jhnmyr: Vintage new old stock Leica M4 and 50mm...

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Vintage new old stock Leica M4 and 50mm Summicron 2.0 Lens

Everything in this camera is manual. No light meter, no automatic focus, shutter, ISO or aperture. It was daunting at first but I’ve been practicing guessing shutter speed/aperture on a digital M9 and seeing how close I get. I consider myself experienced enough to bring only this camera with me now. Most indoor settings require an aperture setting of 2, 4 or 5.6 and a shutter speed of 60, 125 or 250. I’ve learned that the guessing - maybe the intuition - of the settings is what makes a photograph special.

Another great thing about shooting film is that when you see the photos back, it actually matures your “eye” for both looking at and taking pictures. There are a couple of fallacies in digital photography, one being the thinking that high contrast is “fillm-ier,” and the other that you should be able to take a crisp photo in any situation no matter how low the light. Old, classic photos aren’t all as high contrast as you might think, and even the greatest photographers of all time wouldn’t attempt to lift the camera to their eye in a candle lit restaurant basement. There aren’t any photographs of Marilyn Monroe in a dimply-lit wine cellar eating tapas. (I checked.)

Now it’s on me to blow some great moments by under/over exposing, but that’s how you pay your dues, I imagine.

The trick to shooting Marilyn in low light eating tapas is to use your table as a tripod and get her to sit REALLY still, which shouldn’t be a problem these days.