50 Summicron

 

Last week I acquired another 50mm Summicron-M vIV. It's recent manufacture, six bit coded and with the built in lens hood. The image above is from tests the first couple of days, an informal shot at the local convenience store, shot wide open. Of course it's sharp, it's a Summicron, but here's the proof, shot on the M10.

I already had a 50 Summicron, technically also a vIV but in the earlier mount with the focus tab and Canadian built. I bought that lens at Calumet Photo in Chicago for something like $300, about 22 years ago when many were unloading used analog equipment. It was cosmetically very rough but I got lots of good use from it. Even with all the wear it would be easy to sell it for lots more than I paid for it.

Why another one? The built in hood and the coding are advantages for current use on the digital body. It's clean, near mint condition, with the box and leather pouch and caps. The price was fair, toward the lower end of the range I've seen for clean examples recently and I've yet to lose anything on a Leica lens so there's that. But really I just wanted a newer and cleaner one and the opportunity presented itself, and there's been some recent unexpected additional income. Although it's the same optical formula as my older one, this one seems very slightly sharper on the M10, I won't speculate about why.

I like to have one lens on an M body for extended intervals, and the plan is for this to be my primary lens for the M10. It won't come off very often. For landscape outings I'll normally include a 28 Elmarit-M aspherical in the bag, small and light and also six bit coded so no chance of forgetting to enter the lens if changing back and forth. The 50 Summilux pre-aspherical will continue to live on the M6 body because I really prefer the way the 'lux renders on film but am not as happy with it on digital.

Leica M6TTL

 That's my well used M6TTL in the photo. Purchased new in 1999, it's created some of my best images over the years. It's usually paired with a 50mm Summilux as shown, a 1980s vintage pre-aspherical which has been very effective for wide open or low light photography; the 0.85x finder on this camera body has been a big help with that and makes focus easy.

This camera has had a lot of frames through it. There's some wear, which shows as silver on the zinc top plate. It has a little of the "bubbling" characteristic of the zinc top plate, and perhaps encouraged by the mild, humid winter rainy season conditions here on the coast and occasional fine salt spray from all those shoots at the dunes. It's not that noticeable and if anything is a good reminder that this is a camera to use, not to look pretty on a shelf. 

One of my few dislikes about the M4-2/M4-P/M6 series of bodies is the prominent white "Leica" on the front, I prefer to be a bit less obvious than that. So when the white began to scuff and flake off some years back, I used a toothpick to get the rest of it out of there. It's now much less obvious than the strongly lit photo would suggest, it's quite hard to see except up very close.

Using this body more often in recent weeks has reminded me that if necessary I could get by with just this one body and lens. The 50mm is my favorite on an M body and in the past I've gone possibly as long as two years at a time with this same lens mounted.

Anyway, I have four rolls of HP5+ ready to process, three of them from this camera and one a test in the IIIb. There's a bottle of HC-110 (what I prefer to use with HP5) on a FedEx truck on the way, supposedly to be delivered today, and also a few more rolls of film in that box.

Leica IIIb

 I'm just 27 frames into testing the recently acquired Leica IIIb. Not much, but the differences are obvious enough to perhaps allow a mini-review, a sort of first impressions post.

First some background: This isn't my first screw mount Leica. The first Leica I ever owned was a IIIf black dial acquired at a garage sale in about 1978 or 79. It was externally in mint condition, but had a few tiny pinholes in the shutter from being left on a closet shelf while wound since, probably, 1950-something. I was still a working photojournalist at the time and the IIIf wasn't a realistic option for that work, so it was a curiosity that I played with in the studio. Not long ago I chanced on a proof sheet of a roll shot through that camera, a studio series of Marlene who I did model comps for, and apparently shot the one additional roll for fun. Except for the few tiny pinholes, they're respectable images. There were a few other test rolls through that camera, but not long after someone offered four times what I'd paid for it. So I took the offer and put the money back into lenses for my pro rig which I could in turn use to earn more money. A logical choice at the time, although I did later wish I'd gotten that shutter fixed and had a little more time with that first Leica.

As a result of that earlier experience, it took only minutes to get the hang of the IIIb. 

The IIIb is in pretty good condition for an 85-year old camera. The top plate is excellent, just a few very minor scuffs, cleaner than most of my newer bodies. The baseplate has some larger scuffs, obvious but not bad compared to some older cameras. The leatherette appears to have been replaced, and there's a small tear in the front which may be from a botched install because it's otherwise pretty clean.  The camera has been apart, there are minor marks on the screws, and the shutter looks suspiciously clean and new. As far as I can tell everything works.

The 5cm f/3.5 collapsible Elmar is a little newer, post-war. Except for minor cleaning marks it's in good shape.

The camera is tiny, considerably smaller than an M-body. With the lens collapsed it easily slips into a jacket pocket and that's a tempting attraction. Add a wrist strap and it would be really easy to carry this anywhere.

For me the main limitation is the tiny rangefinder and viewfinder, after decades of M use they feel really small. The rangefinder seems to be accurate enough if one has time to focus carefully; the rangefinder image is at 1.5x so it's pretty easy to use when not rushed. The IIIb was the first model to move the viewfinder window right next to the rangefinder, so it's then pretty quick to shift the eye over just a bit, frame, and shoot. Except that for careful composition, that viewfinder is really tiny. It's also set up only for a 50mm lens, not an issue for me since that's my usual preferred focal length.

Most everything else is slow and deliberate. Trimming the longer film leader, loading carefully, winding and rewinding with knurled knobs, lifting the shutter speed dial to change settings, metering with a handheld meter (or sunny f/16 rule, on a bright day; I'm badly out of practice but long ago could estimate exposures in most conditions pretty accurately). Slow and deliberate is OK though, when the camera is for pure creative enjoyment.

My original intent was to run a couple of rolls of film through this and then put it on the shelf with only very rare use. It's kind of fun to play with so far though. It might come out to play a bit more often than originally planned, we'll see.

 Last weekend I attended a few events at Tamarkin Camera in Chicago. A reception, a photo walk, and an annual sales event. 

I was able to participate in only the beginning of the photo walk, a brief in-store presentation and then perhaps the first 45 minutes of a much longer near north side walk. Still, it was fun. And it's important to keep photography fun. Street photography for me is more about seeing than about taking photos, although on a good day both happen.

The next day I acquired a Leica IIIb, about 1938 vintage. The price was right because it hadn't been CLA'd, although everything works. Cosmetically it's less than perfect but not bad considering the age. A test roll is in progress after a couple of Main Street strolls. I don't expect to actually use this camera very often, the old screw-mount Barnack's are capable of quality images but they're not fast... this is more about enjoying the craftsmanship of an earlier age.

I'm back home after an almost three week trip, which was mostly work related. All the photo activity was at the end, and I brought only a digital body, flying with film is a hassle. About 30 images have been through post-production today, some from the photo walk and some from a pair of open space preserves. I did learn a couple of new tricks on this trip, one of them about digital. 

Also today I ordered some more film developer and a few more rolls of film. This coming weekend there's a local opportunity for some photos, and I'm planning to bring the M6.

Reviewing the Reviewer

 Today I stumbled on an online review of the Leica M10 which was less than completely positive. Most of the time when that happens it's someone who doesn't impress with their photographic knowledge, but this fellow seems to be a working pro. His opinion needs to be taken a little more seriously based on the better than average quality of his posted work. The way I'd sum it up is that given the type of work he does, I'm not surprised he prefers other platforms. That said, there are a couple of places where I think he at best fails to account for people who do things differently than he does, and at worst hasn't  stopped long enough to really think about a few things.

Which provides an opening for me to think through why I do what I do.

First, let's get the obvious out of the way. I completely agree with him that Leicas are absurdly overpriced. Now that I'm mostly retired, it's unlikely that I'll be buying any more of them.

Back when I began doing photography it was a little more complicated than that. As a working pro photojournalist from the age of 15, I couldn't afford a Leica then either. They wouldn't have worked for what I was doing at the time anyway. It was February 1971 when I started, with a borrowed Kodak Retina Reflex IV and three lenses for the first few months, slow and archaic and finicky. The Leica M4 was still in production, the M5 had just come out. The former wasn't an option because of the lack of a built in meter. The latter had not much size advantage over the other options of the time. More importantly, I was shooting a lot of sports. I needed longer lenses, and the rangefinder wasn't... still isn't... good at that. Thus I put my first earnings into a Nikkormat FTn and 50 and 135mm lenses. Those served me well, and I wore them out over the next two and a half years. I stayed in the Nikon ecosystem for a while, upgrading to an F2 and FM and better lenses, a different (slightly later) multi-coated 50 and 105 mostly.

About 1978 or so I got my first Leica, a IIIf found at a garage sale for an absurdly low price. I played with it in the studio, marveled at the build quality. The little early 1950s vintage 50mm f/3.5 was sharp, as long as one didn't shoot into the light. The early screw-mount body was slow to load, but in retrospect I could have used something like an M6 for the post-punk journalism I started doing about that time, if it existed yet. It didn't exist, not until 1986, three years after I was done with that work. So I used a Nikon. Years later I did shoot a few bands with an M6, and it was quite useful in that low-light up close photojournalism role.

For me, Leica happened in about 1998 or 99, when I was doing mostly street photography in Chicago and studio portraits. In that latter role it supplemented medium format. I'd shoot the big camera on a tripod with studio flash, and wanted something handheld for more spontaneous shots and the combination worked well. It was on the street though that the rangefinder was at its best.

Gradually as my photography moved out of the studio I developed a style rooted in the early photojournalism experience, a spontaneous approach of setting up a framework, letting the model play within that framework, and capturing whatever happened. Perhaps the timing was right, with Tri-X and Rodinal and gritty urban settings the look was successful for me at that time. I could have done it with other 35mm options, but the real answer is I enjoyed shooting with the Leica. The lack of a mirror let me get away with slower shutter speeds  in low light, the lenses were much better wide open than most of the competition and the shallow depth of field contributed to the look, and the ability to see outside the frame lines was well suited to the shooting style, allowing rapid adjustment. During these years I basically used two lenses, a 50mm Summilux and much less often a 35mm Summicron. Only once did I  try a longer lens, an ancient 135mm picked up on a whim for something like $65, and that for only a small part of one shoot.

The reviewers criticisms are more valid for digital, because Leica was at first late to that game. My M8 was an odd camera, sensitive into the infrared range, which sounds like a problem (and is for fashion work, where it can render some black fabrics as purple) but also gives a unique rendering of skin which can be pleasing. It was slow, with limited buffer, and erratic white balance. The 1.3x crop factor was strange, with a 35mm lens effectively acting like a 47mm lens. For some reason it also allowed remarkable print quality all the way up to 17x22 despite the relatively small sensor, by current standards. I used that camera right up until about a year and a half ago, when it was traded for the M10 and brought me more residual value than expected.

Until recently I haven't been shooting as much as several years back, and half of what I have shot has been on film. So the M10 hasn't really been pushed hard yet. The few serious shoots have gone well. The sets with Brooke and then with Chey produced excellent results. The M10 is faster, it's quieter (although still not as quite as the older film bodies), it's got a full frame sensor. It's the same size as an M6 TTL. That doesn't sound like much, but making the body a few mm thinner helps ergonomics tremendously, and also makes it joyful to go back and forth between film and digital bodies the same size and mounting the same set of lenses. I briefly thought the focus had wandered out of adjustment, but that turned out to be a lens, not the camera body. An old 50mm Summicron I'd bought 20 years ago for a very low price because it was cosmetically challenged finally gave out. Even Leica lenses aren't bullet proof it turns out, and I seriously abused this one as did whoever owned it before I did. It appears the rear element pair has started to separate. That's OK, I got my $300 out of that lens many times over. The only regret is that it balances a bit better on the digital body than the Summilux, and is a bit smaller, and I no longer really need that extra stop with improved modern low light sensor capability. So I'll be using it because it's there on the 'lux, not because it's essential.

I want to go after one criticism directly: The reviewer believes that rangefinders aren't accurate enough. I dispute that. Yes, they take a bit of practice. But today I pointed that 'lux at a test subject, focused quickly and shot a frame near close focus at f/1.4, and it was dead on. I can focus on a near eyelash just as quickly, and get it perfectly 95+% of the time, which is slightly better than I can do with auto focus. If he struggles with rangefinder focus, I'd say that's his lack of experience, not a lack of capability. And I'd argue that in really low light neither is easy, but the rangefinder is possible. One of those bands a few years ago, I got my shots in really poor light. A DSLR most of the time hunted without success for that same focus point, unable to get enough contrast to find it. One other factor: At age 17, I could manual focus my Nikon in any light, no problem. Today the eyes aren't as young, and manual focus on a ground glass takes a lot more care. The remaining options are auto focus, with or without EV, or a rangefinder. Any of those work.

The rest, I don't really disagree with him. If I were shooting weddings for pay as he does, I'd want a modern EV camera too. Most of the rest is personal preference. He doesn't mind over-complex menus, I do. I spent an entire career dealing with complexity, I don't need it in what I do for fun. He works 100 feet from his car, so a bag full of heavy gear and lenses is OK. I sometimes carry a camera 10 miles into rugged high elevation backcountry, so size and weight matter a lot to me. And so on.

Would I follow that path if starting out now? Probably not. I got in when pros were starting to dump analog gear and prices were more reasonable, and now they border on the absurd. My M8 was a demo at half price, and as a trade it covered a fair bit of the M10. All my lenses were acquired used. If I were a young photographer today, I might buy another IIIf as a toy, something to enjoy as a work of industrial art and use for fun and when not in a hurry, and then get something more cost effective for day to day work.