(D)Evolution Of The Leica Snapshot

Howdy folks - today we're going to approach something that was so much of a scene, so hep it never became popular!
It was out there but it never came back.
So strim yer goatee, dig out your snappy duds, put on some sides . . .
Dig?
And let's get going!

Any of you out there with Theo Kisselbach's "Leica Handbook" will no doubt have had a chortle at the photograph of The Cat (actually not just any old cat, but a German one, looking cool, and it's hard to be cool when there's no bread and the Communists and the Capitalists are talking about dividing your country) taking what became known as a Leica Snapshot.

Wot's a Leica Snapshot then Sheepy?

Well, technically it isn't a Leica Snapshot as Kisselbach describes it as a "walking snapshot", but you'll know what it is . . . camera held at a low, hip level (dig? man that's groovy) vertically or horizontally in your hand, your focus and shutter speed pre-set and your big old (but totally groovin') thumb on the shutter release. 

Then all you do is slide man . . . 

And . . .

Snap!

There y'go, outta sight, you've a groovy masterpiece forever y'dig.

Like you get a note in there between C and C# and that's its own sound y'know. I mean, you can't call it C because it isn't . . . that's like dig.
Dig means Dig.

If it doesn't hang you up, it doesn't make it as a thing.

You must excuse the hip speak baby (and its nothing to do with Fecking Austin Feckin' Powers either) no man, we're in Germany in the early 60's with a Leica M2, neat threads, and some crazy side someone got in the American Zone.
I am of course alluding to one of the greatest albums of all time by two loose wigs - namely Del Close and John Brent.

Try and find a copy, sit back and laugh.

Dig yourself baby, you've got a way to go.

Once you get used to it, insanity can be the most normal thing in the world . . .

And somewhere near approaching insanity is what the walking snapshot has done to me.

Sorry, but I couldn't be bothered to separate the two 'covert' techniques photos, so both are detailed below, but it's the Cat (left hand figure in left hand photo in case your sexing radar is a bit off today) and the bit near the bottom (last paragraph of the text) that we're interested in.
Man . . . modern life.

So here he is, a young Cat, in the park, sliding, digging the scene, impressing his admiring Fräulein Chick with his stone-cold skills, and she too is juiced, impressing him with her similarly boss covert stance - all she needs is some rain-threads and she could be that Walker Evans cat on the New York Subway in the 1930's:

"Look - stop moaning baby, I've set it to 1/500th and f16 dig?"

The book states the following:

So, the "walking snapshot" - it's a hip scene isn't it?

Isn't it?

Well, er . . NO!

Baby, it's as difficult a technique to master as becoming a Shaolin monk.
It's so hard, man, it fried people's minds, it chewed the carpet, it split the juice, it . . .
OK . . .I'll stop now.
Indeed, it is so bloody hard that it has largely fallen out of favour, because it is just simpler to go up to people and shove your camera in their face.

So just what is so difficult about it then?

Well, what Herr Kisselbach doesn't mention is that it entirely depends on three things that have to be absolutely right, namely:

Aim 
Momentum
and  
Timing

 . . . but you've been there man. You're a hep cat, you know the scene, you've sacrificed a roll or two to practice, but you blew your wig, you chewed the rug when you realised that for every shot that worked, you had ten that don't.
 

I've tried this technique a number of times now and whilst it certainly beats lifting the camera to your eye, that little frame of film is entirely at the apex of a vastly complex physical equation involving:

Speed
Time
Momentum
Energy
 . . oh and . . .
Random chance

It's like the whole of chaos theory wrapped up into that one tiny moment of time as you pick your moment, and Click! your finger digs the scene!

Of course you can do things to mitigate the whole thing, like being super-careful, not jabbing at the shutter release, suspending your body motion and poising for a brief moment and being totally aware of everything as it is happening, but it still doesn't seem to work.

In fact, with a bit of scouring around it seems close to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (just don't quote me on it)

But how does this relate to evolution?

Well, simply put, despite being a very small and sereptitious camera, the Leica in all its variations still looks like a camera, and it is big for such operations.

My thinking led me to the thoughts that if I don't mind a fixed focus lens I could use one of the smaller pre-noughties compacts and try it that way. The only problem with that, was that if using say an Olympus MjU, you've got that total bane of shutter lag, so I stripped that back and tried it with my lovely old Olympus Trip.

It was almost  a good camera for it - being that bit smaller. But it is still very much obviously a camera . . and not only that it has that stupid red flag that comes up every bloody time you have an interesting picture coming up, so you might be well-prepped and itching to go but at the last moment the camera decides "Nope - you're not wasting film on that!" and the shutter refuses to fire.

So I gave that up as a bad-show, and then happenstance and a kind gift from Bruce Robbins of Online Darkroom fame moved things along.

The gift?
A lovely Olympus XA2 in really lovely condition

In much the same way that the original Olympus XA was an evolutionary move on from the Trip, so, the humble XA2 was a move on from the XA, in that, there's simply nothing to complicate things.

It's simple.

Zone focus - you get a choice of three, close heads, heads and torsos, and mountains.

Automatic - set the EI/ASA and the camera does the rest for you, both aperture and shutter speed.

And it doesn't have anything that stops you from taking a photograph apart from a light in the viewfinder which tells you if things are getting iffy.

And then there's the main thing:  down low at hip height, held in your hand, it could look like a phone and no one pays a blind bit of notice of them do they?

Sounds ideal doesn't it!

Here's the tech specs:

    Lens D.Zuiko 35mm 1:3.5-22 (4 elements in 3 groups)

    Focal range 1.3m to infinity in 3 zones

    Shutter speeds 2s-1/750th aperture-priority automatic

Ally this with a super quite, super sensitive shutter (with NO shutter lag) and a wonderful wheel advance that is easily and discreetly moved by a few flicks of your thumb and you have a camera which is the ultimate in stealth!

I loaded it up and set off to work, winding and snapping like a good 'un. I couldn't even hear the shutter as I was moving, it being a focal plane/between lens elements job. Marvey!

It was a revelation to use - no one noticed, and I thought I had some stonking frames on my film.

And in came the wonder of film too, because unlike everything (or seemingly everything in life at the moment) this wasn't instantaneous gratification, nope, I had to wait . . to finish that long 36 exposure film and then the processing, and even then there was still no guarantee I had got anything at all worth using . .

But you know me - I can be obverse . . I love that aspect of photography where you see something good, take a photograph but just don't know whether it will be any good or not!

I suppose it is a form of oo! yah!, lay off with the split cane will you . . . masochism.

So where did all that waiting get us?

Shitesville, that's where!

Oops

Ditto

Bad Timing

Ditto

There's Something Perversely Pleasing About This One

Ditto - That's A Dog At The Left BTW

Pretty Boring  - But It Shows What Can Be Done With Care

Pick Up Thy Camera (To Eye-Level) And Snap

A Pretty Damn Good Little Lens Though - Shame About The Photographer

Y'see, the XA2's lens is fine, really fine, but you can't really tweak anything at all, the camera decides everything for you once you've set the focus and wound on, I mean you might well be able to get 1/750th at f3.5, but what use is that when you are trying to get a fair amount within the zone of focus? Sadly, for anything other than bright sunshine (this is Scotland - c'mon!) the XA2 and the "walking snapshot" don't really cog.

It's sad actually, because if you could just set it in stone and shoot, you'd have a very capable little machine, however if you live in sunnier climes, you might well find the XA2 to be a very capable little machine indeed.

So, I chewed some carpet, spat my spaghetti at the wall, dug what that crazy Gibson cat said and retired to my secret pad, to see if I could get the thing.

After much ruminating, goatee scratching, and bashing my brains against the lampstand, the lampstand came on, and I dug. I really did. 

It was crazy daddio, but first I needed to tweak the knobs.

If you've read FB for long enough (and if you haven't why not, it's a whole scene playing out in front of your eyes - a lot of people get it, some people even dig it) you'll realise there's nothing I like more than a bit of a tweak.

Pretty much the ultimate tweak for this sort of thing is a box-speed 400 ASA film, and a camera set at 1/125th of a second and f16. 

You've got to zone-focus baby, because, the zone is where it's at. 

Develop your masterpiece in some really aggressive developer (just in case) and let the film's latitude deal with any bad decisions and poor exposure. 

Oh and pray. 

Pray to Bird, or Monk, or Trane or Miles. 

Those cats are watching you. 

You'd better do them justice.

So I put the XA2 away, packed the crazy 1960 M2, but this time with the late '50's Canon 28mm f3.5 attached.
Sigh . . . here we go again . . .

Wides are cool. They dig the scene better than anything else, but you have to move those cats in close, closer than talc or else everything is too far out.

I dug what Ralph had said. 

I even dug where Sheephouse had excavated his technique and shoved it on a plate of loose beans in front of the modern world. 

Education man. 

Yeah, crazy.

Education. 

Helping others - that's a crazy scene.

So before setting out, I decided on mixing a bit of Ralph Gibson Experiment (Tri-X - 400 ASA, 1/125th of a second, f16 in sunny conditions, developed in Rodinal) with a bit of Zone focus magic. 

And what did I have

I had a thing.

A crazy, complex, small, simple and quiet Leica Snapshot Machine. 

The rain came out to play and so did I.

That's the edge of my threads . . . and Ali's nose

Ok - This Was A 'Proper' Photograph - But Dig That Krazy Kanon Glow!

This Chick Looked Fierce, But She Had A Collection Of Cakes In A Bag, So She Must Have Been Alright.

A Scene Going Down - We Vamoosed

She Was Concentrating On Pushing So Much, She Nearly Ran Me Down

They Were Concentrating On Their Destination Of Starbucks, They Nearly Ran Me Down.

But it never came off.

Sady The Uncertainty Principle caught me up in its complexity - you see what I mean, Shitesville City and all it's satellite towns too!

For all my care and even with a fixed fixed shutter speed and a bit more poise, I still found it utterly impossible to take what I would call a decent photograph.

This being said, I kind of like some of these in a crazy way.

There's a perverse sense that someday . . . maybe someday . . . something will turn out right and I'll get there.

But till then . . .

If you fancy having a go, by all means do . . . 

Just don't come blowing my horn when you're 2 rolls down and cracking your nut.

The Ralph Gibson Experiment (Part Three)

Mornin' Maties.
Eggs
Or in the words of me old mate Gollum (the original one, you know the one that has lived in my head since I were young, not the fake New Zealand one):
Eggss's!
Oh yes, Easter is a comin' and there's nothing yer Cap'n likes more than a nice Easter egg. As many as possible so that I can put me ol' seaboots up on my cabin table come Easter morn, give thanks to the Lord and stuff myself full o' Albumen and Yolk.
Chocolate I hear you ask?
Nah, not here.
It gives me the monster-jips. I remember a time when we was runnin' a Brigand full o' Cacau beans down in the Southern Seas - oh yes. Very nasty. But you don't want to hear about that. Suffice to say I can't look a bar o' Lindt in the eye in the same way no more.
Nope, a good ol' hard (or soft) boiled hens egg, and as many as you like.
That does for me at Easter and bless the chicken that lays 'em.
Remember Cool Hand Luke? He's got nothin' on me come Easter Monday.

***

Well, as regular FogBlographers (why didn't I think of that before?) will know, I can drone on with an intensity which could send a caged and smoking lab Beagle to sleep, so today I am going to do something different.
In the words of the world-renowned Buitoni Ravioli TV advert from the early 1970's:
Don't talk . . . Eat!
(Actually, go on, search for a picture of a tin of Buitoni . . I dare you . . you won't find one . . again . . why?)
I am going to let the pictures do the talking and save my fingers the walking.
I will refer new readers back to The Ralph Gibson Experiment Part 1 and The Ralph Gibson Experiment Part 2, in which the whole ludicrous thing is explained, but if you are short of time, here's a précis:
The preface is simple:

Make photographs with a standard shutter speed that does not change and a standard aperture that does not change. All that needs to change is the focus, and even then . . .
Have a standardised processing procedure.
The camera I used is a 1960 Leica M2 - it's as sweet as a nut and I love it. The lens is an uncoated 1934 Leitz 50mm Elmar. It lacks contrast, so to help things, it is also fitted with a FISON lens hood.
The film is developed in a particularly strong solution of Agfa Rodinal (or R09 as it is now known) - Mr.Gibson's objective was to achieve a dense negative, and strangely this has helped me, delivering better results from the rather soft Elmar that are more akin to a modern coated lens.

I'll detail the procedure now:

SHUTTER SPEED: Well Mr.Gibson states his sunny day shooting speed is 1/250th of a second, however this is Scotland (Hoots!) and I chose to use 1/125th of a second, just in case.
APERTURE: Ralph uses a standard f16. He believes this gives his pictures a uniformity. It is a very cleaver move because it removes all faffing around and means you concentrate on the picture. I used f16 for every picture on this film.
FILM: he uses Kodak Tri-X, with EI's ranging from 400 down to 100.
DEVELOPER: Agfa Rodinal (or R09 as it is now known). He uses this at a dilution of 1+25 and a temperature of 68° Farenheit, with a 10 second agitation every 1 minute and 30 seconds, for a total time of 11 minutes.

And that is it.
Simple?
Well yes.
Brilliant?
Well yes, because you are freed of the general process and apart from focusing can make images pretty much on the fly.
My variation on this for this post, is that I had no Tri-X and was down to the last roll of fast film in the house, an expired (November, 2010) roll of Kodak TMY 400.
Because of this, obviously development times were different from Tri-X, so I roughly grabbed a figure out of the air, and settled on 9 minutes, with Ralph's agitation regime. I used 10ml Rodinal to 280ml water in a small Paterson tank. The Massive Development Chart recommends 5 minutes for this combo at EI 400, so this is well over!
The other variation is that for some of the last shots, I took the shutter speed down to 1/15th and 1/60th at f16, simply because the shots were of interiors and through windows. Yes I like the idea of a set speed, but I am not stupid and film is expensive.

Contact Sheet

***

After making two shots at the bus stop, I hit the upper deck of a bus on the way home from work. And as you can see, it has been fine in one shot, but, worried about the unholy way in which the bus was throwing me around and camera shake, I upped the shutter speed to 1/250th and with f16 the combo hasn't worked for shadow detail at all.
The sun was low, but it wasn't exactly dark, but it was a stop too far!

This being said, Frame 3 (the only one at 1/125th) is a corker.
I'll call it The Buddha On The Bus, simply because the rear of the man's head reminds me of Buddha's serene pose.

What isn't seen is his young son, who was running around causing chaos. I think the guy just closed his eyes for a second and assumed this serene pose!

The Buddha On The Bus

Now certainly, on my monitor at work, this seems too contrasty, and very dark (and the same for the rest too - you might need to adjust accordingly) but at home and of course in the actual print, there is a nice glow and the subtleties of the shadows work very well.
I am also happy with the fact that it looks kind of weird because of the composition.

Printing-wise, I tried to get as Gibson-esque as possible with this. It was printed on Kentmere Fineprint VC fibre-based paper at Grade 5. Now that is a nominal Grade 5 simply because the paper is really old. Filtration was 130 units of Magenta on my DeVere 504. The lens was the El-Nikkor 50mm f2.8, new version. It looks quite contrasty doesn't it. I think it has almost transformed the look I get from the Elmar, and yet at the left of frame, there is that lovely Elmar OOFA (out of focus area).

I was pleasantly surprised.

***

Cheese

Next up was a grabbed shot in St.Andrews of a Saturday morning. It was one of those things - a whole bunch of people were gathered around this bloke applying window stickers to a bank. It looked quite surreal, so I just set a hyper-focal distance on the Elmar and went in like a sniper, one shot. The chap on the left looks like he has been stuck on, and strangely the shadow inbetween the two men looks like it is something out of Peter Pan, if you know what I mean.

I love the super-cheesy look on the model's face, don't you? and also the fact that someone has smeared the remnants of a 'kerry-oot' over the window near her face . . .

The world's (nearly) richest students?

Come on guys . . . keep yer lovely town clean.

Again, this is on Kentmere and a full-on Grade 5.

***

The next frame I am saving till second last as I am very happy with it. So I'll substitute in this one:

Cardboard Cat

Why on earth someone would have a cardboard cut-out of a cat in their window, I have absolutely no idea! But they did, so I took a not very good picture of it. As you can maybe tell a bit, the film/dev and lens combo have made sterling work of the tracery of the curtain.
Old Elmar's seem to work very well in the medium/close range . . in other words, really, I believe they were optimised for people photography. Too close can be a bit mushy, infinity too, but in the 5 to 10 feet range, marvellous!
This was a Grade 3 print, but I reckon could have done with more, so I gave it a sharpish bath in Potassium Ferricyanide to tickle the highlights up a bit, and it has sort of worked. As I say, I don't think I am getting the full range of grades from the Kentmere paper as it is a number of years old.

***

Self Portrait With Dirt

OK - another one of my dirty window pictures. I tried to get in as close as possible with the Elmar, but I have just mucked it up as the dirt isn't as crisp as I wanted it to be.
This being said I rather like the ominous look of my reflection in this - it suggests something 'other-worldy' if you get my drift. This was a Grade 4 print.

***

Now I am going to shove in the print which should have come before the cat. I love this. 

It was one of those photos: I saw the shop display of the girls whispering, saw the street reflected in the window, and waited till the woman was walking in the right part of the frame and bingo.

Have You Heard About Her?

What I just love about this is that you can see the girls whispering to each other "Have you heard about her?" and there she is reflected . . Walls have Ears etc etc.

I did actually print this a tad too dark, so have had to selectively pot-ferry the faces. This was simple enough to do - about half a teaspoon of crystals to about 300 ml of water; mix well; remove print from wash, let its wetness stick it to the back of an empty developing tray and use a shower head to wash the print as you are doing it; then paint the solution onto the areas required and almost immediately wash off - keep repeating till desired lightness is achieved; give print a good final blast of water and pop it back into some film strength fix for a minute or so. 

If results aren't still to your liking, then repeat the procedure. 

It is important to return the print to the fix, and the reason I use film strength is so that the print isn't in the fixing solution for a prolonged period of time..

Sectional Enlargement - 800 DPI

The sectional enlargement of one of the girl's eyes gives you an idea of how big the grain can be with this combo . . it isn't alarming. Also bear in mind that scanning isn't an actual substitute for seeing a print. In the print, the grain is super-crisp and quite a delight.

***

And onto my final frame, although it was an extra one, so number 37.

This was taken at Vision - Dundee's 'digital hub'. 13 units to rent, and only 3 occupied. It is a beautiful looking building inside and just the sort of place that should be rethinking its strategy and using its great space for exhibitions and workshops and things. I was so taken by the light and the reflection in the window and also the look of the window through the window and the tree in the car park that I had to make this. It was made by bracing the camera against the window and taking things down to 1/15th. This is easy to do with a Leica as there is no mirror flapping around making a nuisance of itself. I will happily say I love it.

By Evening's Light

I made the print darker than I should have and again there has been selective bleaching to the window and the highlights, but I feel it works. It is sort of a 'nature is just waiting to reclaim all this' picture, and I am fond of making such images.

Again, Grade 5 on Kentmere, oh and I forgot to mention - all prints were developed in Kodak Polymax and fixed with Agfa Agefix.

***

And that's it folks - hope you enjoyed it.
I suppose it does take a modicum of courage from me to stick the contact sheet at the start - my heart is on my sleeve . . . you can see my rubbish as well as my decent bits, but hey that's walking around with a camera!
Again, any questions or anything, please feel free to ask!
You should have a go at using Ralph's regime - it is surprisingly flexible and gives results which can surprise and please.
As usual, take care, God Bless and thanks for reading.