Archive for the ‘Equipment’ Category

The camera

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 by

Of course, to do the Leica Lessons project, I needed a Leica film rangefinder.

As I had no Leica camera, nor a rangefinder camera, I was completely free in my choice, so the first thing I did was dive into Wikipedia and find out what choices I had.

I then went over my requirements, and started scratching off options that didn’t fit:

Film
That leaves out the M8.
Leica rangefinder
No CL, which is not a Leica1 and no M1, which has no rangefinder.
Cheap
Scratch the M7, the MP, and possibly the M6
No meter
Anything from the M5 on is out.

That left the M3, M2 and M4.

After I then decided that my One Lens2 would be a 50mm, the choice became pretty easy. After all, only one camera had a perfect for 50mm 0.92x viewfinder magnification: The Leica M3.

To Ebay!


And here she3 is: Leica M3 number 1067131, made in Wetzlar, Germany in 1963, she’s nearly 20 years my senior.

The reasons I went for this one:

  • She had been CLA‘d just before sale.
  • She’s a bit beaten up (there’s a nice big dent next to the rewind knob, for example), which meant she was of no interest to collectors, keeping the price down4.
  • She’s one of the later models, with a single-stroke advance lever and the less fragile metal pressure plate. Both things I consider preferable in a camera bought for shooting, as opposed to antiquity value (made it cheaper again).
  • The seller was located in the Netherlands (like me), which prevented excess shipping costs and risks.
  1. If you’re using a Leica, you might as well behave like a Leica Man. []
  2. To rule them all. []
  3. All cameras are female of course: Expensive, incomprehensible and if you push the wrong buttons, things will look dark for you. []
  4. I don’t care, I have a tendency to damage my cameras just so I can stop worrying about damaging them. []