main Street, in Everett, MA.

  Depth Of Field is a function of Focal Length, and Aperture... NOT angle of view. Even though 55mm is a wide-angle lens on a 120 film camera... the depth-of-field for any particular aperture is functionally the same as for that aperture with a 55mm lens on a 35mm camera.

  I'd have been able to get away with f/4.5, using a 28mm lens on a 35mm camera... but needed to shoot at 5.6/8 with the Mamiya, to hold the same level of detail, front-and-back.

  This meant that I needed to shoot at 1/8th second... which neccessitated the tripod. The whole sequence between wanting to take the picture, and actually doing so, required thought and consideration... more than just lifting a small camera, and snap shooting.

  Photojournalist Christopher Morris, carrying a Rolleiflex camera, in addition to his EOS and Contax gear. Another great photographer of The World's Conflicts is Ron Haviv, who also carries a Rollei. These guys get great, SHARP black & white photos with their Rolleis, which aren't heavy, and don't take up a lot of space.

  Newsweek photographer David Hume Kennerly and Time photographer P.F. Bentley carry Mamiya 7 cameras, in addition to their EOS equipment... all these photographers know that a bigger piece of film is sharper and clearer than any 35mm picture.