A little experimentation
by charlene
I suggest shooting with nothing but a Leica and one lens for a year. Shoot one type of black-and-white film (yes, even if you’re completely devoted to color and digital, and hate film and everything it stands for. You don’t have to commit to this forever; it’s an exercise). Pick a single-focal-length 50mm, or 35mm, or 28mm. It doesn’t have to be a “good” lens—anything that appeals to you and that fits the camera will do. Carry the camera with you all day, every day… A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist. [+]
The above is an excerpt from a post titled The Leica as Teacher, over at The Online Photographer.
It was the reason I dug out this little Voigtländer Vito CL while looking for the Nikkor lenses I am presently selling.
I got it for a steal some time ago on Ebay, and then promptly forgot all about it. However reading the post above and its lengthy follow ups 1 and 2, made me get it out and dust it off in preparation for the exercise suggested by TOP: 1 year with this camera, and black and white film only. It’s not a Leica unfortunately, but it’s what I’ve got and it’ll have to do.
In the spirit of this exercise, the above 2 photos were taken on my D300 with the 50mm AiS at f1.4. I find manual focusing challenging enough, so this will definitely be a step right out of my comfort zone, with a kind of camera I’ve never used before. Quite keen to see how badly i do!
But all this enterprise has worn me out, so for now, my ambitions and I will succumb to the hammering of the flu, and get ourselves into bed.
I love these vintage cameras. And haha you've taken really awesome photos of it which is cool. Interested to see some results from it!
Glad you like the photos of the camera. Now it stands to be seen if i can take awesome photos with it! :D
Fantastic links Charlene!After shooting 5 rolls on a Mamiya 6 Medium Format camera, my way of shooting has certainly changed. I now carry around a little 35mm 2.8 Olympus XA everywhere with me and shoot b&w on it (Ilford XP2 Super 400). Got 2 rolls of negs waiting for scanning on my desk and looking forward to the results. The D200 and all its lenses and gizmos has largely sat unused sadly in its bag while I'm having a ball with this $30, 30 year old film camera :)Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
I get what you mean. It really is a slow down and look for your image, as opposed to the it's-free-ayway approach. I'm loving it as well. I reckon my new toy is about as old as yours. And i think I got it for the same dollars too.I'm being very careful with my roll of 24. I think I've used about 8 shots of it in the past week. Looking forward to your results as well!