Working as a pro for the last 50 years I never had the extra cash for a Leica. Any time I had ‘extra’ cash it went towards my work gear, lighting or Nikon film cameras and then Canon Digital gear. I rarely ever saw a Leica out in the wild. But they were always there …
The other day, we decided to go for a day trip to the beach. In Worcester where I live, the closest beaches are on the Bristol Channel in Somerset – so that’s exactly where we went.
Despite this relative close proximity, we’ve never been to Brean sands. We’ve been to Burnham-on-Sea, a bigger town just down the channel, and I’ve been to Weston-Super-Mare just up around the other side of Brean Down when I was a kid, but never Brean Sands itself. We’ve talked about it a lot of times, but with it being 90 miles away, it mostly seems just a little bit too far to spontaneously travel to when the the primary goal is really just to take the dogs for a walk.
Unfortunately…
I got into the Leica business last summer by an accident. To be precise, I had some m/39-glass already for my A7, but never had a Leica body because Leica is synonym for expensive, and I’m a sparfuchs, as germans say.
Leica and film. Two words that seem to be forever linked in my mind. After playing around with a Leica Monochrom digital for a while it was inevitable that I would end up trying out a Leica film camera. After hours of pondering I decided to go for an M4-P body and a 1976 Summicron 35mm lens. My thinking was that I would save a bit of money by going with a meterless camera body and spend the majority of the cash on a vintage Summicron lens. I admit there was some trepidation in going meterless but I reasoned that it would help me build up more awareness of lighting conditions and add to the magic.
Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is modifying – or indeed having modified – a Leica rangefinder. Earlier this year I took the plunge and sent my Leica M3 to Alan Starkie of Cameraworks-UK. It went with a list as long as my arm, and came back a work of art. So …
My Leica M3 Titan Reverse Panda & Leica M4-P Super-Rat – CameraWorks-UK Custom Cameras Read More
