Last week’s little video on unboxing all grandpa’s Leicas got a warm reception from our readers. There’s a wealth of similarly interesting stuff on the subject of Leicas — old and new — on YouTube and you also probably allocate a bit of your time to looking for new material. But we can all miss something interesting.
Leitz Park
I was drawn to the following video not so much for the headline content — I have never thought of comparing the R3 with its alter ego, the Minolta XE and I imagine it isn’t foremost in your thoughts either.
But I warmed to the extremely knowledgeable presentation and the setting for the video at Leitz Park in Wetzlar. I certainly now know a lot more about these two cameras than I did yesterday and I hope you enjoy the presentation as much as I did.
If you like it, you can find a treasure trove of similar footage at Analog Insights on YouTube. Jules, Greg and Max, focus primarily on so-called analogue photography in the digital age.
They produce gear and film reviews as well as covering many types of
Great video – and an honest one for a change! Having been left an R4 and an R7 and a batch of R lenses by my father in law, I’m less knowledgable about the Minolta line – I do have the Minolta second version of the CL but rarely use it. I’m not sure that I will ever go back to film – I’ve tried many times but been defeated by the ease of the digital! But my father in law, David Apter, swore by his Leica DSLs and ranged over the world photographing the political events of the post-colonial countries from Ghana in the ’60s to Chile with Allende and China during the uprisings in the Tiananmen Square, exhibiting in the Leica galleries in NY and at Yale where he taught. Unable to match his instinct for “Magnum” style photography or political urgency, I have never really tried them out – but they remain treasured objects on my shelves. The lenses, however, have served my successive SLs and now the Lumix S1R with magnificent results.
R3 and XE, both outstanding cameras.