National Camera Day, The Look of Film Never Left
Today is National Camera Day.
I pulled out my Leica IIIf again. It’s been photographed before, and it still holds its place. Not because it’s old, but because it represents a way of working that hasn’t changed as much as people think. And I still have a love of the look of film.
Leica’s origins go back to Oskar Barnack, who took 35mm motion picture film and turned it into a still photography format. That decision made cameras smaller, faster, and far more usable in real-world situations. It shifted photography away from being staged and into something more immediate.
What followed wasn’t just a camera system, it was a look. The color palette you see in Leica work, and hinted at in the LFI Magazine cover behind this camera, is controlled rather than exaggerated. Skin tones stay natural. Colors separate instead of competing.
Then there’s Hasselblad, working at a different pace. Medium format, larger negatives, more deliberate compositions. Where Leica moves quickly, Hasselblad slows everything down. The result is depth, tonal range, and structure.
That carries forward directly into my own work. My long-time preference has been Hasselblad digital, particularly the CCD sensor versions. There’s a specific color palette that comes out of those files that still stands apart. It’s not overly processed, not chasing saturation, just clean, controlled color with depth. It feels closer to film than most modern digital systems.
There’s a reason NASA chose Hasselblad for the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Those images required reliability and the ability to hold detail across extreme conditions. The same qualities show up in controlled studio work, just applied differently.
Film ties all of this together. It forces decisions early. Exposure, contrast, color balance, all set before you ever see the result. That constraint shapes the outcome. Grain becomes texture. Highlights roll instead of breaking. Blacks hold information.
This photograph isn’t about nostalgia. The Leica sits there with its mechanical dials and engraved markings, built to do one thing well. The magazine behind it points to the result, what all of that engineering was built to produce.
And even now, with everything available, that way of seeing still carries through.
More of my photography, from fast food to everything in between, at https://www.secondfocus.com
National Camera Day with my Leica IIIf
A beautiful woman on the cover of Leica’s LFI magazine. A classic Leica camera on top. It’s National Camera Day, and one of my favorite subjects to photograph is beautiful women.
This is my Leica IIIf, a 35mm rangefinder produced between 1950 and 1957 in Wetzlar, Germany. Leica began making 35mm cameras in the 1920s, and these cameras have documented much of the world’s history through the eyes of photographers who carried them.
The IIIf is fully mechanical. No batteries, no screens. You wind the film, set the exposure, and press the shutter. It’s simple, and it still works. Its solid construction means it keeps working long after many other cameras have been set aside.
Photographs seen through a Leica have something special about them. It’s a combination of the lenses, the viewfinder, and the way using a camera like this slows you down to see the frame with intention. See more of my photography at https://www.secondfocus.com
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