– Jim Wirth

“Nice watch!”

“Nice Camera!”

I don’t remember which was said first. The watch was mine – a huge 47mm Panerai PAM217 Luminor Marina Militare. The camera belonged to David Hisanaga – a Mamiya 7-II Medium Format 6×7cm Rangefinder. It was last October, and we both happened to be sitting in Nanette Lepore, a women’s fashion boutique in the Forum Shops at Ceasar’s Palace, Las Vegas, waiting for our wives to try on various outfits, and worrying that we might each need a second mortgage. We had never met before, yet we enjoyed the opportunity for show-and-tell, passing our prized possessions, one to the other, for closer inspection. It turned out David was from Mill Valley, California, which is one exit down the highway from Corte Madera where I live – small world. So we exchanged business cards, and David left financially intact with his wife, who did not find anything she really wanted. I was not so fortunate.

Fast forward to earlier this week. Out of the blue I received an email from David, reintroducing himself, and telling me that our OpenRoad.TV video story about the San Francisco Presidio and George Lucas was getting emailed around his place of work – Industrial Light and Magic. He recognized the OpenRoad.TV name and pulled out his wallet where my business card still sat. Yep – small world.

In his email, David took the liberty of attaching two amazing photos that he had taken in one of my favorite places, the Marin Headlands (see my story and video about Exploring the Headlands of Marin) .

The first photo was taken with a twin lens reflex (TLR) Mamiya C330F. The second was shot with the Mamiya 7II that David had with him in Las Vegas during our chance encounter. David is passionate about cameras like I am about watches, and likes to shoot with the Mamiya medium format film cameras. He also shoots with an Olympus OM10, a Canon EOS630, and a Canon 10D digital SLR. But David’s favorite camera happens to be a very cool 42 year old Rolleiflex 2.8F TLR with a Zeiss Planar lens.

“It’s beautiful and it takes beautiful pictures. Everything’s manual. Manual focus, manual exposure setting, manual film advance. It has a light meter, fortunately, which is a luxury. These are hard to find in good condition with working light meters. One side benefit of this camera that I couldn’t have possibly foreseen was the warmth that it brings out in people. I can’t tell you how many people just stop me to say ‘Cool camera’ or ‘Wow, my father used to have one of those’. Just this weekend while I was in a department store, an older man who was with his wife and grandchildren stopped me and said, “Oh, is that a Rolleiflex? I had one of those when I was in the Navy”. His wife chimed in, “I think you still have that in a closet somewhere, dear.” He asked me all sorts of questions. Like if I had heard of so-and-so who took pictures of the West with a Rollei; can I still find film for it; how much does it cost to process; etc. He then asked me to show his grandson how it worked. I did, and he thanked me profusely afterwards. It was a neat moment.”

You can see more of David’s photography at his Flickr account. And if you see two guys in a coffee shop in Marin County anytime soon, and there is an array of interesting cameras and watches spread out on the table, you can bet it’s David and me enjoying a little more show-and-tell.