Back to Film

I must say, once I decided on a rangefinder camera it didn’t take long to decide which camera system I was going to choose.  The decision was rather simple given what I was looking for in a camera.

We had planned a Rick Steves tour of Scandinavia in June, a trip that we had to cancel.  I needed to decide which camera to take.  I have a Sony A7III with several zoom lenses and I could take that camera along with one or two lenses.  I have a Sony RX10 IV.  It’s not full frame, which is OK, but has a fixed zoom lens which has a crazy zoom range, 24-600 (35mm equivalent).  Lots of flexibility with either of these cameras, but both cameras need cables, chargers, batteries, SD cards and bags to carry the stuff in.  I also have the Canon F1, a simple camera to operate but is an SLR and as such is larger than a rangefinder.  I also have just 1 lens for the F1 so I would need to add to that collection. 

But would I want to just rely on using film, and B&W film at that?  I pictured us traveling through interesting towns and cities as well as awesome landscapes with beautiful colors everywhere we went.  Either of my Sony cameras would give me a color image that I could convert to B&W in my digital darkroom.  Whereas, B&W can’t capture the colors, well not directly, but it adds a much different interpretation to the scene.  I ‘see’ differently when I know all I have is B&W film in the camera, plus it’s not like I don’t have a color camera with me because I’ve got an iPhone in my pocket.

As in life there are trade-offs in photography.  Shooting digital has its challenges with size and weight of the cameras and lenses along with all the support equipment.  Whereas, shooting film is a lot slower, complicated it it’s own way, less flexible and limited options plus you have film to lug around.

So, what camera system to get!

The camera must be small with minimal controls, no extra buttons nor menus.  You just need to be able to open the camera, to put in and take out film, advance the film, trip the shutter and replace lenses.  Super basic.  However, there is one function that I need that requires a battery, a light meter and with that a means set the film speed or ASA.  An interesting thing about the battery is that the camera doesn’t need the battery to operate, it’s a totally mechanical system.  The battery and light meter are there just to ‘suggest’ a proper exposure.

The camera system needs interchangeable lenses.  Going back to my early days, prime lenses were king.  As zoom lenses improved, they became more prevalent, but the best lenses were primes, fixed focal lenses.  Prime lenses bring back zone focusing using the depth of field scale only available on prime lenses.  Prime lenses tend to be a lot smaller than zoom lenses as well.  True one needs to change lenses to change focal lengths but that is the tradeoff.

As I looked at my options I didn’t have to look far.  I decided on the Leica system knowing little about the available options.  So, off to my source of most information like this, YouTube.  I watched hours and hours of videos talking about Leica cameras and lenses.  What people liked and disliked.  Leica has a very dedicated following that freely expresses their passion for the platform.  After all the research I decided on the Leica M6.  The M3 was a very popular choice but that model didn’t have a light meter whereas the M6 does have one.  The M6 was produced between 1984 and 1998 and the M6 TTL from 1998-2002.  The only difference between the two models is the M6 TTL has TTL flash and a larger shutter speed button.  I’m not much of a flash user but the larger shutter speed knob was attractive.  It is much easier to change the shutter speed while looking through the viewfinder with the larger knob.

So, the Leica M6 TTL was the camera for me.