I bought a case for my Leica last week and I went to pick it up today. 
A very pretty thing. Lush brown leather. Stitched. Suede interior. And a thin carrying strap.
I'm a sucker for pretty things.  As my mom saw it laying on my table, she commented how my grandfather used to play with Leica rangefinders. I was quite surprised. You see, I didn't know him very well. While I was born in Hong Kong after my parents moved from Shanghai, my maternal grandfather and my parent's families still lived there. I would go back and forth the two cities as a child to celebrate various Chinese holidays but all in all, I've probably spent less than a year total in Shanghai. Even less time with my maternal grandfather. As we got to talking, she suddenly remembered that my grandfather had given my father an old camera as a gift. She shuffled through some closet and came back with this. 
I was amazed! Apparently, he was quite into cameras while he was younger. My grandfather was a chemist who worked for Bayer Pharmacueticals in Shanghai. He studied his post-graduate degrees in Germany and would often travel back and forth the two countries for his research. I guess that's where his love affair with cameras began. 
I had no idea what this thing was, but one look at the leather case and its shape, I could recognize it was an old German rangefinder camera. The name Zeiss was familiar, as we are used to seeing it on all Sony point and shoot cameras these days. Carl Zeiss. Other than that, I was at a lost at how to even operate it! 
After some fiddling, I managed to open up the lens cap and whoa! An accordion style lens!! I've never seen that before! What at first appeared to be a mold or some sort of mildew on the lens, I soon realized it was a yellow 32mm filter for black and white cameras. 
Everything was so intricately made. And everything still worked! It may look tired and quite worn due to use, but everything had a snappiness to it. From the basic flip-up view finder, to the film advance turning knob, to the plunger style shutter trigger, to the manual focusing ring on the lens, and to the shutter cocking lever, everything still worked! I wasn't afraid that stuff were going to fall off or break off, it had a seriously feeling of solidarity to it. 
I was, without a doubt, certain that this was dated pre-world war II, because on the side of the camera it said "Made in Germany". That is Germany, not West or East Germany. After some quick research online, I found out that this was a 6x6 medium format Zeiss foldable compact camera, manufactured in 1933! While holding this small camera in my hand, I suddenly felt very melancholy. 
I could imagine my grandfather holding the camera, as I was, and taking pictures of his family. I remember looking at my mom's old family photo albums, the square shaped black and white photos that were crystal clear and oh so nostalgic, like only black and white photos can be. I can imagine him looking through the view finder, at a completely different world from where it is at today. I can imagine him being fascinated with photography, as I am now. 
I do miss him. He's passed away for a few years now, and he's had a debilitating stroke during his last years of life. My best memories of him were mostly from my childhood. Good memories. None bad. Putting the camera carefully back into the case, I noticed a small pocket attached to the strap. I opened it, and inside was a small piece of green velvet crumped and stuffed in. It was quite a personal moment. It was probably him, how ever many years ago, that crumped and stuffed that piece of cloth into the small pocket and I was the next person, over all these years, to open it. I can't truely describe that feeling. All this got me thinking a lot. It got me thinking about how a small camera like that invoked so much memory, how it reminded me of the man he was, how it defined a small portion of his legacy after his life, and how I will be regarded in the eyes and thoughts of my own grandchildren, however distant in the future that may be. I think our actions and our choices defines a lot about who we are. I often wonder what kind of father I would be, and how my future generations will see me as a person. I try to make good decisions. Choices that I can be proud of. It also got me thinking what kind of legacy we would leave our future generations. Without a doubt, we take way more pictures than our film using ancestors did in their day. But of the thousands of photos I have taken, how many are actually printed in hard copy? Very few if any I'm afraid. Where will my old family ablums be in the future? Online at a site like Imagestation? Well, that's disappeared. Kept digitally in a hard-drive? But hard drives go bad. Is the vast quantity of recorded memories superior to the few heart-felt photos in the family album? And what about our cameras? My old Canon A70 died in a year (right after the warranty ended). My trusty Pentax point and shoot is still going but it has a developed two hot pixels on its sensor. My Pentax DSLR and my Leica point and shoot? Where will they be in a few years, or a few decades? Chances are, they won't ever be passed down because they simply won't last that long. Our digital age has enabled us with technologies that are both advanced and affordable, but at what cost? Longevity? With disposable and replaceable everything, why do we need a camera that is well-built and can last us years and years when we can just replace the obselete camera in two years time? Build quality is a very much under-rated idea nowadays. 
I bet he loved his cameras like I do mine. | 
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