Leica M9 Photography

The Leica M9

A few weeks ago I was out walking Cookie before work.  We had walked down into Muir Woods and, as usual, I had a camera with me.  On this particular day, I was carrying my Leica M6.  After taking a few pictures, I had the thought:  “I will never sell this camera.” The Leica M-series rangefinder cameras are in the sweet spot of smooth-handling, fun cameras.  I’ve only known this fact for a short time.

For the past 10 years or so, I have been in digital-only-land.  I’m a huge fan of the ease of use, instant feedback, and ever more flexible digital processing capabilities of digital cameras.  But an experiment in medium format (using a Mamiya C33) threw a spanner in the works of my digital loyalty.  Like anyone my age, I have used plenty of film and film cameras, and they didn’t have a lot of appeal.  But the Mamiya and medium format were a different world of “think, set, frame, think, shoot”.  And I liked it!

With a rekindled interest in film cameras I have been experimenting with a number of other 35mm and medium format cameras.  Let’s face it, when you can buy a pro-level Canon SLR for a couple of hundred dollars, or a Hasselblad kit for way less than a thousand dollars, and then turn around and sell them for no-loss (and sometimes a gain), it’s easy to get caught up in the film fun.  I finally convinced myself to buy my Leica  M6 earlier this year, figuring that I could always sell it if I decided it didn’t work for me. 

Well it works. But I digress…

After realizing that I loved my Leica, I began wishing that Leica would fix the flawed M8/M8.2.  At the prices they were asking, there was no way I would touch one of those cameras — not even used.  Not even for a quarter of what they were asking.  Leica has said that they couldn’t produce a full-frame digital camera, and I kind of looked like they might not even try.  Thus, my thinking that since I would never own a digital Leica, I would certainly never sell my M6.

Now all that  has changed.  What am I to do with the beautiful M9 now available?  Well, at least it is available to be ordered, though not available to the “average” person selling all his other camera gear to buy one.  My answer at the moment is to dream, and to build this website to facilitate that process.

The first addition to this website is the “Leica M9 Page of Fame”.  On this page you can see the 90 most popular photos posted on Flickr over the last 7 days.  I will also be tracking the top three over the last 48 hours and the top three over the last 30 days.  That’s the goal, but I still  have some work to do.  Sooooo, back to the coding and testing…