william_littman1

Mr Salomon: You are right technicaly it would be comparable to student price and the sponsorship isnt the norm so to speak but in selling them the cameras at cost affording the service and costs would be absorbed by the more intricate designs And so that was the message I was trying to convey. We did have rental cameras available thru Lens And Repro from 2000-2010 but unfortunately they closed. As of January 2015 the utilitarian cameras are available for rental from Pier 59 Studios in Nyc. We will however have a student contest for a camera thru a trade Publication in 2015.

My great great great uncle on my mothers side of the family Is one of the 19th century's most renowned traditional painter/ Portraitists and one of the earliest photographers known. A pioneer and enthusiast of the Daguerrotype process. http://dag-ru.livejournal.com/2029.html One of the upsides of the camera as art project is that It will enable us to produce an annual lot of 10 cameras aimed at sponsoring the work of those who have a passion for alternative processes . These utilitarian cameras with fixed design would be offered to the artists at 50% of retail price. Delivery once annualy by cristmass.

Thank You Bob

2008 design<div></div>

Another editorial portrait of a dance company by Henry Leutwyler

2007 design. The Littman Kings Cross was the first design attempt concurrent with the introduction of perfectible parallelism the picture clears up if you zoom in until ir depixelates<div></div>

Another early design

Typo the previous photo credit is Fionna Singer and not Chloe Crespi

A candid snaphot by Chloe Credpi

I think you misunderstood me somewhat. I like good designs both classic and modern. I like a lot of the current designs. A lot of supercar designs are ok Some luxury vehicles have intelligent designs now but some are a crossbreed between the good and bad design And in the consumer market I believe design is now breaking with all norm purposely to accelerate replacement. Check google do a search for stories on thousands if acres if new unsellabe vehicles which the car companies have to store but wont reduce prices so as I said you pay mire for less. When the claimed utility of the upcoming model is attractive and the outlines are more generic and non descript it is an easier sell as replacing your cell phone every time there is an upgrade. The consumer market in the automotive industry is not interested in you getting attached to a car for 20 years. My family once had a Mercedes with a million miles on it. Now the industry has stopped worrying about patents as much on parts and instead came up with the"cluster" concept which makes it less attractive to make after market parts and then since the cars come with maintenance included they also cut out the diy alternative and so keeping a car long term makes no sense any longer. I dont presume the priviledge of being targeted. I did years ago partly inexperienced partly as a knee jerk reaction but as I tried to explain in the post to which you responded to I would find it way more reasonable when objecting to a character flaw to avoid attacking the good things in life and presenting "them"as associated or resulting from a character flaw because as a result that invites intelligent design be replaced with that which I find has the character aproximating tge cartoonish. And I say that because the outlines and accents look as if someone blew up a granade inside the cad program :) No when my camera had no aesthetic improvements my creative clients were being attacked and shamed as"fashionistas artists having mire money than sense" MY response has always been that large format handheld only makes sense at this crossroads if you have the willingness to pursue an aesthetic quest and if that is deemed presumptious and unessesary whoever feels that way can use digital. By now I dont feel targeted and reccomend that those who have creative talent or tastes which arent completely seamless because they are nurtured tastes instead of what is in the menu so to speak will be criticized and should dismiss the criticism. My point was and which is by now irrefutable. The average consumer now pays more for all and gets less and when he gets more it us usually fillers empty calories and questionable design when instead of asking for what he wants spends his time shaming good taste or creativity. Its as the saying goes you get what u ask for. My point if you attack luxury and creativity as a character flaw of the rich you get less and pay more because you asked for that and in a righteous manner. They listened.

Now lets move to architecture and housing as I keep being reminded by annoying talk shows as to the role of inflated value in the real estate crisis and its effects which still linger after a decade and which seem to flare up every decade in different degrees.The cause is only one. In Europe and other parts of the world you inherit a house which has either been in your family for hundreds of years or has been arround for a long time. If its conveniences fall short in the pushbutton department a relatively inexpensive addition brings it up to date and which may leave some room for quality of living and expenditures. This is less true today as a result of Europe and other countries using credit cards to buy more planned obsolecence products and less solid real estate. And in America where you have more great architects than photographers a large portion of the housing uses less than desireable architectural design which is selected from catalogs and its style isnt stylish and to describe it you have to add "ish" when comparing it to desireable design. These are some of the side effects of things that are sought for being entirely new efforts and so please excuse any lack of elocuence on my part or english writting skills when I ask how does this make any sense to anyone?

Lets take a minute to examine the value of design and the shame response to what is belittled as ostentacious. I will use the automotive industry to attempt to make an analogy. Lets start with the supercar/ sportscar sector. The audience of this market encourages good design great texturing and innovative technology. Guess what? They get what they asked for. Those who buy also get signaled out as having their motivation as being mostly justified by ostentation in an attempt to curb enthusiasm by those who object. Now lets take the consumer family car and utility vehicle sector. There is a growing trend of political correctness and aversity to ostentation and excess justified by the ridiculous defassages of 2008 etc etc and a real disparity in resulting revenue none of which is fabricated or immaginary. With this said about all this being true is that to add insult to injury this sector shoots itself in the foot so to speak even further when in attempting to shame ostentation and excess in design those who evaluate the feedback assume this sector has an aversity to intelligent design. Guess what? This sector also receives what it asks for . But I have to ask myself if it is what it wants. There was a kink in the road at some point. No idea who made the first egged shaped minivan with bug eyed headlights which sold out probably because of incentives and then tge competition assumed people liked the design as things are usualy appreciated for what they appear to be and then the kink became a trend. In the 80s it was the box angular k car and today many consumer vehicles look cartoonish or have cartoonish looking features as accents. My point and which automotive experts agree is a consumer market car buyer may not want a ferrari but he also doesnt want a bug eyed pile of ferrous oxide to be which reads"Its not ostentatious cost as much as if it were and Im acting proud but I have no idea how I ended signing on to this". Just consider your grandpas mustang have residual value after half a century and your kid is proud to drive it. If his grandson goes to college decades from now and has to drive some of the abominations made today he will park it several blocks from school and if he gets caught he will shame you haha karma baby karma. This is why I chose to pick up where others left off. Its the way of the world very olympian organic environmentaly friendly and proven as truly constructive.

An early Littman tropical camera<div></div>

Summer of 2000<div></div>

An early Littman 34 on the job

This is an ad Campaign shot by Famed Art photographer Peter Beard of Supermodel Stephanie Seymour posing holding one of my earliest pack film cameras back in the summer of 2000. As you can see the camera is also used to shoot. The world was different then and pack film cameras were mostly used to check exposure a utility that now belongs to the digital camera. The performance of pack film cameras isnt being questioned but instead we suggest a higher end performance to those whos work may justify it.

Here is another shot I took with a Littman<div></div>

Rodeo Joe: In response to your question to whether these cameras can take pictures or only meant to be looked at I am posting an image I took which has the kind of qualities which have been consitently obtained thruot the years by me and others and for which most people would attempt with 35mm or medium format but the claimed synergy of this camera has made it an option to retain responsiveness and hd concurrently. Honestly few use it exclusively any more . I just pull it out when the shot makes sense and snap a few sheets otherwise digital as you said does the job for all quickies and commercial applications but when it comes to artistic this alternative is still way ahead of the game.<div></div>

Drew short response Pack film only camera.

Thank you Drew: That is a good question. This is only a pack film camera.What makes sense depends when you ask and who. When I introduced the 4x5 the pack film camera made less sense because unable to improve technicaly at the time the 4x5 had more lines and more bokeh as a result of the extra magnification. As you know 4x5 instant film became less available and then unavailable. Then the fact is that on a 4 x5 camera the 405 holder doesnt center the pack on the lens. I started making pack film cameras in 1998 and first few sold for circa 700. after 6 months of experimentation it turned out my cameras were producing results which the pros claimed were far superior to the 4 Designs which I felt was really good I had no idea what were the improving factors as I was just experimenting then and didnt have a long term plan and something I was doing on my spare time when I wasnt shooting editorials. But 6months after I started I hadnt raised the price but to my surprise people were paying up to 1500 for a used one because I could only make about 5-6 a month and the word was out so I then took it more seriously but didnt invest on the pack film camera because the required investment in the 4x5 would eat up all the income fir 5 years And when Polaroid determined my 4x5 was already producing results in excess of the original camera they sent me an exclusive contract as an OEM to make the 4x5 but asked me not to compete with 4 designs and so I stopped making a pack film camera by January of 2000. For standard expectancies in pack film there is a ton of inexpensive alternatives. I know that shooting instant film for proffesional jobs makes sense now only if the cost of shooting film makes sense to the client and if the technical results justify it. As a simply circumstantial fact 3x4 is smaller than 4x5 and then the perfectible parallelism on the front standard increases the sharpness enabling shooting wide open with a sharpness which would otherwise require f 11 and if you are in rare situations where you can shoot handheld movement and stop diwn to f 11 That apears to compare to f 22 without the parallelism.. Just numbers on paper but when shooting a film that cant be pushed it is significant to people who work proffesionaly with instant film. That is the advantage for standard portraiture and snapshots for artistic portraiture using tilt handheld as in the Littman 45 the camera can yield comparable results to what you can see in the video linked. Then it is also posible to recover the negative of the fuji 100c the process is experimental and borderline esoteric aporoach but for art purposes can be very appealing for that very reason so having a camera that can maximize the performance of such fixed speed film is also appeling. But the world has changed a lot in the last five years and manufacturing costs have risen due to the decline in demand so suppliers have doubled ir tripled the costs if just about anything. A cable release cost 4.50 when I started making the 4x5 now it costs 17.50 Ive only made 20 prototypes of the 3x4 have only one left to sell. I have prepared batch of bodies in anticipation to a story in American Photo if I decide to move forward and make it for the public. So far we just completed the 1 year prototype stage where the camera is used by pros to determine whether it is just hype or hypes utility. I am satisfied and if I move forward and proceed witha 25 units a year allotment I can offer it at 2500.00 . We no longer take orders for custom cameras . I was doing that years ago while the research had me working round the clock but now we have selected the best improvements and so only make one technical model in 34 and 45 and in regards to design I was also experimenting bk then but now the designs will be available completed . The price of the 3x4 during prototype stage was 4995.00 This didnt even cover the reserach time but fortunately the expectations proved justified early so I was able to make ends meet. I do expect it will move forward. I think it only makes sense for artists who require the extra quality and as they sell their art the cost is super justified when a shot of 10oc plus thus 3x4 can produce a similar result to what they were spending thousands per job on type 55 and new 55 Who knows if it will cost 75 100 50 or 200 if it is ever made. In the meantime my clients have no downtime shooting 4x5 black and white using fomapan 100 which can be a positive or a negative and when developed in rodinal 1/50 us virtualy industiguishible from type 55 except you only pay a dollar a sheet and can push pull etc galore. So to be perfectly clear this 3x4 camera is not a necesity to anyone except to someone who can benefit from the highest possible outcome on pack film.

I wish to thank everyone who has contributed to the discussion so far for the intelligent responses which I find very useful.

Thank you Lex I was aware of that. I think I may have connectivity issues and the system can be robotic:) BTW nice picture of the cat in the margin

Could someone tell me why my text is first confirmed but when i go to add an attachment it says problem with your imput so i have to change the text and have to try several times before it confirms the attachent? and ends up looking untidy.

LITTMAN STRASSEMEISTER 08

LITTMAN VOIGTLANDER APO LANTHAR 2008