*Recently, our website host ‘upgraded’ their servers. This has caused us to spend endless hours trying to repair problems that never existed with the old servers. Everything should be smoothed out by now, but if there is any issue, please don’t hesitate to email jeanb@leicaboutique.com or call the store directly at 514-875-5110. Thank you for your patience.

Dear classic photographers and Leica enthusiasts,

Thank you for allowing us to share news and some of our thoughts with you.

Setting things right.

As reported in our April news bulletin, the post-Steven Lee era is off on the right foot. On April 10, 2008, Leica Camera AG announced that effective immediately, Passport coverage on M & R lenses (Summarits included), analog cameras and sport optic products is reinstituted.

Breaking news from Solms announced the retirement of the legendary 50mm Noctilux f1. Introduced in 1976 and redesigned in 1994, Leica will offer the final 100 lenses as of July 1, as an exclusive limited edition offering. Hailed as the world’s fastest production lens for 35mm, the Noctilux visually regaled photographers with images that contained more detail than could be seen with the human eye. The final 100 lenses are of identical design to previous lenses, but the purchaser will have to spend approximately $10,000 above the lens’ standalone price for the dehumidifier cigar box! Despite its Canadian heritage, only 2 are available within the Dominion.

M8 Exclusive Set and M8 Summarit Sets prove popular.

These newly created sets that combine an M8 body with a choice of 6 lenses with a saving of $500 to $1000, are very attractive to people wanting to enter the digital M world. The combination of M8 with Summarit 35mm f2.5 at $6,195 was particularly sought after, followed by the M8 with Summicron 28mm f2 at $7875.

more details about these products here

Technology and the times: a rant for the ages.

I have a yellowed postcard of Che Guevara that resides above my computer. No, it is not THE photograph of Che, the one that covers adolescent chests in bastions of capitalism around the world. This photograph shows Che holding a Pentacon or Praktisix, a medium-format reflex designed like a 35mm SLR pumped up on steroids, an appropriate look for an East German product.

Technology has had enormous, even revolutionary influence on our art. 35mm-rangefinder cameras freed photographers encumbered by the paraphernalia of photography’s nascent years. Before Godowsky and Mannes invented Kodachrome, colour images existed courtesy of Autochrome, Finlaychrome and other persnickety processes. With the release of that first modern transparency film in 1936, came new masters of the medium. Ernst Haas, arguably our greatest colour photographer, exploited lighting conditions and movement to create images that would not be successful on panchromatic film.

But photography is nothing if not seduced by trends and fashions. More often than not, it takes on the role of a modern-day Salieri. In the ’60s, we thought we were oh-so-cool with underexposed transparencies and 3M Color Keys dripping in garish colour. In the ’70s, armed with catadioptric lenses on our Nikon Fs, we reached out and touched the skyscrapers, producing oeuvres with shallow depth of field and shallower depth of content. The ’80s ushered in theatrical gels and lighting that deified the corporate world, and the ’90s brought us accurate auto focus and fill flash, ramping up the scourge of snapshots of celebrities that overruns us to this day.

We now arrive at the new millennium and the digital era. Ones and zeros have democratized the photographic landscape. They have changed how we record, share, transmit and access pictures, but they have also tempted us with their new bag of tricks and toys. Sensor size and megapixel counts are just our latest fixations in a seemingly unending list of equipment wants. Photography has always been a technology-based art, but we are in serious danger of becoming a technology-obsessed craft. Let us not forget that each and every one of us takes photographs to bring purpose and understanding to our world. Therein lies the strength of our chosen vocation and avocation. Long live the revelation!

It did not rain on this parade: M Vision Atelier a hit.

What a weekend. It kicked off with The Main Event on Friday where each photographer was assigned a portion of St. Laurent Boulevard. For those of you who don’t know Montreal, this is the hub of multiculturalism and joie de vivre in the City.

On Saturday, we were instructed to document different aspects of life on The Main. Participants picked and chose from 3 themes: Urban Art, Urban Flavour and Urban Personalities. Sunday’s showers didn’t diminish the creativity. With themes like Rain on the Main, The Soggy Mountain and, of course, Sunday Mass, the weather actually contributed to our participants looking at subjects in an even more unconventional light.

Our two coaches, Carl Valiquet and Conrad Duroseau, pushed us to new heights. Carl’s studio, with his stunning images on its walls, let us appreciate street scenes and put us in the mood to try our hand at street photography. Participants left their comfort zones and surprised themselves with captivating images of real Montreal to produce our own version of ‘in cameras veritas’.

Congratulations and many thanks to all photographers who made this weekend so memorable. And to Carl and Conrad, thank you for accepting my invitation and steering the atelier so capably. Through your photographs, presentations and enthusiasm, we all learned more about our world and about ourselves.

See all pictures here

Letter from India.

Look at the National Geographic Guide To Digital Photography or listen to the blather of imaging experts, and you could begin to believe that cell-phone cameras represent a technology that will change the way we capture images. Here’s a differing point of view from my good friend Alan Gold. (In the age of inspired advertising, he was a leading Art Director at the creative centre, London. Retired to the Himalayan foothills of Uttaranchal, India, Alan sent the following missive.)

“I got me a Nokia cell phone and it comes with music and a camera and god only knows what else. Having directed photography all my life I felt it was time I took some great photos of my own.

What a fu**-up!

It’s partly the camera’s fault (actually it’s entirely the camera’s fault). When I’m taking a landscape photo I can’t see a damn thing in the view finder so I point the lens in the general direction of what I hope to immortalize and end up in one extreme photographing my shoes and in the other getting a full skyscape. When I rarely get what lies between these two, I find I’ve turned a superb scene into boring ratshit. If I’d known the camera was going to reduce the Himalayas to an ant hill I’d have bought that rarity—a cell phone without a camera.”

A tasteful necessity.

While LowePro, Tamrac and other manufacturers make some great camera bags, many of their recent items seem be following the fashion lead set by the Transformers™ lineup of toys and action figures.

We are now offering camera bags, cases and neck straps from Artisan and Artist. The designs are elegant and, unlike the competition, understated. Leather, leather/nylon, canvas/nylon or PVC/nylon materials are used in this luxurious, superbly crafted line for rangefinder cameras and lenses.

Leica Camera AG proves P.T. Barnum wrong.

Executives at Leica must be followers of P.T. Barnum and his dictum, ‘There is no such thing as bad publicity’. How else can you explain their recent hardcover book entitled ‘Our Masterpiece, Digital Photography from Germany’?

To call this effort vacuous belies the lack of substance found between the flyleaves. The images are stilted and contrived, more appropriate for a circa-1950 Kodak ‘How To Make Good Pictures’ book than a proclamation of excellence. Not to be outdone, the copywriting plumbs depths that would challenge a Trident submarine.

In case you were laboring under the misapprehension that any preschooler with an Etch-A-Sketch™ can design a digital camera, on page after page we learn that Leica digital cameras are the work of qualified engineers. You certainly don’t need an engineering degree to give this book an unqualified thumbs down!

In case you still want to subject your eyes to this atrocity, copies of this publication is available free of charge at the store ONLY.

The way of the dodo.

When the announcement came on a cold February day, it never sank in. Now the grass is green, the sun is strong, and I have the urge to embarrass my teenage daughters by snapping them poolside with their friends. I reach for my white, plastic Swinger (for those of you who are too young or too sober to remember, the Swinger was a top selling late sixties Polaroid camera that was designed and marketed to appeal to the youth market) I reached to the turn the knob until the wording in the window below the viewfinder goes from ‘no’ to ‘yes’, and click the shutter.

I won’t be indulging in this nefarious pleasure once the film packet is finished. Polaroid dropped out of the instant film business, another road kill on the digital highway. Goodbye green sky, goodbye roller marks, goodbye uneven development, goodbye mottled prints, goodbye…

Time to fire up the grill.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
- Groucho Marx

Summertime is finally here. Have a great one!

Always looking forward to your comments. Photographically yours, Jean Bardaji & Daniel Wiener