I finally have my Leica M240s set up exactly the way I like them. I have thumb grips mounted in each hot shoe. Each camera has a +2.0 diopter screwed into the eyepiece (dammit Leica; $180 for one small piece of glass? Yeah, I get it...gotta preserve the brand..), a small, black leather half case both protecting the bottom plate of the cameras while adding nice finger grips at the front. But very understated and quite cheap...non-Leica. About $34 each for the leather cases. A nice, short, happy and totally mismatched (color-wise) leather strap on each. The straps are from Small Rig. They are tan leather. Of course I would have preferred black (I think) but the company only offers one color. I'm sure, now that I've bought three of the tan leather ones the new, black ones can't be far behind.
Having used the cameras with the above features and additions in place for a while now I am very satisfied. I'm sure M10 users, and users of the first two generations of Sony A7(variants) will question my putting a leather case on the bottom of the cameras which does not include a little flap to access the battery or memory card. Yes, you have to remove the case to do those things. But here's the deal. The battery in the M240 lasts (almost) literally, forever. I shot for hours in downtown yesterday with the camera turned on for the entire time. I shot hundreds of frames. I chimped like a first time digital camera owner. I even used live view from time to time. When I got back to the office and checked the battery was still at 80% full. Much different than my SL cameras. And, from what I hear, much different than the experiences of Leica M10 users. (thinner camera, smaller batteries...).
Every time I use these cameras I learn something new and at the same time feel more at home with them. It makes daily photography more like an exercise and less like some sort of big undertaking.
I had an odd thought as I walked down the main drag across from the biggest university in our state. Not a single person on the crowded street had any sort of camera in view. No one had a camera over a shoulder or on a neck strap. No one was paying much attention to anything around them. And I wondered how we'll remember these random moments in time differently than the past eras when Garry Winogrand and a legion of Winogrand wannabes stalked the streets around campus with "serious" cameras hanging off one, or both shoulders. Would we have evidence of what life looked like today when we look back from the viewpoint of twenty years in the future? Will it matter or will we all be living in the Matrix by then? If, indeed, we are not already.
When I was a student and practicing photography as a hobby it seemed that the preferred camera of female photographers was the Olympus OM-1. All the guys aspired to own some variant of the Leica Ms or rangefinders by other makers. The few who wanted to be photojournalists instead of fine art guys embraced the Nikon world. In 1974 it was all F2s or Nikkormats --- soon to be replaced by either F3s or Nikon FM cameras. But the point is that one couldn't walk down one of the streets on or adjacent to The University without bumping into an aspiring photographer every 100 yards (or, on a nice day, every 25 yards).
Old duffers and people who haven't kept up with culture constantly moan about Leicas being "worn" by photographers who are trying to show off. But show off for who? Judging from this morning's walk no students or faculty in the area had any interest in any camera and probably never heard of the brand before. If they lifted their collective heads up from their phone screens to see what camera I was using I'm sure 99% of them would think "My grandfather had a camera like that. Poor old guy. Maybe he can't afford a Sony or a Canon."
The idea that young thieves are cruising through crowds of people, hoping to identify Leica cameras, and their vulnerable users from which to steal said cameras is just flat out laughable. A holdover from a time when people read photo magazines, believed that there were differences between current camera brands and were afraid to travel out of the country because of...crime. If someone in a prosperous city is out to steal your Leica because it's a Leica you'll like find that thief to be in their late sixties or maybe seventies. Cruising the tourist hot spots with their walkers and resting up to be able to make a quick getaway once they get their liver spotted hands on your stuff. Young people? Dream on.
At any rate, I spent all morning walking through and around the campus and taking photographs. I saw no other person carrying or using any sort of camera whatsoever. In fact, no one even stopped to take a photo of anything with their phone. And it was such a gorgeous day....
I guess photographers who still use dedicated to purpose cameras are operating in our own little bubble or dream world. If you see a bunch of people around you with expensive cameras slung over their shoulders you are probably at a photography workshop and you've perhaps forgotten that you actually did sign up for one. Otherwise you have accidentally attended an air show or a craft festival. But out in the real world? It's one gigantic camera-free zone. Well, except for me and you and some other people who've spent forty or fifty years developing the habit of photographing. Everyone else has moved on...
Inadvertently we may emerge as the people who've saved a visual record of what life is like right now. Cuz I gotta tell you that no one else is...
Why a Leica M240? Because they work, they're cheap (relatively), they are different --- and that's always good, and they are actually very low profile. So, maybe you'll get one and I can bump into you in the streets and we can tease each other about how all the young thieves are ignoring us so they can steal Sony cameras instead. They're easier to pawn. At least that's what I hear from law enforcement... YMMV.
there is endless construction around campus. Huge dormitories that are
more like fancy condos. Amazing wealth flowing into big universities.
Is scooter culture subsiding? Not seeing many people using them today.
One of the new high rise luxury dorms across from campus. Six or seven other huge
private dorms under endless construction.
My favorite coffee shop on the drag.
Two different businesses commingling signage messaging.
Today's answer to the "Red Couch" phenom from years ago.
Little glimmers of Austin/UT campus history peek out from time to time.
Mobile hotel parked in front of a residential co-op on Guadalupe St.
So, Dirty Martin's (original name until the 1990s) has been making hamburgers and French fries and pairing them with beer since the 1920s. They've been in exactly the same place. They recently defeated a city attempt to zone them out of existence. I haven't eaten there since I was an undergraduate but every time I walk past I promise myself that I'll grab some old UT friends and head over there for an unhurried lunch. It could happen. Really. I don't remember ever getting sick after eating there but I'm betting my gastrointestinal system was a bit more robust in 1974...
"Americana" Austin style. A combination of weird taco trucks and national brands.
Tan leather strap on a black camera. What a faux pas.
How do I manage to get out the door with stuff like that?
Probably any lack of adult supervision...
The only person to pay any attention to me today was an huge, hulking Department of Public Safety trooper with a felt cowboy hat, reflective sunglasses and big-ass Glock Pistol hanging off his belt. He pegged me as trouble from a distance but by the time he got close he realized it was just one of those harmless old guys with a Leica. Probably lost and wandering around looking for his car. I smiled. He didn't. Still playing the hard ass. He wandered off to harass someone else.
I found my car...
Still happy with my M240 - and I suspect I’ll probably never need more than three or lenses for it.
ReplyDeleteMy teen-aged nephew has a newfound interest in classic cameras (film and digital) so I showed him my M240. He enjoyed it and took to focusing with the rangefinder surprisingly quickly. But he expressed mild surprise when I told him that cameras like these were considered compacts from the 1930s through 60s - used by photojournalists in the field, even during wartime. I pointed out to him that the alternatives in the day were those big Speed Graphics used by many newspaper reporters, and huge field cameras.
As for the Leica brand - you guessed it. It meant nothing to him. His father, on the other hand, was suitably impressed. I have to wonder how much longer Leica will be able to pull off its premium price strategy in a world where most of its customers are aging out.
Meanwhile, did you ever find your additional Leica flashes, Kirk? I sent you a link by email.
I guess you can say that Leica M240 is relatively cheap, well actually you did say that. Haha, but I am not sure I would want to spend $3000 plus for 12 year old technology. And not to be a naysayer, but the real problem with Leica is the lenses. Not because you can get reasonably priced lenses for it because you can, but when I had one (a Leica monochrome) I was always jonesing for the next Leica lense. I once read that someone compares them to little jewels and that is definitely what they are. Beautiful and perfect but all of them are really beyond reach in the money department, at least for me, and once you add the $3000 camera with a couple of beautiful Leica lenses, i find it in crazy territory insofar as expense. If I got a Leica M240. I would immediately lust for the 35mm and 50mm summicrons and then boom I would be at the price point of a used 330 BMW. I mean sure, you can stick a voigtlander or zeiss on there, but to be snobby,, A Leica camera deserves a Leica lens.
ReplyDeleteWe have become Stone Age relics. AI will be able to recreate the scenes we wish to see, no need to record them now.
ReplyDeleteOnly twice since 2009, when I started shooting with the Leica digital M cameras, has anyone noticed what I had around my neck. Once while doing a portrait session with a woman who had been born and raised in Germany, I commented that my other camera was a Leica. She had never heard of it. Apparently, as Kirk has surmised, no one notices so I feel safe in public :)
ReplyDeleteKirk, your images with your M240 are a constant reminder that my M240 is good enough for my purposes. While the "latest and greatest" always has its attraction, there is only so much you can do to an M to improve it without damaging its appeal.
You should have documented the big ass Glock Pistol guy. People like that deserve to have someone with a Leica take their picture.
ReplyDeleteThings seem relatively safe in Austin as it is here. However it seems that for the most part what attracts snatch and grab thieves only exists in Austin for short periods of time. What I am referring to are affluent, distracted tourists. You wouldn't be able to casually walk around the tourist hot spots in San Fransisco with your 240. The stats indicate you would be relieved of it within an hour. For the most part though I concur with your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Calgary is an anomaly but when I am out and about taking photos I quite often see people totting real cameras. Not just old farts like us but teens too and everything in between. I have no idea why? I don't find downtown Calgary very photogenic. Although our pathways and parks are pretty. Well for those two and half weeks of summer anyway.
I have a buddy who has way to much money and has both an M11, M11-P and Leica Monochrom. If I can ever catch him in town he says he will lend them to me. Should be fun.
Eric
Eric, I guess a lot has changed in SF since I was last there. I did a gig for a tech company for a week back in 2016 and I walked everywhere for a week. Chinatown, the Square, the wharf, etc. Never had a moment's trouble. And while I wasn't wearing Leicas on that trip I did have some nice camera stuff with me. I guess I'm just very intimidating being a whopping five foot eight inches tall and weighing in at 156 pounds. Very intimidating.
ReplyDeleteI am heading back to SF to see the Irving Penn show at the De Young at the end of the month or the beginning of April. I will have a 240 over one shoulder. C'est la vie. I'll bet you no one will care.
My friend Paul and his wife were there last month. No problems anywhere and I'm 100% certain he was carrying something nice with him.
The biggest magnet for personal crimes is the exuding of paranoia.
JCF, No. I should not photograph the enormous cop with the big gun. This is Texas. I don't really fear criminal activity but law enforcement? Some of those people are crazy.
ReplyDeleteYour photo and thoughts about Dirty Martin's reminded me of the great, now-departed F+T Diner just off the MIT campus in Kendall Square. A couple of Teamsters in one boot and some Nobel Prize winners like Paul Samuelson having a relaxed lunch in the next booth.
ReplyDeleteBest dill pickles in existence and, toward the end of the year when we undergrads/grad students were to poor to buy a real lunch, F+T would sell you a large paper of wonderful pickles, enough to make the stomach stop growling.
The area is now high-tech and biotech central, with massive research towers all about, but it certainly doesn't have nearly the same "character". Maybe that's a good thing, though, as the area back in the 1970s generally looked like more or less like Berlin at the end of WWII.
There must be some leather craftsmen or women left in Texas?
ReplyDeleteYou really ought to get one to die your straps black.
Then in a few years you would have brown “patina” showing through.
Even better, how about Texas rawhide straps with the hair left on? ;)
I just hang a smallish Canon with a 35mm round my neck and another with an 85mm or 135mm on my shoulder when I go somewhere interesting, same as the last 30 years. Don’t carry anything else. Nobody notices. It’s more about how you act than what you carry.
I do watch out for people trying to steal my phone or wallet. People want those.
Having visited your lovely city a time or two, your observations about how few photographers and cameras one sees in open display align well with my own. The one exception is around Congress Ave and Joe's Coffee, where if "open carry" may not be common but is not unusual either. I've almost always had a camera slung over my shoulder when I'm there. If I attract any notice at all, it's either a smile, a nod, or a request that I use their cellphone to take a photo of them.
ReplyDeleteAs for feeling fearful in larger cities such as LA, San Francisco, New York, Philly, etc., I find a dose of situational awareness is an effective antidote. The few hassles and negative interactions I've had have mostly been with cops and security guards. I avoid homeless encampments, open air drug markets, people having mental breakdowns, and dangerous neighborhoods not out of fear, but because I don't care to traffic in human misery. This is true regardless of what type of camera I use, be it a Fuji, Leica, Hasselblad, or Contax. Frankly, I feel more safe walking alone in Philly or San Francisco than I would wandering in the wilderness, far from civilization. YMMV