I have been toting the M6 and a lens or two around with me just about everywhere. I was even inspired to start a couple of longer term projects with it. I have shot only black and white so far and have used a mishmash of old 7 or 8 year old film I had laying around. Tri-X, TMAX3200 TMZ, etc. I have liked it so much that I actually put in a big film order for 35mm film last week. It cost me about $170 this will probably hold me off on “needing” an M9 for a long time.

The camera is great – having it with me is great – being “limited” to 35mm and 50mm is great. It is a freeing experience. I forgot what it is like to travel light. The film I have shot so far has it’s flaws. The biggest one is me but I am sure I will get back in shape in another month or two. The other flaws are that the TMZ is almost useless after 8 years. You have not seen fog like this. It’s bad. The Tri-X is useable but still fogged a bit. That is why I got new film. Point is it is cheap and it is fun and on top of that I get fantastic results – at least by my definition.

I also noticed that people are still voting on my Leica M9 poll. The results have cooled off a lot since the introduction. Far more people are not considering it as a purchase now. I wonder if the same demographic decided to make a future investment in something else or just decided they don’t really need a new camera? I hope it is the latter.

The image at the top was shot on my Leica M6 with a 35mm Summicron wide open or thereabouts. Really slow shutter speed – like 1/8th-ish, hand held in very very low light – very low backlight. A nightmare of an exposure situation when you need to shoot quickly. I kind of like the image  - it is interesting to me. Yea I know that everything is not in focus that is what happens when you shoot about wide open and close. Yea I know there is a little flare – that is what happens when you shoot into your light source in a big big way wide open. Yea I know there is subject motion. It is still interesting to me – I love the expressions on each of there faces – this was the moment when the wedding planner let the bride and her best friends know 5 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start that A) The flowers were not here and could not be located and B) The best man was not here with another one of the ushers and could not be located. Priceless and a great example of why you do not want me as your wedding photographer.

RB

I don’t do anything with them. I don’t hang them up on walls or show them to people. The APUG discussion was a rare exception where I sought out a bunch of people thoughts on which particular similar image they thought was print worthy. Hey I am trying to go green here I don’t think I want to actually make 3 different prints of the same staircase with different compositions. I didn’t get an answer – definitively – as to which one was printworthy. There were supporters and detractors of each image. Who would have thought? I guess that didn’t surprise me, what did surprise me is how many folks have similar secret subjects – things that for no particular reason they are compelled to shoot. I am not talking about general things like people or landscapes. I am talking about very specific things like stairs, doors, windows, electric meters, dead trees, you name it. Not just once or for a week but over years and years.

Does every photo enthusiast have that other think that they are drawn to shoot? Do you have something like that? Would love to hear what it is. I am sure it would make those of us that have that secret obsession feel a little less strange. The attached images are the latest grabs from a walk I took to warm up the Leica M6 for it’s come back as my carry around camera. They were shot on Kodak TRI-X and processed in Pyrocat HD.

RB

I did order a replacement small batch tank and a bunch of fresh film. I ordered some fresh stuff in both medium format and 35mm. I figured if I am going to fire up the wet process there was no reason to just shoot with the M series. I will give my medium format film stuff some exercise as well. This is actually fun. The images included with the post are two frames from the beginning of that last roll that didn’t have any obvious faults. Again 7 or 8 year old TRI-X that I had never processed. There are actually a bunch of frames that have some potential. I wonder why I chucked this roll to the side way back when? Most likely I got busy with commercial stuff and didn’t have a slot for the the film type/developer for it and forgot about it.

For anybody that is remotely curious the developer that I have been using is Pyrocat HD in glycol. I have a bit of experience with it in the past and now that it comes premixed in glycol it should keep extremely well – the glycol doesn’t do anything but preserve the stock solutions better than water but that is important if I am not going to be doing high volume work. The liquid kit cost about $30 and makes 50 liters of working solution. For my uses that is about 100 rolls of film. I could probably double that if I change my process a bit but 500 ml is about the practical limit for a single roll of film in my setup. So I guess the price is about 30¢ a roll – not too extravagant.

The fresh films that I ordered are Kodak TRI-X 400 (TX), TRI-X 320 (TXP), TMAX 100 (TMX), TMAX 400 (TMY), and Efke R100. For the uninitiated, the TX and TXP are completely different films – both wonderful – but Kodak should have probably named them something completely different. The only thing they have in common is spectral response. The TMX is one of my go to films, the TMY is the new version that I have never tried so I am going to calibrate it and see what I think – just in case TRI-X goes away or maybe I will be surprised and find that I love it for some reason. The R100 is to see if this is actually the same really old style stuff that gives me results like Veripan – I tried some of it a long time ago and it had a really nice scale so we will see.

RB

You may also remember that I have pooh poohed all of the small cameras that have hit the scene since the beginning of time. None have held a candle to my DSLR stuff in terms of quality so I don’t own one. They all still make crappy images unlike my small Leica M6. I guess I got spoiled 25 years ago when my small Leica “travel” kit produced fantastic images, maybe better than all of my big SLR junk. I guess my standards for small camera images have been set impossibly high. Heck even if small cameras produced adequate images, not great, but adequate, I was just not able to get over feeling so compromised. I ended up using my D200 and a smaller lens kit as my “small” camera.

Finally, finally, finally Leica has released the M9 earlier this month. The M9 is exactly what I have been craving. Finally my small camera is back and it’s digital. All of my Leica glass will work just fine on it with no magnifier effect, not so bad for DSLR’s but killer for a rangefinder, rendering the M8 series useless for the lens kit I owned. Finally no more feeling like I would love to bring my Leica M6 but I am doing that for convenience so I will have to deal with inconvenient  film, ahhh screw it I will just take the D200. Finally.

I am getting an M9 with my proceeds from earlier this summer. That is final. I may wait a month or so but this is a done deal. I may even buy myself a lens for the M9 as well, not that I need any more lenses. Maybe I will get something outrageous like the new Noctilux, like I don’t have enough fast Lieca 50′s. Hey this is RB-o-nomics at work. I was set on spending 10,000, I ended up not spending it, so now anything that is 10,000 or under is free – you see that money was already psychologically gone anyway. Hmmmmm, M9+Noctilux, same $10,000 bucks but I will get a forever lens that will probably double in value over the next 10 years since nobody in their right mind buys them except crazy people and when they stop making them the 14 made will cost like $1mm. This plus I will have so much fun using this thing for like the first 6 months vs the $10,000 in same old same old Nikon bodies that are great cameras but will be worth spit in 2 years. The M9 will still be worth spit also but Leica spit at least and that would only be half of the $10,000 investment or so.

I just had to post an image that I shot with my Leica M6. This was shot with my 90mm Elmarit at 2.8, wide open, 1/125 on Kodak TRI-X pushed to 1600 processed in believe it or not PMK pyro. Obviously not the first time I tried that combo. Ooooooh I cannot wait. This is the first time that I have had gear lust in like ummmm, 5 years.

RB

Moving on you can check the story out here. There are a couple things to think about if you take a look at the piece that I linked. If you ever think there is nothing to photograph close to home let this be an inspiration. Now this guy (Danny Wilcox Frazier) spent a long, long time creating this and it shows but I will bet there are a thousand things for you to start work on in your neck of the woods – just make sure it’s important to you.

Another thing that became obvious as I watched the epilogue and interview at the end with Frazier, namely the camera he chose to shoot with. It appears to be a Leica M6 or M7 which means he shot this on film. To tell you the truth I don’t know if I would choose to use my Leica gear for a project like this but I just might. Why? Well, the Nikon D3 is a fantastic machine when coupled with my 28-70 AFS but it’s just too stinking big and intrusive. That thing scares the crap out of all but the most jaded and professional models. The D700 even with a smaller prime would still be a completely different dynamic than the Leica. Where does that leave me? I could buy an M8 if I wanted to spend the cash but that would cause all of my lenses to become virtually obsolete, at least at the wider and normal end of the spectrum. I could go with a Canon G9 or one of the competitors but that would leave me with are really small sensor that bugs the crap out of me when using the maximum apertures afforded in terms of DOF aesthetics. I guess I would probably go with either my Leica or my D700 with smallish lenses.

Just something to think about. God I wish someone like Cosina would make an M-mount full size sensor compact camera that made any kind of monetary sense. Maybe even Nikon hey how about the D700 sensor in an RF body and a couple of really nice F-mount primes from Zeiss? How come my Leica “full frame” F1.4 lenses are sooooooo much smaller than my SLR lenses? Even the primes? Damn It! I guess I am back to shooting the Leica for stuff like this, the new micro 4-3 cameras just do not cut it.

I definitely would use Aperture to organize, keyword, caption, and edit.

RB