The Leicas in my life, the Leicas I've missed

My story is a bit different. I have never owned a M or a digital Leica but I got started on Barnacks a few years and began an unintentional collection. Now I have a Leica I(A), I(C) II, III, IIIf (2), Standard, If, and for good measure, the replica/reissue Leica 0. I've never felt the need to modernize, even for the Ig. I'm so backward I almost never use the rangefinder and don't use an exposure meter with 95% of my shooting. I shoot quite often with the Barnacks and used each camera at least once last year. If I could only have 2(!) cameras, they would be my Leica I(C) and a Holga.

Just yesterday I recalled our visit to the Leica "headquarters" in Wetzlar! It was a show of admiration of Leica and its many products. We were maybe 10 RFF members, and we were greeted by Leica CEO Oliver Kaltner. Those were the good times.

My father had a Leica IIIf kit and used it in his dentistry as well as for family photos. Of course I wanted a Leica, too. I couldn't touch his ... it was, to him, a sacred object. To me, it was a camera...

My first Leica(s) was a pair of ancient "junkers", as the sales guy at Olden Camera called them in 1970. "Why do you want this old junk?" He sold me both a IIc and a IIf along with an Elmar 3.5cm f/3.5 and 5.0cm f/3.5, in beat condition, for $99. I only had $105, and he said, "I'm leaving you $6 to get a hot dog and pay for the train to get home." Nice guy. 😀 The following year I bought my Nikon F Photomic FTn and 50/1.4 after I'd saved up for the entire year.

Over the years, although I managed to buy and use a bunch of different cameras, everything always seemed to return me to a Nikon SLR and Leica RF camera. I had FMs, FM2s, FE2s, F2 and F3 Nikons, M3, M2, M4-P, M4, M6TTL, M6, M4-2 M9, M-P 240, M-D 262, M10-R, M10-M ... some of them more than once. I stopped buying Nikons after the autofocus models came out, although I had a Nikon D750 briefly and sold when I bought the Leica SL 601. Just didn't like the way Nikon had gone with their body designs, and I still don't use autofocus much, it just seems more trouble than it's worth in convenience.

I've had tons of other cameras ... Olympus (both film and digital), Panasonic, Pentax, Canon, Hasselblad, Rollei, Minox, etc etc.

But the baseline has always circled back to the Leicas. The M10-R, M10-M, M4-2, and M6TTL 0.85x are my base kit. I use them a lot; I've accreted a bunch of lenses for them. They work. Yeah they were expensive; doesn't matter. To me, they're just good cameras that work, and since my priority in living circles around my photography, that's where I choose to spend my expendable money.

G



enjoy!