... blog post:
Despite having adopted and used numerous digital camera systems over recent years I have always retained and continued to make photographs with my good old 35mm film based rangefinder cameras. But times passes...
Digital SLRs and latterly mirrorless system cameras have all had their place in my life for use in my landscape, macro, museum, fauna and flora photography plus video for which they were well suited, but I have been there, done that and moved on.
As time progressed I found myself wanting to go back to using my rangefinder cameras more often than not, it was just that the cost of analogue photography had continued to escalate and the choice of colour film stocks to decline - as I commented here.
The answer came recently with a used Leica M10, a rangefinder camera that handled like a film M but was a modern digital machine designed purely for stills photography. None of that hybrid stills-video complexity here 😎.
Which brings me 'back to the future'. My photography started with a rangefinder type camera and the walkabout-snapshot style of photography that went with it and all these years later has returned to them both.
After all the different genres of photography I have explored with the appropriate apparatus and technological developments to support them, I have come full circle but with a twist.
When I began making photos my abilities were limited by the characteristics of a compact rangefinder camera of that time and my own lack of knowledge. Now I have a wealth of knowledge and experience and, for what I now wish to achieve, the refined constraints of a digital M rangefinder camera are an enabler of my work and style rather than an inhibiter.
So now here I am again, wandering around, rangefinder camera in hand, snapping away at things that grab my attention, in interesting places. Only this time the camera is my Leica M10, probably with a 35mm f1.4 ZM or possibly a 50mm f1.5 VM attached to the front, instead of my good old Yashica Electro 35 GX of yore with its fixed 40mm f1.7 lens.
Yes walkabout photography with a 'modern' digital rangefinder camera, it doesn't get much better than that. 'Back to the future' indeed.