Jason Schneider

Part of the fun of the photokina show in Cologne, Germany this week is getting to actually touch and try much of the new camera gear that’s been announced in the past month.

In commenting on an obscenity case back in 1964 Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped, “Hardcore pornography is hard to define, but I know it when I see it.” The same can be said of bokeh, a Japanese term for the perceived quality of the out-of-focus areas in a photograph. 

One of the most enduring and ubiquitous axioms in photography is that it’s the photographer behind the camera, not the camera itself that creates the image. Or, as one guy commenting on my recent article "My 10 Favorite Film Cameras" trenchantly put it, “In the end, the equipment you use doesn’t mean squat.”

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the world-renowned center of imaging tech, research, and photographic education, and Leica Camera, acclaimed for its legendary cameras and outstanding optics, proclaimed May 6, 2008 as Leica Day. The daylong event, hosted by RIT at its impressively large modern campus, was celebrated with speeches, lectures, tours, slide shows, seminars...