5 Frames with a Leica CL and Jupiter-8 – By Simon King

I’ve gone through a handful or so of Leica CL cameras, which is more than I expected to when I first started photography. Film was never my area, so when I bought my first CL it was as an experiment, and not intended to become a part of my workflow. I have since sold and bought on a new one every so often, and this time I found one at the cheapest price I’ve seen – so I bought it, attached a Jupiter 8 lens and then blacked out he logos so its resale value would go down and I’d be less tempted to sell it.

So far this has worked, and the CL has accompanied me out the house on several more occasions than any of its predecessors were capable of. It is light enough that I never have any excuses to leave the house without it, and for my personal photography it has been very fun to integrate alongside my digital camera.

With film I have made myself a promise: I will do everything slowly and methodically, and to adulterate the images as little as possible digitally. I have made very sure to frame, meter, focus, set up my shutter speed and aperture correctly, and to render the light as I want it to be seen, without needing to edit exposures later. For me the point of film will be to train my eye and my responses, as well as my brain to analyse light carefully and creatively.

The images here are from my first roll of street photographs taken very recently. I hope to write a longer article for 35mmc at some point in the future, when I’ve had more rolls developed and have formed a better opinion of film photography overall, and how I end up finding that alongside my digital rangefinder workflow.

You can follow my photography on Instagram, and also on my personal blog where I maintain my thoughts and experiences working as a creative and street photographer.