I mentioned that after the Leica III F I got a Canonflex, in 1959, not long after it was launched. I used it during my military service in the Congo (then a Belgian colony). When my military service ended I stayed in the Congo, hitchhiking across the country from Katanga in the south-east to the Ruwenzori Mountains, the Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira volcanoes in the north-east. I was using the first Kodachrome which had an ASA (now ISO) of 10. I still have an image taken in 1960 online at the Getty Stone collection made with the combination Canonflex - Kodachrome I in the Congo:
Go to gettyimages.com, Image, Creative, Rights-Managed, and search for my name (TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/bea7zw). It´s the African woman with a lip ornament).
A thing I loved about the Canonflex was its bottom left winding lever. You didn´t need to take your eye off the camera to advance film. Apparently (from a Google search) some photographers didn´t like it because it made it difficult to follow-focus or to use on a tripod.
OK, back to the Congo. Independence day was coming. From Kisangani (then Stanleyville) I went to a small town in Central Congo to assist at more traditional festivities, essentially dance to the sound of drums. After a few days rumors started running that a revolt was happening in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) - or was it in the Katanga, or both? Anyway I hiked a ride on a truck back to Stanleyville/Kisangani. To continue in a dramatic next chapter… (probably after my March - April trip)
Hello,
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008 some of my first pictures, and my first “anthropological” pictures, were of Gypsies in the Brussels suburbs where my parents lived. Those pictures were taken with a Leica F III with an Elmar 3.5 lens. A wonderful camera, but what I miss most is the focusing lever, that allowed you to preset your distance and with experience have very little focusing to do.Then some “genius” came up with the idea of a focusing ring. Previous to the Leica I had taken some landscape pictures with my father´s Rolleyflex. Somehow around the Leica period I got to like jazz music. I still do, especially the period starting in 1941 at Minton´s Playhouse in Harlem where, under the influence of Coleman Hawkin´s playing, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and others gave jazz a new form that came to be known as bebop. The apogee came, at least to me, in the fifties, best ilustrated, perhaps, by the works of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It lasted into the sixties when it morphed into soul (some great soul music, by the way). But I was talking about photography, wasn´t I? So I started photgraphing jazz musicians giving concerts in Brussels: Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy, Miles Davis etc. The most emotional moment was in a night club after a concert when Bud Powell, completely doped, gave a marvelous version of Round about Midnight. Everybody had tears in their eyes. I never heard something that beautiful and emotional. Then I did a first and last experiment at spelunking, and the Leica found its way into the center of the Earth. My next camera was a Canonflex, the first Canon SLR I believe. A very interesting concept, but that will be for another day.
Jacques