Hi all

Before I went to Malta on 4th September, I had a certain problem: I didn't want to screw up my holidays with being worried about damaging expensive cameras or what lens to chose on any given pic. Some of you may know the feeling - it can be downright stressful to carry a load of photo equipment on what is primarily meant to be a relaxing vaccation, but then the photo perfectionist takes over...

On the other hand, the small Olympus Pocketcam of my GF wasn't quite satisfying me last year, when we went there. Matla is beautiful and without a good "manual control" camera you won't take the kind of pictures it offers you.

So what I needed was a robust, cheap, workable "holiday camera".

What I got is this, a Leicaflex SL:

http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/entry_C625.html

Yes, that's one of those things where you put in 35mm film . And, it's a Leica. I always wanted one, so this was my chance to get one used, complete with original leather pouch, owners manual, even the original carton it came in.

It's downright indestructible, it's precise, a fine piece of German engineering - and it's fully manual. From focus to exposure, it's all your own job. Yes, it has a spotmeter for exposure, but that didn't work in high light values for me so I had to "go by feel". A very different, slower, more "thinking man's" kind of photography experience. The 50mm F2 Summicron lens is awesomly matched to the human field of view, and not having any kind of zoom just makes you think that little harder. Oh, and the viewfinder is awesomly - both in it's brightness and with the focusing microprism screen.

This is what came out of it:









More to follow. I'm not too happy with the average results, they are just "bland", but these first three struck a nerve with me. The phone boot could be better if the wall was not taking away the viewer's attention...

When was the last time you shot 35mm film?

Film camera? Long time, long time. I recently found my old Canon A-1 and it had a roll of film in it. I have no idea how many years ago or what's on the film. I'm toying with the idea of getting it developed, but I don't even know where to go to for that nowadays.

Love the picture of the church, the shadows and everything. Very dramatic. Is that woman in the folding chair near the ocean flipping you the bird?

I think it's the hand still where she was holding her newspaper, sadly she looked around just as I hit the trigger.

Film definitly has one large advantage, and that is the ginormous dynamic range you get. Especially important in such brilliant sunlight as you get in the Med. There's so much more details to be had in the darks and whites than a DSLR could have managed. With those, I'd either need to shoot RAW and post-process fake HDR, or try for true HDR by exposure bracketing, which is a problem without tripod.

Despite the lack of comments, two more just to punish ya'll





I just had some of the above shots rescanned to higher res from the negatives, by the same shop which did the first batch - and the colors & sharpness is totally different, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Which goes to prove that working with film it is quite problematic to control the entire workflow, you really need a lab that you can trust or the equipment to handle it yourself.

Maybe Slides would be more constant in scan results.

Ah, 35mm. So so pretty.

I have my dad's AE-1 on call most of the time, but because I'm a half-arsed shooter not really looking to push my own boundaries, it doesn't see much use. Next time I go on holiday I intend to bring it - like you said, out of the box the dynamic range just blows digital processes away.

I've done a little reading along the way and from what I've read, slides do seem to be the way if you want a more controlled workflow.

Out of interest, what film did you use?

Mostly Fuji Superia and one roll of Afga something or other I had to buy on Malta itself, 200ASA all. A bit much for mediterranian sunshine actually, so better to bring 100ASA and a polarizing filter along next time. I think all the above scans are from the Fuji.

It's an interesting bit of Trivia that if you go to a photo lab today, and have them do prints from 35mm film, they will ALWAYS scan the developed negatives and then light-print them onto photo paper. Direct transfer is almost never done anymore.

So in theory, by getting the scans to CD, you have the same quality as if you get them on paper. But I'm not sure how they are doing the scanning, since they must first "inverse" the negatives? And this is where slide film has one step less to deal with, since they can (or you can, with a decently expensive scanner) directly scan the developed film to digital.

It's interesting to note that I carried, for a short time between buying my D70 in '04 and my D200 in '07, a Nikon F80 Analog Camera as backup body, which was fully automatic everything. It never really gave me any joy to work with it. Now with the Leica, with the misscalibrated lightmeter and having to "expose by rule of thumb", that was some really different kind of work.

There's something very wonderful about doing all-manual photography with such a piece of iron, the slowness of it, the fact that pictures actually cost money, make you think much harder and longer about what you take home. Oh that viewfinder is just sooo sweet, with the microprism focusing screen enabling you to set the center DOF precise to a millimeter...

I actually have a good idea for a girl/fetish/semi nude shot that is just screaming to be shot on Ilford FP4. A well-exposed and tack-sharp B/W negative is just something even a D300s will not easily match today.

Just goes to prove modern doesn't always mean better. My dad used to talk about Leica and Hasselblad cameras saying they were the best in the world. Your photos have got lovely lighting and tones in that first batch. If only it had the convenience of digital !

I've found that scans-to-CD are a complete waste of time outside of a pro-level lab. The last lot I got were something like 800x600, and I was using Ilford XP2 400 but they used a colour process for the prints and they all came out with a sepia tint rather than pure black and white. I scanned them myself and had much better results.

Did you vignette the first one? It's aesthetically very nice but the shading looks artificial.

These are every nice pictures, and very nice scans from film - some of the best I've seen.

I got into photography with only digital cameras. I was given a Canon film camera a while back, and I've thought about shooting with it, just to see how the results compare to my Canon digital cameras, but haven't gotten around to it.

Ken, it's definitly worth it, but do yourself the favor and go "full manual" when you try it out.

Also, like U-96 says, it needs a decent lab otherwise you will be dissapointed. The guy who does mine is a working photographer himself and runs an equipment/development shop on the side. The first batch they scanned was done by his long-term employee with 20+ years of experience, the second by the junior assistant, so that explains why things came out differently.

But in my case I can always sit next to the Fuji Frontier while it does the business, as the guy is a friend of mine and allows me maximum control over my images, so I could have input into every single scan. If you only have some quick-mart in a shopping mall nearby for the work, it will mean a serious lack of control over the workflow.

U-96, the vignetting is original, I only reduced saturation by 50%, cropped slightly and sharpened. Weird enough the lens doesn't seem to vignette so clearly on most other shots, and it's only doing it on the left side...?

I found out yesterday that Leica actually makes a digital full format rangefinder camera (Leica M9) with 18 megapixels. Rangefinders are what made them famous, that would be a seriously tempting piece of kit - but I'll have to pass on the 6000EUR pricetag.

Funny closing note: My GF had a look trough the 4 x 36 scans I got in total, most of which are rather bland to my eye. She was totally deflated that her Olympus Compact Cam pics came out nowhere near as good (but then of course she didn't really try...)

I think on our next trip she'll show more patience with me fiddling around on the Leica.

Very crisp