Lessons from Oskar Barnack: Or, the Story of my Leica IIIa

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Note: This essay was originally written for the fine folks at Frozen Wasteland and can be found here in a fuller form.

I was recently approached by Andrew McClees, aka @andrewdmcclees of Instagram fame, to write an article for Frozen Wasteland on the topic of things we have learned from shooting a specific camera, a lens, a film stock, whatever. I agreed (obviously) and decided that I would try and talk about the most important camera from the panoply of different cameras that I’ve used over the years. 

My ever-changing collection has shuffled through the gamut of numerous digital cameras, 35mm film cameras and medium format film cameras. To be fair each of them has had something to teach me. Shooting a heavy RB67 from a tripod teaches you something about a slow, considered, and contemplative approach to photography. Shooting a small, lightweight digital setup teaches you something about shooting on the fly, in the moment, etc.. In that sense every one of my cameras could probably serve as source material for an essay on the way that any particular photographic tool has something to teach about the many sides of the photographic process. 

However there is one camera that immediately comes to the fore as the most significant. That camera was a Leica IIIa, as well as the Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar that was paired with it. I came to possess this camera in a roundabout way from a familiar lust that I would guess many photographers have felt before. Stated simply, I wanted a Leica. Well, actually I had been curious about experimenting with the rangefinder format for some time and had already experimented with a Canonet and found it interesting enough to pursue further. But of course, as we all know, the ultimate conclusion when you want a serious rangefinder is that you need a Leica, specifically a Leica M. 

This was all well and good except for one critical problem: I didn’t have the money for a Leica M. Prices on used film M’s were already crazy even two years ago and the more I searched for one the more I came to realize that an M probably wasn’t going to be an option. It was at this point during my quest for M alternatives that I stumbled upon the interesting world of Barnack Leicas. 

For those that are in the same boat I was the history lesson is as follows: 

The “Barnack Leica” is really just an umbrella term used to denote the large family of screw-mount Leica cameras made prior to the first Leica M in 1954. They are collectively referred to as “Barnack Leicas” because they all share a fairly consistent mechanical heritage which leads back to the Ur-Leica (this is what they call it, it’s German), the foundational camera invented by Oskar Barnack in 1913. 

The Ur-Leica was developed as a light, compact and easily portable alternative to the bulkier camera equipment of the early 20th century. It utilized a small negative made from modified movie film which, when paired with capable Leitz optics, was able to produce a sufficiently sharp enlargement that rivaled the technology of its time at a fraction of the size. 35mm photography was born. A polished version of Barnack’s brainchild was introduced to the public as the Leica I in 1925. This was followed by a number of developments over the next 30 years: the Leica Standard in 1932, the Leica II which integrated a rangefinder, also in 1932, and finally the Leica III which integrated slow shutter speeds in 1933. The last Barnack Leica produced was the IIIg in 1956, and the reign of the Barnack Leicas came to an end in 1960. 

Following the genetic heritage of the Ur-Leica, Barnack Leicas have always been a relatively simple camera. At bottom they are a brass box with a viewfinder, a screw-on lens, and a shutter. Even the later Leica II and III merely added an expanded range of shutter speeds and a rangefinder focusing mechanism for additional focusing accuracy. I will admit that these cameras were a far cry from my original quest for a Leica M. But the more I read about these fascinating old cameras the more I was intrigued about the prospect of using one, and the fact that they were much cheaper didn’t hurt either. And I mean, it was still a Leica after all. 

A lot of deliberation and scouring of the internet later I eventually came across the Leica IIIa + Leica 50mm f/3.5 Elmar combo that would come to be mine for sale from a Leica store in San Francisco (pro-tip: look at the used section of the various Leica stores around the US for some good deals). The camera and lens were in great shape and while the price was a bit higher than I was looking to spend it was less than buying an M and an additional lens. The condition of the pair and the fact that it was coming from a legitimate Leica store took some of the edge off of the premium as well. So, I sent Leica my money and waited eagerly for my old-but-new-to-me Barnack Leica. 

Fast forward through several days of waiting and I finally got my hands on the Leica IIIa. I was immediately smitten. Unwrapping the copious bubble wrap revealed the beautiful, hefty, compact brass body, knurled advance knob, shutter speed dials, and film rewind knob, all in that beautiful Leica chromed brass. The collapsible 50mm Elmar, while undoubtedly funny looking, also had its own antique kind of charm. 

Aesthetics aside there was a beautiful tactile quality to the camera as well. Advancing the film/cocking the shutter involved turning the large knurled knob several times until the film had been advanced and the shutter was cocked. Setting the shutter speed involved lifting the speed dial slightly to be able to rotate it to the desired speed. Framing and making an image involved looking into two separate windows: a tiny peephole of a viewfinder which showed a 50mm field of view, and another window through which you could use the rangefinder focusing mechanism to achieve focus. And of course releasing the shutter elicited a responsive click and that ever-satisfying sound of the Leica cloth shutter. 

There was a decidedly non-modern, even spartan simplicity to the whole thing paired with a brilliant craftsmanship that I absolutely loved. It was a camera that did everything a camera needed to do, but nothing more, and nothing less. And it fulfilled its function in ways that only the most masterfully crafted tools can, with an efficiency and precision that allows them to function effortlessly and invisibly, as all great tools should. The way that a great pen simply writes, the Leica simply made pictures. As I would eventually find out, this was part and parcel of its deepest capacity to teach.

To be sure, the methodical (some might say cumbersome) process of image making taught the virtues of a slow and considered approach, and the minimalist form factor taught the virtues of working freely, unencumbered by overly complicated equipment. The Leica certainly had technical and practical lessons to offer, but looking back these things, important in their own right, aren’t the distinctive things that the Leica taught me. I had worked with cameras in the past that had taught these and many other lessons in one way or another, but the Leica taught lessons both more subtle and arguably much more important from an artistic point of view than the merely technical or practical aspects of photography. 

To concretize this a bit: wandering through the forest lugging a heavy tripod mounted RB67 or Bronica with ten or fifteen frames of 120 film might have taught me about looking carefully for potential compositions and assembling those compositional elements within a frame to construct a well ordered image. And to be sure this is important technical knowledge. But walking through the same forest with that simple old camera allowed me to more readily lose myself in the rich and meaningful experience of the landscape that had always been the impetus behind my making photos of the landscape and to more easily bring that rich and meaningful Lebenswelt into intimate contact with my photographic endeavors. This was a paradigm shift for me. 

That old Leica, in its quiet simplicity, allowed me the ability to simply walk, to think, to experience, and ultimately to engage in the photographic process in a way that was richer and unencumbered by overmuch technical concern, plunged into the depths of life rather than the lifeless arena of technics. It showed me a way to blend the rich and meaningful content of my experience with my photographic work in a way that previous cameras had, for whatever reason, not. In becoming an invisible component of the rich and meaningful context of my lived experience the Leica enabled me to partake in the photographic process not simply in a detached, technical manner, but in a new, engaged, and more meaningful way deeply in contact with the heart of what mattered to me as a photographer.  

I cannot imagine a more profound lesson that a camera could give to a photographer. The lesson of that old Leica was not about this or that technical or practical aspect of photography, but something that cut to the very heart of what it means to make photographs, something that fundamentally changed how I understood the meaning of photography. So, in the end I didn’t really get what I was looking for in the first place. It would be some time before I even came to own a Leica M. But what I did find in that old Leica IIIa turned out to be valuable beyond anything I could have possibly foreseen, and for that it will always hold a special place for me.

A Test: HP5 vs 5D: Or, is the film look bullshit?

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Backstory:

For the last two weeks or so I have become a bit, uh, obsessed with this matter of “the film look.” It all began when I posted an Instagram story reflecting on some thoughts from my time shooting exclusively digital over the last few months. In the story I stated outright that there is no such thing as “the film look” and that any qualities that we might use to define it can be pretty well emulated by digital manipulation. This wasn’t a revelation. I have held this position for years, ever since shooting a combination of medium format film and digital and noticing that I was able to make my digital images and my film images look at least passably identical. Grain, tonality, even the latitude/highlight rendition of film can be pretty well copied via digital sensor technology and digital manipulation thanks to the juggernaut that is technological dynamism.

To be completely honest though there is always something that keeps me from standing too firmly in the “the film look is BS” camp. My eyes are always drawn across enemy lines, so to speak. Or maybe it’s my heart. I have been shooting film for a long time and that old film affinity and the lurking sense that there is a rendering that is just special or unique in my film results never fails to unravel any overly certain dismissal of the “magic” of the medium. Whenever I go through my backlog of images I can’t help but feel a certain fondness for some special something that I find my film work rather than my digital images.

The fondness for film that draws me toward affirming the reality of “the film look” and my sense that it may be bullshit created a kind of internal struggle in the wake of broaching this topic online. The number of stimulating conversations that I had from both sides didn’t help quell my desire for definitive answers either. So, growing tired of endless theoretical speculation and the tension of waffling back and forth between my perspectives I decided to conduct something of a test to try and get a better hold on this issue. The following describes the test, results, and offers some interpretations of my findings.

Putting things to the test: Principle and Process

The principles of my test were relatively simple:

1) Shoot a number of photos on both film and digital
2) Develop, scan, and process my film images per my usual procedures to provide a sound baseline for a film sample*
3) Try to match the digital images to the finished film images

With this test in mind I made my way out to a local haunt of mine equipped with my Canon 5D MkI and a Canon 50/1.8 STM as my digital setup and my Minolta XD5 and 50/1.4 loaded with HP5 for the film setup, oh and a tripod (ugh). Both the film and digital versions were shot from the tripod so as to keep compositions as close to identical as possible. Shutter speeds were set from the Minolta and then transferred to the 5D so as to keep exposures identical as well. Both lenses were set to a constant f/5.6. The HP5 was shot at box speed, and the 5D sensor was therefore set to 400ISO.

After shooting was complete the film was developed in Ilfotec HC at a dilution of 1+31 for 6.5 minutes, given a water stop bath, and fixed in Photographer’s Formulary TF5. Film was digitized with a Plustek 8100 and Silverfast SE Plus at a resolution of 3600DPI, saved as a TIFF and given final adjustments in Lightroom. The 5D files were also brought into Lightroom and the finalized film versions were used as the guiding rubric for processing the digital files, the primary aim of course being to duplicate the film results as closely as possible.

*By working from a final film image I am hoping to circumvent the murkier issue of defining what exactly “the film look” is. A film image presumably has it if it is real.

The results:

Below are five pairs of images: each contains one film image, and one digital copy doing its best to duplicate the original film image. Can you tell which is film and which is the digital copy?

How did you do? Maybe you know already but if you don’t the digital is always on the left side if you are viewing from a desktop, or on the top if you are viewing from a mobile device. Now that you know, how did you do?

Looking over the finished pairs I think it is safe to say that the digital copies routinely get 90-100% of the way to copying the film images. In other words the differences range from barely perceptible to imperceptible. I’m personally convinced that if one was presented with a random sampling of these images it would be difficult to impossible to tell whether an image was the real deal HP5 or a digital fake (I am especially convinced of this because I myself often got confused about which image I was looking at in the process of doing this whole test).

For the 1-10% difference that separates barely perceptible and imperceptible there is part of me that wanted to say, “Ah, there is the irreducible remainder of film magic!” Were it not for some image pairs that were essentially identical this might have been a plausible answer. But the more honest answer, I think, is that this is an expectable degree of variance given the number of variables in the test. And given the number of variables we cannot conclusively say that the variance is necessarily some irreducible film magic eking out an edge over the digital counterparts.

An interpretation:

So what of the results, then? Stated most conservatively the results simply show that digital is able to convincingly duplicate film images. But what does all of this actually tell us about “the film look”? More than we might think at first.

At first glance the results seem to show that there is nothing special about film or any “film look.” Film doesn’t seem to be doing anything that digital can’t do with the right processing and the digital copies seem to say to film “Anything you can do I can do just as well, or better.” So, that’s it, right? The film look is bullshit. Case closed…right?

This seems like an obvious conclusion and it’s the one that is commonly invoked to dismiss the uniqueness of film, and in some respects it is correct to do so. But this quick answer also felt wrong in a way that I have been struggling to articulate for the last couple days. After much consternation what I think the test actually shows with more careful reflection is that there are some truths from both sides of the debate and that a deeper interpretation is able to show how the film look is, somewhat paradoxically, both bullshit and a very real phenomenon.

Firstly, from the bullshit camp: it is indeed bullshit in the sense that there is no mystical property of film and film alone that bestows upon images some ineffable quality that digital technologies are unable to duplicate. The results, I think, show that this view of film magic is demonstrably ridiculous. Taken as a purely objective set of quantifiable aesthetic qualities, digital is clearly capable of convincingly replicating the look of film to the point that it is difficult or impossible to spot a fake. This much is true and is a respectable salve against some of the misguided deification of the medium among purists..

But stopping at that common conclusion felt like a shortsighted dismissal of a subtler point we could glean from this test that points favorably to some of the beauty beloved by film shooters. More specifically there is an important point lurking in the third step of the process that we outlined at the beginning of this piece. That point is the subtle fact that I need to process my digital files in order to get them to conform to the results from film.

At first this sounds like a trivial point but we would do well to note that the very fact that I must massage and manipulate digital files (somewhat extensively) into matching the results that I get from film suggests by that very fact that film is, at least at some level, rendering images in way that is different than the output from digital sensors. Sure, the skillful manipulation of data has proven capable of generating passable simulacra of film but that very process also functions to highlight the unique qualities of film. The experience of this real distinction between the aesthetic tendencies of these two mediums is the seed of this phenomenon that we call “the film look.” So it seems to me that film lovers who insist on something special in the rendering are far from delusional regardless of what digital wizardry may be able to do with 1’s and 0’s.

Conclusion:

So, is the film look bullshit? The short answer is kinda, but also not at all.