I purchased my silver Leica M4 rangefinder in Melbourne in the late 1970s. It quickly became my walk around camera and I became very comfortable with a rangefinder as opposed to the then popular and more versatile single lens reflex film cameras. Unfortunately, the Leica's rangefinder was damaged when it fell to the ground in Brisbane around 2011. The camera strap broke and the camera hit the concrete floor with a thud. I then lost it for around 10 years or so.
It was found in 2021 and in early 2022 I sent it to Leica in Germany to have the rangefinder repaired and the camera serviced. I then bought a second hand, modern Summicron-M 35mm f/2 lens.
Despite being made in the 1960s this 60 year camera now looks and works as if it were new. I could see why it's classically minimal, industrial design or aesthetic would appeal to collectors; and why it has a much higher monetary value today than a contemporary digital camera. (The Leica's value keeps on increasing).
I started photographing with the unmetered Leica M4 using black and white film in a very modest way this year --the M6 was the first metered M rangefinder (manufactured between 1984 to 2003). I made photos using Ilford HP 5 Plus film whilst I was on the various poodlewalks in the local bushland. This one of bark along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga is one of the early photos that I made:
I was trying to see the world around me in black and white after years of photographing in colour. A
colour version is here.
I struggled. I'd lost the knack. I found the bush to be a much more difficult subject for black and white
compared to colour.
The M4 Leica was limited in the low light situations of the bushland compared to the digital Sony A7 R111, which is now my walk around camera. The Sony is technologically far more versatile and its conversions to black and white look pretty okay as well.
Film was still ahead of digital in the mid-1990s in that the image quality of digital was very low and digital cameras were incapable of competing with analog film cameras. Though scanning backs, which scanned the image line by line, with their long exposure times, produced image quality, film d still ruled supreme for a few more years until the digital photography revolution set in at the beginning of the 21st century. Most photographers and other members of the photographic industry were surprised at how quickly digital photographic technology displaced film.
Digital camera technology dramatically improved in the decade between 2010 and 2022. I quickly became aware whilst using the M4 that this was old technology. It still makes sense to use film with a large format camera in a digital age, but 35mm? It's definitely niche. So why bother?
Is the clinging on a refusal to let go of the past? Nostalgia? Most probably. Fond memories? For sure. Did using the Leica M4 with Ilford film give anything that was photographically better in terms of image quality than the Sony? It is not obvious. Did the Leica M4 give me anything that was photographically different --- a special x-- to the Sony? Again it is not obvious. So where does that leave me? Caught up reacting against the sheer volume of visual culture to avoid being trapped within a huge content-spewing photographic factory? Stepping away from that does make sense.
On the other hand, many people would say that I should have cut my loses when the camera broke in 2011. I should have said goodby to Leica rangefinder and 35mm black and film. It would have been more sensible to have put the money that I'd saved up over the decade into a
Fujifilm GFX 100s or a digital
Leica M11 instead. Embrace the future! And these people would, more than likely, be right. The best option is to sell the camera to a collector.
On the other hand, a good photographer is able to make good photographs with any camera.
