A few years back (or more preciceliy, in 2018) I more or less forced myself to love Leica. I found an M3 rangefinder in a niche serial number range with most of the later upgrades but with the more aesthetically pleasing buddha ears..
Confused?! Well then, you, dear reader, are not a LEICA PERSON! I admit, I went full bore with my obsession, watching every online video I could find, and eventually purchasing the seminal work of Erwin Puts (1944-2021) called the Leica Compendium, a more or less complete catalogue of all their film cameras and lenses.
I purchased the book directly from the man, so just a few years before his passing. I pored over MTF charts, read his lens reviews, before settling on just ONE Leica lens, the 90mm f2.8 M. An absolute work of art, an engineering marvel.. and a lens I hardly used. To this I added a more functional Canon "Sumilux".. a 50mm f1.4 LTM lens (for those few readers who are not a LEICA PERSON.. it means Leica Thread Mount) which saw marginally more action.. but far too little to justify the expense.
You see, though I might have considered myself a LEICA PERSON.. I was definitely NOT a rangefinder person. I knew this of course, when I was given my father's Canon 7 with the absolutely magnificent 50mm f0.95 lens.. which after a few rolls ended up sitting in the cupboard (it's still there, after all these years). So why persist with the rangefinder madness? Perhaps my problem was that I had used an inferior Canon rangefinder, and the Leica was the ticket. And the Leica M3 WAS superior in almost every way to the Canon. The weight of a gold ingot, machined to Rolex levels of mechanical perfection (or maybe it's the other way around.. Rolexes are machined like Leicas..). It was truly a work of art, and a fabulous machine, and one that I simply could not use.. In the end I sold it for a modest profit, but I did not miss it. I mean.. it's not like I could wear it on my wrist!
However.. the love affair with Leica HAD been kindled, and so I decided to try out their SLR line, being more in tune with my personal preference. My first serious camera had been an SLR, the Yashica FX2000 followed some years later by the Pentax K1000.. the most basic camera you could hope to find. So off I went to Ebay in search of some Leicas to play with.. and found myself with three. Just sounds like a good number I guess. First up was the R4, followed closely by an R7, last of the "traditional" SLR Leicas.. and rounded out by the Hunchback of Solms, the R8. I fell for the R8 after trying out a friend's camera, as even though it was chunky and heavy, it has hewn from a solid block of metal, and evoked the spirit of the M3 with it's watch-like precision, that the R3 to R7 line simply did not, with plastic dials and bubbling top plates. Then came the lenses, bought and sold in feverish fashion, as I tried to find optical perfection (with an eye to budget).. I mean optical perfection would have set me back several tens of thousands of dollars, so I had to tread carefully. True, R lenses are generally cheaper than analogous M lenses, but ever since film-makers discovered they could adapt these Leicas to cinema cameras, prices have been going up. I bought and (stupidly) sold a 50mm f2
Summicron, thinking the f2 was too slow, and then just as quickly bought and sold a 50mm f1.4 Summilux.. which was absolutely dreadful wide open. I mean, why would one buy a fast lens and then shoot stopped down to f8. And then I bought another Summicron, which in my experience is the sharpest with the most pleasant bokeh of any of the 40 odd 50mm lenses that I've used in my life. Even better than my Canon 0.95 dream lens (you remember, the one that's still in the cupboard?). I tried some late zooms from Leica, the rather astounding 21-35 f3.5 and 34-70 f4 and both were beautifully built, with ranges that were quite useful.. but the relative slow speed and resultant dark viewfinder meant they were not my favourites, and were soon moved on.
But in the sine-wave that is our life's journey, my period of expansion into the Leica R world was followed by a period of contraction. Gone now is the R7, fun as it was to use.
Gone is the R8..
which I regretted as soon as I'd sold it.. But in my mind.. I had a plan.. to own the best that was ever produced, of anything. And what's better than an R8?! Well, an R9 of course! Released in 2002, 6 years after the R8... I must say, in 6 years they didn't make any major changes! BUT... it is the very last film slr from Leica, and the refinements are quite nice. Lighter, focus and recompose actually works (my R8 would reset the meter when you recomposed.. defeating the objective...pun intended). And it's rather chunky design is actually quite pleasant to hold. A lock on the mode dial, which I was constantly moving by accident on my R8, and a nice little frame counter on the top plate. Small things. But they perfected the already pleasant design of the R8. In black of course..
As for lenses, I've settled on a trifecta. A 35mm Sumicron, which a LEICA PERSON knows is an f2 lens. Then my 50mm Sumicron.. which is simply stunning. And finally an absolutely dense lens, the 80mm summilux f1.4.. a singular portrait lens! These would by my only lenses.. a perfect numbers. Oh, but wait.. I haven't mentioned my other camera.. the one I didn't sell? Leica's last fully mechanical SLR, the R6.2. In absolutely perfect condition. But if I'm honest.. I shoot with the R9 more often. The second body is just so I can swap between colour and black and white. Or when I want to be a bit more discrete, as it's profile is about half that of the R9!
Will this be the end of the story?! Or will I be tempted by yet more bodies and lenses? If (my) history is anything to go by, if GAS principles hold true, and if the perfect number of anything to own is N+1, with N being the current number owned... then yes, I will most likely indulge in a lens here or there.. My penchant for landscapes means I will eventually need a wider lens. And I quite enjoyed the 135mm focal range in the past, so having another (lighter) portrait lens may be welcome. However those are only desires.. my needs are most assuredly already met by what I have!
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