Paul Lester Photo

Please Note: This image can only be taken with a Leica M6 0.85 TTL equipped with a 50mm f/2 Summicron lens, loaded with Ilford FP4 and developed in Rodinal for 15 minutes @ 20 degrees C. Any attempt do to it in another way will result in failure! Sorry! I didn’t make the rules. That’s just the way it is! When you approach a scene, please look for the placard that will tell you what is the proper equipment to use!

I like to laugh. My favorite types of movies are comedies, especially well thought out parodies. Heck! I also love slapstick comedy. My wife, and many other females that I have met, never really can understand why men like The Three Stooges! It’s a guy thing, I guess. “Hey, Moe! I’m tryin’ ta think, but nothin’s happening!”. Classic!

If you want mindless entertainment, the web is a great place to get it. Heck, you can get a lot of it on this blog! Of course, unless you’ve been trapped under a rock, or you get your Internet service from Time Warner (ouch!) *, you know about the Leica M9, S2, and X1 releases on 09/09/09. There have been endless articles, posts, reviews, and forum debates about the M9, which seems to be the most notable release of the three.

I believe that most of you have heard of Ken Rockwell. In general, it seems that about 50% of the people like him, the other 50%, not so much. I find his reviews entertaining. They are not dry like the technical reviews that you’d get on DP Review. They are rather hyped up and full of opinion. For example, his most recent ‘musings’ about the M9 state that People really are dumping their old Nikon D3X and Canon 1Ds Mark IIIs for the LEICA M9 as fast as they can!, in reference to this article, which plainly states that some photographers are ditching their DSLR cameras for the new M9, but later on another vendor notes that about 99% of the people who are buying the M9 were already Leica fans. Mind you, Ken has not even held, let alone used an M9 yet, but he has declared victory over the DSLR! Entertainment.

Another source of entertainment, though very short lived, is to look at the debates on the forums. I was reading one that went something like this:
P1 – Person 1
P2 – Person 2

P1:I might buy a camera to shoot pictures of kids and I’m thinking about an M9.
P2: It might be a good choice, but you’ll have to get used to a rangefinder. It’s a different way of shooting.
P3: No! You should stick with a DSLR! P2, are you saying that you can get good photos of kids with a Leica rangefinder? If so, prove it. Let’s see the photos.
P2: OK. Here are the photos taken with my Leica M8 (Shows 8 or 10 really good kid photos)
P3: OK. So then are you saying that you can ONLY take good photos with a $15,000 set of camera and lenses?
P2: Well, obviously, all you want to do is argue, so I won’t continue …

And on, and on, and on, and on. As I said, short term entertainment. It used to amaze me at how much time, effort, and energy that someone will put into an argument just to convince someone that their point of view is the correct one. Now, I just laugh and move on. Forums are rather like slapstick comedy and Ken Rockwell is more of a parody of a review, though he does have some good points, you just have to dig through the hyperbole to get to them.

*As you can guess: Not a big fan of Time Warner!

Where to begin. On Tuesday I left work, grabbed the camera, and headed downtown. It was very much overcast and threatening rain, but I couldn’t let that stop me. I was a man with a mission and a new camera.

i entered downtown where I always do, Waterfront Park. When I got outside I had all types of fears. Had I loaded the camera correctly? Would I know how to use it right? Had I taken the lens cap off? I would look pretty stupid shooting with the lens cap still on, which is perfectly feasible with a rangefinder. Also, which of those frame lines do I use? Inner set? Outer set? Hmmm, I think that it’s the outer because I’m using a 50 mm lens. Let’s roll with it!

OK, off to take some pictures. As it was overcast, I took a reading at what I would consider a medium type scene, set my aperture to f/5.6, exposure to 1/250, and away I went. No need to change.

The first thing that I saw were some cheerleaders practicing. I took a few shots of them, then of some kids playing near the fountain, then of someone lying in the grass, cheerleaders in the back ground. Go, Team! Go!

The first cool thing that I noticed is that people have a look at you, see the camera, then dismiss you almost instantly. It’s a small camera. No threat. Obviously not some crazed-lunatic-psycho-pedophile-terrorist-minded photographer out to exploit us. Keep moving. How cute! He took a picture of us. Now, where was that ice cream stand. I felt nearly invisible! Perhaps it has a cloaking device built in that I didn’t notice. I must have activated it by mistake, but it sure is handy!

The second cool thing is that not only are you cloaked against sight, you are cloaked against sound. I stood almost right behind someone sitting on a bench, framed them up, shot, and they never even turned around or flinched. Had that been my D300, the mirror-slapping-sonic-boom would have had them diving for cover. Well, maybe not, but it would have been very obvious that I had just taken a picture. The slight “snick” sound of the Leica’s shutter is not enough to attract attention more than a few inches away. I would imagine that you could hear it in a very quiet environment, but on the street, no way.

So, I walked around taking this picture and that. Man! 36 exposures is a lot! I only did the whole roll because Anita told me to! I felt compelled to do it. Of course, as is normal for me and my street shooting, I spend much more time talking than I do shooting. It’s a wonder that I was able to squeeze of 36 shots in the 2 hours that I spent down there. I had two pretty long conversations: One with Justin, whose story I’ll tell tomorrow. We talked for at least an hour. The other with Dave, whose story I’ll share on Thursday. We talked for about 30 – 45 minutes.

After talking with Justin and Dave, I had burned all of shooting time and it was heading towards sunset so I went back to Waterfront Park, sat near the fountain, took a few more shots, then waited for the light to fade. When I got home I was very hungry but eager to develop the film. I ate something quickly, loaded the film, developed it, and held my breath, hoping that I had some pictures. What do you know, 35 perfectly exposed shots! I know, it’s a 36 roll, but I screwed up on the loading and took up too much film on the front end and only got 35 shots. I remember that I used to be able to get about 38 on a 36 roll. I just have to get better at loading the film! They were all very well exposed, but I blew the focus on a couple of them. Oh well, I’ll get better!

It was fun. I hope to do some more tomorrow, though not an entire roll, Anita!!! I’ve still got lots to share from this roll. 36 shots is a lot, especially when you have the gift of gab, and I’m very gifted in that way.

There are days when I feel that I am simply a gatherer of images whose sole mission is to run out and gather as many images as possible on a given day, come back, give a cursory look at some of them, judge them, show one or two, then on to the next crop. Never looking back. Never stopping to consider the ‘why’.

Anymore, I don’t ask why things happen. When I purchased this film camera, I had no intention of it being my sole-use camera for any period of time. Sure, I thought, it would be a nice trip to “back in the day”, nothing more. Yet, it has become more. Lately, there have been a few posts about film either directly or indirectly. Paul Butzi talked about why he wouldn’t use film to do his theater project, more specifically, large format. His points, of course, were all valid. The other day on T.O.P (The Online Photographer), Mike talked about shooting film and using Leica for a year to become a better photographer and to be able to ‘see’ better. I think that there is some merit in his idea, though not necessarily that you ‘need’ a Leica.

So far, I’ve shot 5 rolls of film, processed 4. The final finished roll I will process this evening. All told, 75 shots. In my bag sits another 6 rolls of film, ready to go. From what I can see, my success ratio seems to be a bit higher. To be sure, I am aware that there is cost involved with each exposure and I’m not prone to shooting, shooting, shooting … even though I advocate this approach. I think that, early on, the shoot/feedback loop is very important … if you take the time to analyze the feedback. It never looses its importance, but with the lower cost of digital, and higher shoot rates, the number of shots to analyze can be overwhelming. Now, I find myself moving, looking, moving, looking, waiting, and feeling things out before even taking a shot. It’s a relaxing way to shoot.

I’m rediscovering my ‘tone vision’, if you will. Not all things photograph well in B&W and, when shooting B&W film, one must make a choice. There is no shooting it in color, then converting to B&W to see which one you like best. You get what you get. Also, the digital perfection is gone. Film has its own characteristics, like grain and tonality, and I’m finding that I really like the grain on some of the film. It adds a beauty all of its own.

So! Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Am I more contemplative because I am shooting film or am I shooting film, because I am more contemplative. It is, I believe, the latter. The photography just followed, I think. When I shot film when I was younger, I ran through many rolls of film, to be sure. Back then, I bought expired film almost exclusively and developed it myself, so it was still relatively cheap.

Though I never fully intended to do the one camera, one lens, one film thing, I think that it is happening. Will I shun digital and run back into the arms of film? Doubtful. However, I am enjoying this medium format film and the developing. As with all things in life, we’ll just have to see where it leads. Thanks for riding along.