Notes from a Dark Pond ...: Thoughts on (digital) photography...

At the end of January I was walking along the lake front at Evian when I was struck by the sight and particularly the colours and the contrast of the blue of the lake with the orange of the small boat approaching the pont in front of the Evian Casino.

By the time I had opened my canvas bag and grabbed the small Leica D-lux 4 hidden in its depths and fumbled with the zipped cover of the protective case, and turned on the electronics, removed the lens cap, pressed the small safety button on the back that acts as a security control and moved the dials, which had of course, moved of their own free will, the orange boat was no longer where I had wanted it to be...

But I took the shot in any case. A grabbed one. The result is above. Not much you may think, but look... the nearby mooring posts in the foreground are out of focus. The depth of field of this small compact camera has come into play without me choosing the f stop.

It confirms to me a thought I have had for a while.

Mega Pixels v Lens.

My first digi camera was a Canon Ixus. It cost me 4999 francs in December 1999. It had a useless battery that cost an arm and a leg to replace and did not last for very long. More to the point the tiny lens sent an image to a 2.4 megapixel register. Some of the shots I took were quite good. But I had the feeling that nothing I took really compared to the pictures I had, for years, taken with my battered Nikkormat FT3 with 50mm lens and a roll of either Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP5, or for fine grain stuff, Pan-F. Oh, God...those were the days. But I always struggled to have somewhere to develop and print them. Digital photography seemed the answer to my unasked questions. At least until the system crashed and all the stashed photos of the past couple of years disappeared.

I wanted something more though, and could only afford a Fuji Finepix S7000 when I saw a good deal and although I don't recall what it cost, it gave me 9 mega pixels and a decent zoom and light meter reading and although it only allowed me to choose from 200ASA to 800 ASA, it gave me some freedom while remaining a bulky thing to carry in a small shoulder bag. What's more it took 4 AA type batteries which meant I could always buy more if the rechargeable ones I used went flat.

Easy peasy....

It allowed me to get in and get shots for the screen, but to print ? Well the lens was okay, but what I wanted was something that would be creative, compact and easy to use and suddenly Fuji issued the E900. I even went so far as to add the optional lens adapter which would enable me to use a wide angle and a telephoto lens. Wow!

But still something was missing. Taking pictures and printing at 4"x6" or 100mm x 150mm was okay but anything else; forget it. If I took pictures on the finest pixel reading and cropped, then what I ended with was not what I wanted in terms of clarity and quality.

The lens. You idiot. What has changed? A Practica, a Chinon, a Nikon or a Leica. What happens when you shoot the same type film through those ? Well it depends upon the quality of the lens - dunnit ?

It seems to me, and I might be wrong here but I don't think so, a camera is only as good as the lens that is fitted. As it has always been. As it still is...

And so; friends, Romans, countrymen and women I decided now, well last November, was the time to buy a Leica but although I might covet a Leica M series like I might covet my neighbour's wife, the D-Lux 4 would be (almost) as much fun, longer lasting in my pleasures and not half as expensive. And so I did for about €580, or CHF1100 - or at the time, £600. Almost ten years later for the same amount of money a camera that would leave the Canon Ixus for dead. I wasn't even bothered in finding out if the Ixus could compete. I felt sure it could not.

..and so here are a few recent pix of said camera using the 3200 ASA setting, therefore without flash in the dead of night, recording some of Evian-les-Bain's excellent 2008 Christmas lights...