One of the good things about a Leica M6 is that it is a fantastic street shooting machine. It is unobtrusive, super quiet, and barely noticeable, save for the familiar (to photographers) red dot on the front. It does have a week point, in my opinion, and that is its ability to land just so in your bag so that the shutter button is depressed part way so as to completely drain the battery. It’s happened to me twice and the little button batteries, though common, are expensive at about $5.00 each. Ouch.
It happened to me again and I was determined that I would NOT buy another set of batteries. I’d just use the Sunny F/16 rule and shoot to my heart’s content. Well, that’s just what I did and shooting was fun, easy, and free! The only down side was that I didn’t know exactly how sunny it had to be when shooting like this. Sunny means wide open spaces, sunny day on the beach sunny, not sun filtering through the trees or reflecting off of buildings … no, that type of sun is, shall we say, about 2 stops less intense as I found out. 
After developing the first roll of Neopan 400 and seeing it as a total loss, I developed the second roll of film at a much higher developer concentration, 1:25 instead of 1:50 and maintained the same development time. The second roll was slightly better, allowing me to salvage a few photos, of which this is one. I actually like it!
Neopan, and I would agree with others that say it, is really about a ISO 250 film, so this means that I underexposed it about 3 stops. Not much shadow detail to be had! 
Further, rescuing it with my favorite developer, Rodinal, was not really an option as it is not a compensating developer and therefore not so good at pushing film.
This morning, in my travels, I made a stop at CVS and bought two of those $5 batteries! Cheaper than wasting film. Also, I’ll keep my old Gossen Luna Pro light meter as a back up since I can’t seem to remember to put the shutter speed dial on “B” so that the meter doesn’t accidentally come on. The other option, don’t cock the shutter would be and extremely hard habit to break!
In the end, neither the camera nor the film failed, it was the guy with his finger on the shutter. Still learning!!!
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2 Responses to “A hammer to the thumb!”
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My question is, “Would you have this same problem with the M9?” If not that is also another option and a pretty weak reason to buy one. However, we are looking for reasons, right?
LOL If it would have been and M9, there would be no picture at all. No battery power, no digital photos. That simple. So, in that regards, the M6 is better because at least I was able to get a shot! No excuses or reasons needed for buying and M9, should I decide to do it, it will be a Nike thing: Just Do It. That said, it takes a lot to ‘just do” $7,000!!! Care to donate?