Night Shooting on Halloween with a Leica M3 and a Contax T2

Halloween, 2025 has been on my calendar as a shooting opportunity for a couple of months.  In NYC the scale of the revelry is epic, including a giant parade in the West Village and all day fun for all ages.  My favorite subject for 2025 has been photographing the wonderful and quirky people you find out and about in NYC, and Halloween is more or less their national holiday, so how could I not get out there and capture some of the costumes and spectacle on film?

Before sundown I shot a couple of rolls during ‘shift change’ between families with small children in the quest for candy and adults of all ages looking for other kinds of fun.   Shooting in late afternoon light is right in my wheelhouse, so that part of the day went smoothly and might make for another post at some point.  Shooting after dark, not my wheelhouse, but something I’ve wanted to try for a while and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.  First, I had to think about how to configure my kit — for running and gunning on the streets of New York at night going lean felt right, so I went with the M3 and a single lens, the fastest one in my collection, the Summilux 50mm f1.4, ASPH.  I loaded up a roll of Tri-X and pushed two stops, hoping that combination would work in full night using the plentiful available light in the streets of Manhattan.

While I was excited to put the Summilux through its paces, I thought it might be wise and possibly creatively interesting to have an option for shooting with a flash. I don’t own a flash unit for the M3 and I didn’t fancy the added bulk of a second full-size 35mm, so settled on the Contax T2, a posh point & shoot.  I got my T2 for family snapshots in the early aughts when my son was small.  That was before one of the Jenners made the camera famous so that they are now viewed as an over-the-odds luxury accessory.  Despite their current ‘blingy’ rep I think they are pretty sophisticated and well-designed cameras with a highly regarded Zeiss Sonnar 38mm f2.8 lens, widely considered ‘best in class’ or thereabouts for a compact 35mm point & shoot.  It was a brilliant camera to get fun shots of my son running around playgrounds, family gatherings, school plays and the like, but eventually it faded away, first replaced by a digital Contax that saved $ on film & lab costs during some lean years, and eventually by the iPhone for those kind of ‘preserve the memory’ shots.

After returning to film still photography in 2024, I haven’t used it much other than a couple of dinner party gatherings when I didn’t want the distraction of an all-manual rangefinder, either for me or our guests.  But a few weeks ago I was talking about gear with a friend who was trying to decide what kind of film camera to buy.  When I mentioned the T2 as an interesting compact camera, they said that they had heard that some pro photographers keep one in their pocket for quick snaps while out shooting.  That seemed like the perfect idea for Halloween night, so I slipped the Contax into one coat pocket with a couple of rolls of film, a spot meter in the other, and slung the M3 over my shoulder and headed into Manhattan.

I was out of Tri-X so loaded some XP2 in the T2 — all those letters and numbers sound like some kind of Cold War era espionage code — so it’s not an apples to apples comparison with the M3 in terms of the emulsion, but at least I got to see what both cameras were capable of in these conditions as well as comparing the user experience of a high tech point & shoot with a classic all-manual rangefinder.

The T2 with flash proved capable of getting excellent ‘snapshot’ style photos in places that were not shootable going handheld with the M3.

You can really feel the difference between flash and available light in this shot with the M3.  Even with overheard florescent tubes as the main source I really like mood and shading I got here, perhaps accentuated by Tri-X’s grain structure. These kids were taking a break while the crowd thinned out so I had time to line up and set focus.  I was right on the edge of handheld shutter speeds — you can see a bit of motion blur as they flashed the “V” sign just as I triggered the shutter. When I’m worried about focus with the M3, I often end up leaving whatever I’m focusing on dead center — it would have been better to reframe to get more of the second child in the bottom of the frame, but I still like this shot.

I liked this woman’s Bride of Frankenstein kit so much I took a quick swing with the T2 and fired away as I passed her on the sidewalk.  Here I don’t feel the flash as much.  The highlights don’t have that harsh shiny glare I often see, maybe her pancake make-up was matte enough to absorb the light?  Also the background is so dark you don’t see any flash spill/shadow.  The T2 works pretty nicely under circumstances where I don’t have the time to shoot more deliberately.  I’m very impressed with the Zeiss Sonnar.  It’s hard to believe that this was taken on a fully retractable lens that is about the size of a stack of 3 or 4 quarters.

I could tell I was not quite hitting it on the M3 when I tried to get quick ‘grab and go’ shots.  People were milling about so quickly that it was hard feel confident about focus and sometimes even exposure could change within a few feet depending on the light source.

On this shot of a woman sporting a carousel diorama, I can really feel the flash with lots of bright hits from her shiny outfit as well as her face. It’s a bit harsh to my eye and feels kind of “noir” or maybe “60’s paparazzi.”  Possibly interesting in certain situations, but I’m not sure that’s a look I’d want all the time.  It might be interesting to experiment with the flash, perhaps with some soft diffusion to reduce the harsh glare a bit.  Colored gels could also be interesting.  I remember trying that a with my digital Contax when I felt like its flash was too heavy-handed.  I got the idea from Michel Gondry who was putting a beer bottle in front of his digital flash one night after work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Someone brought a couple of horses to Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, and was charging a few bucks for people to get their photo taken on horseback.  This was a moment for the M3 as I didn’t want to use the flash out of respect for the horse’s eyes at night.  Luckily there was plenty of ambient light to get a good level.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something kind of eerie about this shot that feels a little late 50’s/early 60’s horror movie.

Finding subjects that are on the higher end of the grey scale, like a pale horse of a white fluffy costume can make it easier to get a decent shot in lower light.

Anticipating how different subjects render with a flash will have a learning curve.  Subjects that are darker and/or further away will have a different look and feel than something lighter and closer to the flash.  This creature looks like it might belong in the same 50’s B movie as that pale horse…

As the night went on, I found myself shooting less and less with the M3, which was feeling a little too tricky in the friendly controlled chaos of NYC on Halloween night.  This shot of a group of cyclists and skate boarders has interesting energy, but too much detail is lost in the shadows and the light sources are pretty blown out.  If I had it to do over again, I might try to bracket the shutter speed (I had nowhere to go on the aperture) at the cost of some motion blur.   I’d be curious to hear from the forum any thoughts on what you might do for a shot like this…

One issue/disadvantage for the T2 is a small delay between pointing and shooting while the electronics of the camera rev up to do their thing.  I don’t think that takes as much actual time as I spend sorting out focus and exposure on the M3, but for some reason I notice it more.

This couple had a very odd and mysterious aura about them as they slowly made their way down the street.  They were silent and and the crowd parted for them as they moved in an almost gliding manner.  I suspect the person on the right, who looks very slight and slim from their high waistline, was wearing some kind of very tall elevated platform shoes/boots under their long trousers and it was probably very difficult to see in those full head masks.  But they were happy to pose for photos for anyone and everyone; they felt kind of like Halloween royalty!

It was starting to get late (for me, not the revelers, many of whom were just getting going) so I decided to head for home.  But not without grabbing some shots en route, now shooting exclusively with the Contax.

This nurse looks like someone from that same 1950’s horror movie…

I kept shooting on the F Train home.  The people on the train were singing and having a rowdy fun time, so I wasn’t worried about the flash distracting them.

After a few shots, I realized I had enough stop at 1600 to shoot in available light, a look I generally prefer.

I really like the way these shots on pushed XP2 look in available light.  I’m also noticing that my shots on the Contax look much better than they did ‘back in the day.’  All that I’ve been learning by starting from the ground up with all-manual cameras has made it easier for me to understand and get the most out of an automatic camera.

If I want to go into ‘stealth mode’ for closer candid shots, I could do a lot worse than the slim and unobtrusive T2.  This shot of a young couple might be one of my favorites of the whole night — I think it really catches a delicate moment that may not have survived through me lining up and focusing on the much more noticeable and distracting M3.

As a first foray, I’d say it was neither an abject failure or a smashing success, but how did the two cameras/systems compare for me shooting side-by-side at night?

For ease of use, it’s hard to beat the Contax.  While the T2’s fully automated system is kind of against the grain of everything I’ve been dong since I started shooting film again on vintage all manual cameras, I think there is something fun and freeing about pointing & shooting a high end point & shoot.  Looking at the results, I’d say that the Contax has a much higher ‘floor’ than the M3 for night shooting.  The combination of flash, auto focus and auto exposure meant that more or less all of my shots were in an acceptable zone — at least as good as whatever image I decided to point & shoot at.  Based on a small but pretty impressive sample, I think the T2 offers far more than a flash as a ‘get out of jail free card’ at night.  I think I might end up valuing the autofocus feature as much or more than the flash, and that Zeiss lens lives up to its reputation.

As much as I love the M3,  I’d say the floor is almost bottomless for shots that try to capture the motion and energy of the crowded streets by night and I have the receipts that prove it.  BUT, I know Leica gear is engineered to take great photos in just about any situation I could encounter, so like it or not, the point of failure wasn’t the camera or the lens, it was me.  But I do love the look of the few shots where I did manage to hit it.  I will need to raise my levels and perhaps with the benefit of some tips and techniques from friends here on 35mmc, but I feel like the Leica has a higher ceiling than the T2.

So which will it be going forward?  The classic all manual range finder with the higher ceiling or the high tech point & shoot with the higher floor?

I guess my answer is, “Why choose, when I can have my cake and eat it too?”   The T2 is extremely pocketable and would fit nicely into a small ‘night kit’ with the M3 and the Summilux.   I think those pro photographers my friend told me about were onto something, and with sundown coming before 5pm for the next couple of months in NYC, I definitely want to get better at night shooting in the city.  I look forward to practicing those skills on both the M3 and the T2!

NOTE:  Readers can weigh in, but if you like the idea of having a two camera set up like this, but don’t have the $ for a Leica plus a Contax, there are other excellent choices on the second hand market with much friendlier price points, and 35mmc probably has great reviews of all of them.

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