Well, it's official. I now own a camera that is worth more than my car. It's tax refund time, and that also means new camera time. So I spent my refund... and emptied my money market account (which was tanking anyway)... and put a sum (which shall remain undisclosed) on my credit card... and bought a Leica M6 and a 50mm/f1.4 Summilux lens.



I could have spent that money on the latest professional Nikon digital camera... but the more I grow as a photographer, the less digital gear appeals to me, and the more attraction I have to the classic 35mm film cameras. 35mm film, and Leica cameras especially, have a look and feel to them that digital can't match. Sure it's going to be a challenge shooting with a 100% manual camera. I'll admit that auto-focus and aperture-priority shooting mode have me somewhat lazy. But did Henri Cartier-Bresson have auto focus? Did Doisneau? Abso-fucking-lutely not. They didn't need it.

So why should I?

So it's time to step up and take my photography to the next level. It's time to become best friends with the depth of field scale on my lens. It's time to became a human light meter and have the appropriate shutter speed set without even looking at the camera's meter. Any schmuck can run around the nature reserves shooting flowers and sunsets. I've been that schmuck for way too long. It's time to hit downtown streets with nothing more than a tiny, inconspicuous camera that fits in my pocket, and photograph real human moments. Sure, it won't be all pretty like my nature stuff. But I've taken that genre as far as it will go. And those unscripted human moments have a subtle beauty of their own. One that belongs on b&w film.