Thanks for the feedback guys. Many interesting comments and suggestions. Charlie, I think that's a good idea to do a tight edit of the 'good' shots (and get rid of the ones of us feasting and drinking, etc!) that may have a wider appeal. Maybe I'll do that today.''
The 50 Summicron was probably my 'default' lens for the most part, followed closely by the 35, then the 21, and finally the 90.
I think I spoke French for about 80% of the trip -- being Canadian, I took French for about 14 years, though living in Toronto never was really immersed in a French environment. So it was never really a problem. When we were in the Strasbourg area, I passed some of the speaking duties to my wife, as she is fluent in German.
Oradour is unreal -- quite sobering of course. The fact that an entire village was wiped out, and then left more or less as-is as a memorial has to be seen to be believed. I first became aware of Oradour from the 'World at War' series from the 1970's (Laurence Olivier narrated). The opening scene in episode 1 is of Oradour.
The illuminated castle is in Blois -- it's one of those 'Son et Lumieres' events that happen in various cities in France. My wife had been interested in seeing one of them, and this one happened to be on the Saturday we were going to be in that area. It was okay, but I had a bit of a time understanding all they were saying in the voiceover. Likely would have enjoyed it more if my French comprehension was a bit better.
Interesting that as I was going through the photos, I forgot about all the places we did in fact visit -- I completely forgot about Vichy and Lyon! And the one place that we found very interesting, Senlis, we discovered on our last day, and we had to catch an afternoon flight. Ah well, next trip I suppose.
The M9 performed great, though it did develop a number of dust marks on the sensor, and had to buy a little blower en route (I ended up sending the camera to Leica to get cleaned, and just got it back this week -- no charge). Think I had two guys during the entire trip ask about the camera.
For me France is best seen in black and white, so the few colour shots might be a bit jarring. Plus, the predominantly cloudy weather worked great for me, and gave that 'all-day' light that I tend to like.
I do wish that I had more people shots, but quite honestly didn't feel like being the aggressive photojournalist -- we were on vacation, after all! However, I did miss one shot that would have been a good one -- we were in Senlis, and something happened in front of us. I instinctively grabbed the camera, pressed the button and....nothing! I hadn't used the camera for about 10 minutes, and the camera went into 'power saver' mode. The first press of the button 'woke' it up, and by the time I pressed the button the second time to take the shot, the moment had already passed. Would have gotten the shot with my M2! If I had the 'Auto Power Off' in the 'Off' position, would the camera have behaved differently???
I'll try to do a tighter edit today, and create a separate album in Flickr. Many thanks for all the responses!
