Leica Handbook – Fritz Vith
Summer 1933 (English)
Toronto. George Dunbar once again points to the Gardian for a new twist on celebration of the revolutionary little camera’s first century. While the design was noted in January, 1914, it took another decade before the camera was marketed. The camera was so revolutionary that books about enlargement techniques were published. Fritz Vith’s popular Leica Handbook was translated from the German to English in an edition published in the summer of 1933.
The Guardian Observer in the UK originally did an article last January which we noted in an earlier post. This month, the British paper has published “100 years of the Leica camera – in pictures“. with many famous images in the article.
In a companion piece published the same day, John Naughton writes in some detail (with illustrations) “Why I love my Leica“. Naughton tells how he first discovered the Leica and goes into the history of its innovative design and concepts. These ideas are familiar today with the many books on cameras and the presence of search engines like Google. But this article still makes a very worthwhile read. Have a look at the above link and learn or refresh your memory of just how innovative it was to create a tiny unobtrusive camera dependant on enlargement of its negatives.
