Daniel Neal acquired a monster collection of Leica Photography magazines and felt that he would like to share his new-found record of Leica history.
Fired with enthusiasm, Daniel has steadily worked through the pile with the aid of the wonderful Fujitsu Scansnap SV600¹ to produce the finest collection of magazine PDFs I have seen. We, the Leica community, are the beneficiaries. The archive is an ongoing project and currently covers nearly 25 years from 1949 to 1973. Daniel makes the scans available for non-commercial purposes but hopes that if we get hooked we will make a small donation. After checking the Fall 1949 edition I’m already a fan and will be scouring the magazines for useful material for discussion on MacFilos.
The top image, taken from Daniel’s copy of the 1949 issue, compares seven popular screw-mount lenses for the Leica system. It vividly brings these lenses to life, allowing us to see them through the eyes of contemporary users who were convinced that they were the best that money could buy.
Note: I am sorry to say that this site was taken down within days after pressure from copyright holders.
_____________________________________________________
¹ The Fujitsu ScanSnap SV600 is designed for copying books, magazines and other bound documents. I am a great fan of Fujitsu’s scanners and have been using a sheet-feed model for archiving documents (as part of my famous paperless office) for over five years. It is utterly reliable, which is saying something for a machine that handles paper, and the scan quality, even on medium, is admirable. I am just about to the press the buy button for the latest bells-and-whistles model, the iX500, even though the old model is still working well.
Thanks so much for the plug! I’m a bit embarrassed that the photos you posted have more distortion than is usual for the archive. I’m slowing working my way back through the collection to rescan and correct distorted pages.
All the best,
Dan
Dan,
No need at all to be embarrassed. After I posted the clips I read some more of the magazines and realised the the distortion is mostly not a problem. In the main, the important thing is the content and the ability to read clearly. Distortion, within reason, isn’t a big problem in that light. You have set yourself a big task and I think the photographic world in general should be grateful to you for making this material available. I would dearly like to find some old British magazines, such as Amateur Photographer, to check out Leica history through their eyes–and to read the advertisements which give an insight into market conditions and prices at the time. Unfortunately I cannot find such archives.
Mike
As of 11 July 2015 the sites linked above appear to have been taken down. Probably copyright issues. I would be interested to hear Dan’s commentary.