" THE LEICA PURSUIT," a Book
By: IRVING FREED
“The Leica Pursuit,” a book by Irving Freed, LHSA member. As shown on LULU.com, this paperback book cost $14.05,and ships in 3–5 business days. A must read for Leica enthusiasts; you will love this thriller, which is a good yarn with a photographic interest.
Review synopsis: In the book, “The Leica Pursuit,” the main character, Daniel Spanier, is a dealer in old and rare cameras, and photographica. Since his school days, Daniel has been known to his friends and acquaintances as ‘Spaniel.’
While attending a Government surplus auction, Daniel accidentally comes into possession of an old, pre-war Leica. This camera contains a deadly secret which leads to a pursuit across 3 English counties by ex-Nazis, who are intent on regaining the Leica.
Daniel discovers the secret of the Leica camera by enlisting an old friend in Cambridge, who has a darkroom in his house. Meanwhile, the pursuers, intent on regaining the Leica, are hot on his trail. They kidnap Daniel’s lady friend and hold her as a bargaining chip. Daniel leads them to Stansted Airport, where he and friends set up an exchange of the Leica for his lady friend.
With the help of a local rugby team, who create a diversion, he rescues her. Together, with the assistance of an old pilot friend, Daniel and his lady fly to Amsterdam in a small plane. But even in Amsterdam, they are found by the ex-Nazis, and they have to continue to elude their pursuers.
In a series of events, they eventually reach Jerusalem, where the contents of the Leica camera, and all the damning evidence associated with them, are handed over to the Nazi hunters at Yad Vashem.
In the finale of the book, Daniel, and his lady, return home to find that the government minister whose deadly secret was contained within the Leica, has been exposed in the world’s media.
M4 Modified for Rapidwinder, Leicavit and Motor Winder
By: Alex Shishin
Don Goldberg (DAG) modified the M4 I've owned since 1987 to take the Abrahamsson Rapidwinder and the current Leicavit and Leica motor winder. (See the first photograph in the above series.) Don also cleaned and adjusted the camera. The Rapidwinder I had originally planned to use on the M4 didn't take. (The locking mechanism was too tight I think, though perfect on my M6s.) The second Rapidwinder, which had been fine-tuned for me by Tom Abrahamsson did take. It is working quite smoothly now in its post-breaking in period. The grip is a first generation Rapidgrip that Tom modified for me.
Super Seattle
By: Christopher Kavanagh
The 2009 annual meeting in Seattle was the best since first attending in 2002. When I told my wife Martha the meeting was in the home of Nordstrom's flagship store, she couldn't refuse! Enough can't be said about the "LEED" certified hotel with all its space age ideas mixed with an Asian touch. The boat trip on Lake Union and endless comaraderie impressed the bride. Martha works with other Leica equipment, hospital microscopes. But that didn't stop her from enjoying the trip, cocktail hour, tours and a sense of a much needed vacation to the west coast.
The work that goes into planning and executing these events is daunting. Professionals make hard work look easy. What a great meeting. Thanks to all.
Chris Kavanagh
The Decisive Sequence
By: Alex Shishin
The “decisive moment” occurs when the photographer captures an instant (often seemingly trivial) in which something beautiful or profound is revealed. This concept, defined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is similar to James Joyce’s literary use of “epiphany”: “… [a] sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.”
A photographic epiphany can reveal itself not only in a single moment but also in a series of moments, a decisive sequence, culminating in a single effect.
A decisive moment or epiphany is both a representation of reality and the artist’s idea of that reality. It thus hovers in between fact and fiction like a ghost. In a decisive sequence the temptation to fictionalize is greater than in a single-framed decisive moment. One can fictionalize by pressing or not pressing that shutter button at a particular moment in the sequence. Later the photographer can rearrange the chronology of the frames to create a very different story.
The four frames presented here are arranged in the order in which the action in the sequence occurred on a train somewhere between Osaka and Kobe in 1991. I used a Leica M2 and a Canadian Summilux 35/1.4 at f 1.4 with Fuji Neopan ISO 1600 film. I had pre-focused at eight feet and shot the sequence “blind” at waist level. Years later I scanned the images with a Konica-Minolta dedicated scanner and cropped to straighten them in Photoshop. There were six frames that were usable.
The two absent frames would have added only a little more continuity to the presentation. How did I choose to eliminate those particular ones? The sequence is a set on my Flickr site. Only those two had no viewer responses. The other four had strongly positive comments.
You can see the set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexes/sets/72157604283042128/
Leicas in Surprising Places
By: H. Peter Von Pawel
While visiting the Prints and Photographs Section of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., I was pleasantly surprised to find pictures of Leicas affixed to some of the tables used by researchers. The staff had the good taste to use these Leica images to denote that photography is permitted. Although there are some restrictions, hand held cameras without flash may be used to photograph documents and photographs in the Library's immense collection.