5 Frames with a Leica iiig, Summitar and FP4+ at 400asa

I have written about the Leica iiig in the context of other Leicas here. Briefly summarising these are the key differences compared to the M3 for me:

Advantages

Smaller and lighter – not by much but it makes a difference.
The lever around the rewind knob allows me to adjust rangefinder focus whether I am wearing distance glasses, reading glasses or going commando.
A totally stupid reason but it looks more impressive with all the levers and knobs than the M3.

Disadvantages

The major one is you are stuck with LTM (screw mount) lenses.

Of course there are other differences that may matter to or bother you more – the main one being loading. The recommended method (not the risky one mentioned by Hamish in his otherwise excellent in-depth review) is as follows:

1. Trim the leader. Between the 13th and 14th hole on the already shortened side of the film cut a gentle curve extending the length of the narrow part of the leader. Make sure there are no jagged edges – these can get caught and tear. Insert the film into the take-up spool making sure the film extends perpendicular to the spool.
2. Load the film into the camera. Put the lens cap on. Gently rewind the film to take up the slack. Fire three or four shots making sure the take-up spool is turning evenly. If it isn’t turning after several shots then it hasn’t caught on the sprockets and you need to retry loading. Be aware that the process of inserting the film into the camera if not done evenly for both spool and film can mis-align the leader so that it misses the sprockets.
3. If all is well turn the rewind lever and gently rewind the film until you feel the tension of the film in the take-up spool. Then turn the rewind lever back to ‘advance’, reset the frame counter to minus one and off you go. Generally I get 38 – 40 frames depending on film.

Once you’ve done it a couple of times it no longer seems so much of a hassle – just a minor one.

Lens

The Summitar comes in several versions – mine is the 10 bladed coated version from circa 1950. Although I shot with the Summitar on this occasion my favourite lens for the iiig is the f3.5 Elmar – the lens extends little more than the depth of the lens cap once collapsed making the camera pocket-able.

Film and development

Some years ago I compared FP4+ at 125asa vs 400asa with side by side shots using two cameras. I could find no difference in recorded dynamic range or image quality. Of course this was to some extent a function of the “normal contrast” images I was taking at the time. This time it is fair to say low-light image detail was lost in high contrast scenes.

The film was developed in Rodinal 1:24 for 20 minutes at 20degC.

Images were scanned on a Sony A7Riii with a Sigma 105mm lens at f5.6. No image processing was performed other than setting the black point and a straight line contrast curve to the white point.

Images

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