Leica Gallery - getting infected with the virus

Many years ago I thought about buying a Leica film camera. Even at this time, Leica was prohibitively expensive for me and, most important, I felt more comfortable with an SLR, the Nikon F2S. Film loading, interchangeable focusing screens, macro capabilities, and the extensive range of lenses were the decisive arguments for me, in addition to the price.

After several visits to the local Leica gallery (see:  Leica galleries worldwide) I had the chance to attend the vernissage (opening) of  an exhibition of b&w images by Craig Semetko. Craig gave a convincing explanation why he uses a Leica for his work. My interest was roused.

Purely by chance, a few days later I passed by Andrej Borodin's shop Fotokor in Salzburg, Austria. He had a used Elmarit M 90/2.8 lens at a very reasonable price. I bought this lens. Andrej also showed me a beautiful Leica M6 TTL, also in near mint condition. After a surprisingly sleepless night, I bought this camera too.

Concerning the haptic, I did not regret this decision for a second. I enjoyed toying around with the camera, learning to focus and to operate its controls. I liked the haptic of my old Nikons (F, F2S, F3; all sold now), but the Leica was definitely a class above them. A beautiful tool. Something special.

Concerning loading film into the Leica and, most important, concerning the first images I took with this camera, I was rather upset. Bad images they were: out of focus and sometimes blurred. Further, I did not want to bother with a darkroom, so I had my b&w films developed and printed by a local store, at stupid prices and with meaningless, flat prints.

But, there were a few images that gave me some hope.

Then I took a decision.
The Leica would serve me to produce b&w portraits. No landscape, no color. I would scan the images from b&w negative film or from slides, and make the b&w conversion in Photoshop.

This decision had consequences. I bought a film scanner, a Minolta 5400, over eBay. Nikon Coolscans are  were too expensive. And I fould the tutorial Black & White 35mm Scanning with Vuescan by Tim Gray, which was most helpful.

And then I took some images, with a Canon 5D Mk2, which performed flawlessly, was a pleasure to work with and produced nice results. And all this was accompagnied by some images with my M6, taken with a used Summicron 50/2. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the Leica more than the highly efficient, highly practical and instantaneous Canon. Strange, isn't it?

More about this in one of the next posts.

The image below was taken with the Leica M6TTL 0.85, Summicron 50/2, on Fuji Sensia slide film, then scanned with the Minolta 5400 MkI, and converted to b&w in Photoshop.

The following image is from the same shooting, Canon 5DMk2, EF 100/2.0.