Many of us fall into the trap of coddling our cameras and lenses. I confess I take great care, dreading the first scratch. Yet, despite this in-built caution, I love to see a well-used camera, especially a brassed Leica, showing every sign of a hard life. Five years ago I happened to meet a friend. Kai on one of his visits to London. He’s not a coddler. His cameras are workhorses and they get a lot of use, and he doesn’t worry too much about a few scratches and dings.
At the time, I wrote about the encounter for the benefit of Macfilos readers…
Kai’s beautiful MP with black-paint 35mm Summicron ASPH (Photo Kai)
Back in April, I met Kai in Red Dot Cameras for the first time. In his hand was his very brassed-off Leica M-P and I was impressed. I’ve been rubbing my cameras outrageously since then but they are made of sterner stuff, it seems. Or perhaps Kai is made of sterner stuff. He certainly gets the best out of his cameras; he uses them hard, they travel around the world with him and they get no special treatment.
In the meantime, his film addiction is rubbed by a lovely Leica MP which is already showing signs of graceful ageing. My own MP has a bit of natural brassing but nothing like this.
Kai’s Ricoh GR has had a super tough life but it carries on snapping around the world
Recently Kai shared the top picture of the MP with me and also made mention of his trusty digital workhorse, the Ricoh GR. This is the camera I took to Germany earlier this month (August 2016) and used to grab some high ISO night shots in the centre of Munich.
Kai isn’t easy on any of his cameras. The Ricoh in question has been in the wars and no mistake: “I’m rough on my GR. The lens cover got stuck from all the surf trips and sand. So I ripped them out and stuck on a plastic lens protection cover instead.” This would give me the collywobbles but Kai takes it all in his stride.
In relation to the MP, Kai reports: ”Shot my black paint Cron 35 the whole summer. And the past year. The black paint is finally fading on the lens. Yes, I do rub it like a genie lamp often enough.”
All this begs the question of whether many of us take too much care of our cameras, maybe take them too seriously instead of taking them out to do some serious work. Perhaps we are so busy coddling the GAS’d gear that we spend less time taking photographs. Kai is clearly one of those guys for whom the camera is a means to an end, a tool that enables him to capture some great shots. He just throws the cameras in the bag and gets on with it. I suspect it is the best way of working.
What’s your poison? Do you look after your cameras fastidiously, or just don’t fret about cosmetics as long as the camera is in full working order?
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12 years ago when attending the annual “Wicksteed at War” (Google to find out more) one of the traders was selling ‘veho’ 20cm x 27cm NEOPRENE tablet cases for 50p each … I bought 20 and sold most at cost price to photographer friends … keeping several for myself. Whenever I pack a Billingham bag any cameras are slipped into one of the neoprene cases. I ‘throw’ the ‘neoprened’ cameras into the Billingham with impunity … they’ve never been scratched or dinged whilst in transit. Best 50p worth “ever ever”!!
Well, I did Google it ..and it’s a “..show for all the family..” with Sharon saying “..we had a lovely family day out..” ..looking at tanks and other devices for killing people.
It’s a celebration of “..Over 100 tanks and military vehicles” and “Archery & Axe Throwing”. Remember Peter Cook saying that he didn’t want to see sex and violence on TV, as there was enough of that at home (wink)?
Tanks and army missiles? I’ve seen enough of that in TV reports from Afghanistan, and battles everywhere else, and the tanks – which people in China aren’t allowed to mention – in Tiananmen Square.
A day out for all the family, with photos of jolly mothers and children playing with tanks? Not for me, t(h)anks. (My father was a tank commander in the last big European – or world – war, and never spoke about it.
I asked my mother when I was four, “why are there so many men on crutches with their legs missing?” “..Because they’ve been in the war”.
Another case, it seems to me, of fanaticism over hardware ..like camera brand fanaticism.. without really understanding what the hardware is FOR ..in this case: killing people.
David, It’s also a celebration of the allied forces WW2 victory which enabled all of us to be here today after defeating A.H. et al … and it features iconic WW2 aircraft ‘fly past’ displays e.g. Spitfire and Dakota … latter in their hundreds enabled the postwar ‘Berlin airlift’ which brought relief and supplies to German citizens.
I’m so worried about scratching my m10p that I’m now thinking of moving away from Leica! What good is equipment when you are worried about damaging/losing/being stolen!
We gotta live out there in the world, man! Use your equipment to its, and your fullest. Don’t worry about resale; you’re going to pass it along to relatives who will display it on shelves in your memory, anyway. Carry it around in a beat up old canvas Domke bag not worth stealing. Meanwhile, cameras were made for pictures, not shrink wrap. Hear and feel that satisfying click, knowing you captured something memorable.
Having said that, $8000.00 US dollars for an M10 body is just…dang! So I feel you about sitting on the fence and thinking of equipment of lesser value. But you already own it, so… Tough call!
I’m careful with my cameras. They just show rhe wear of time.
Slipped on my ass on black ice in a parking lot, that Tamron lens at end of d850 landed front end from about 20 feet up as I did tuck and roll and my Barbour had ripped sleeves! Fun all around, was saved by Roberts camera got me new lens overnight, 850 kept on ticking.
I bought a Leica M6 Titanium thinking it was similar to my Nikon F3 Titanium. The Nikon was pinned under my body weight as I fell on granite with the slightest ding resulting. The M6 dinged with the slightest fall from upright to its back while on a dresser top, I could hardly believe Leica’s Titanium was so soft until I found out it was simply a coating and not solid like the Nikon. Leica’s are beautiful, for me the dings and dents hurt.
My cameras look like new and I try to keep them that way. My M6TTLs and even my Sony Walkman Pro from the 1980’s look like they’ve just come out of the box new.
However I do wish I didn’t care about it so much sometimes.
My Contax T2 is the most travelled and getting on in years now and should be battered up considering all the adventures it’s had but that titanium casing has been amazing. Hardly a scratch on it and only one repair ( the lens cover) in it’s lifetime.
In an interview about the 1966 movie “Blow-Up” David Hemmings said he intentionally treated his cameras carelessly. This was a first, of sorts, in film: the notion that cameras were just dumb tools in an otherwise glamorous profession. His idea was to portray a photographer who did not fetishize equipment so that you would pay more attention to his persona. Indeed, the cameras in the film are almost afterthoughts. I think his insouciance worked for a generation of young men to follow and who wanted to be not just photographers, but Blow-Up-style shooters. Ive never assisted to a pro of his generation who had good-condition cameras. Even new ones got beaten up pretty fast.
As a collector with items up to 160 years old, a lot of what I have came to me already pitted, brassed, dinged, scratched, stressed or cracked. I have enough items to keep my CLA guy occupied for the rest of his life and mine, but at the moment the head of ‘my queue’ is made up with two items from friends which need repair. If one of my cameras needs a repair, I just take another one out of the cabinet and use it.
The one thing I will never do is to have a camera repainted or re-chromed. The marks of honest use are a ‘badge of honour’ in my book.
Speaking of badges of honour I am sure that a lot of us here have seen Don McCullin’s famous Nikon F which stopped a bullet, just beside the pentaprism, while he was covering the war in Cambodia. That was a camera which was certainly ‘doing its job’ and some more.
William
The brassing is natural from the long-term use of film cameras – for the new digitals the value of which goes down too quickly before its prudent to trade them in, it’s better to take care of them, and return them in OB condition. Brassing is hard to effect between upgrades. Even when I keep my digitals for a long time (in digital time) as with my X2, there is no wear at all, and the leather half case takes care of its still almost mint condition.
I have a Leica M4 chrome that was given to me as a wreck
The chrome is worn through to brass where the hands have held it
It has been rebuilt and works perfectly
Looks aren’t everything
I look after my gear but don’t obsess
Cheers
Philip
If anyone is sufficiently troubled by this question and has Leica equipment on the shelf that they would like to look more used please feel free to send it to me for a year or two and I will gladly oblige.
I offer this service at a minimum charge, along the lines of someone being sent a prototype for review. It’s a new line of business. Maintenance, repairs and postage at their cost though. No guarantees unfortunately.
As for my personal gear it sits in padded inserts in Billingham bags.
I am in the same ball park – both my X and my Df are wrapped in Billingham’s best goodness, several feet from where I sit (just in case).
I love a life full of risks, but some risks are unnecessary, and thats not about loss of cash, but about the loss of items or kit that I love, and cherish. For me that is so important, treat our kit, as we would like to be treated, and we are in the right place, at the right time.
Please there are two way to obsess and not just cameras, pre torn jeans….cameras are tools to me not objects of veneration or worship. If, while covering the shooting and anti vax protest in Olympia, Washington, USA, Saturday, my M3 DS with a Rapidwinder or my M-A (the battery on my M10P died and, coming home from a shoot in BC the spares were dead as well) the unanticipated uproar did not, in this case, lead to dents or dings but if they had the images are what matter and these are tools for capturing images…now pre bracing is, to me, as absurd as pre torn jeans
I’m very careful with my gear, but not to the point of not using it. I usually wrap my cameras in a protective cover, even when carrying in a bag. It helps when I want to sell.
Cameras and lenses are precision instruments and I treat them as such. A precision multimeter would cease to be reliable if it was tossed around in transit or the workplace. No, a craftsmen looks after his tools and they will continue to serve him well. Unless you are a war photographer, it is pointless to act as if you are one. Such idiocy should be deplored, not admired.
Now I will leave my pulpit😁
You spend good hard earned money for your stuff why abuse it? Show me some one who abuses a Purdy shotgun I show you an idiot!
I’m sure – and correct me if I am wrong JW – that you t-boned a large lens once a few years ago, a rather expensive outing as I recall.
Of course I could be wrong, long covid has addled my brain, and my large memory banks. But still, I am sure you did.
I try to look after my kit, but accept it could go west with the cowboys on a bad day.
Show me a person who owns a gun of any type and you show me an idot, and a dangerous one, at that!
Many years ago, and with much tongue in cheek, I told a group of Sunday brunchers in London that even though they might not have a weekend cottage in the Cotswolds I could make their Range Rover/Volvo estate car look like it had been in the country. “My” under the arches distressing workshop could add mud, straw and scratches to provide them with an authentic look. Surprisingly a number took me up on my offer until they discovered it was a joke. At that point I came of their Christmas Card lists and never saw them again.
There’s a big difference between a work tool and the same object used for a leisure pursuit. My late Uncle’s “Landy” was beaten, battered and scratched after years of hard work. It might be the same vehicle that some people call “The Chelsea Tractor” but Chelsea Tractors likely never live a truly purposeful life that makes a contribution to the owner’s income.
It’s the same with cameras and even camera bags. No pristine camera bodies, straps or Billingham bags here when you see pros on a shoot! I think if there’s natural wear and patina, that’s OK, but faux distressing surely should not be encouraged. Or do I see a business opportunity there..?
The average farmer with a muck spreader and a bit of creativity may pop up as a mini Chelsea tractor distressing unit – you see what you started now..
I am an obsessive care person. My M9 looks new. I purchased a half case for it to protect it. The case also makes it easier to hold for me. I did not get a half case for my SL2 yet but I guess I am learning to relax a wee bit. However, when I sold my horrible M240 it was in like new condition due to the half case, Hence, it sold at a premium price when there was a shortage of M cameras. I smiled all the way to the bank. Excuse me, I need to order a half case for my SL2.
.
Just to make my Audi look more of a ‘workhorse’, I scrape it against every wall I can find, especially going into and out of the garage, so that it looks so much more, er, ‘authentic’.
I’m thinking of asking Lenny Kravitz to scar and craze it, and I always drag my door key along the sides, to create a few long, loving, deep scores and scratches (..to enhance its value).
As for my cameras, of course, to make myself look more ‘professional’ – when out using them, or just sauntering along the promenade – back at home I toss them into the tumble drier with 2lb of steel wool. That soon gets the paint off them! ..And nicely scratches the lenses!
(What IS this idiocy of thinking that cameras work or look better when scuffed and scoured? Would you do that with your car, caravan or cocker spaniel? I’ve heard of new barristers kicking their new wigs along the corridor so they look more worn and ‘worthy’, or ‘practised’ ..maybe I’d better quickly scratch the TV screen, the hi-fi and the dining table so that they, too, look more, er, ‘distinguished’! ..It takes all sorts – and some are really stupid ..daftly mistaking appearance for EXPERIENCE!)
Thank you for making me laugh after another challenging day.
Although I hasten to add, if you are brassing and trashing your Audi, please do not try selling it on to me. I do like my cars to be in better nick, the better the better. (if that makes absolute sense).
My camera’s do what I need them to do, and I take care with them between use.