Please, check your batteries now!

Over the years I've seen countless old cameras brought to me by my students. It's always disheartening to see an otherwise mechanically healthy example that has been destroyed by leaky batteries. It's an all too familiar tale, and you can imagine the disappointment on the student's face when they learn about their camera's fate.

It's been some time since I have used my Leica, life and lockdown conspiring to make this so. The other day I had a strange urge to check it, and, remembering a social media post by Sandeep Surmal, I opened up the battery compartment.

The Leica M6 TTL takes two 1.55V silver cells. The back of the cells were nice and shiny and there was no obvious evidence of leakage. However, when I turned them over I could see that they were just starting to turn, the first acid seepage coming through. I took them out and there was no obvious damage to the battery compartment. Wow, crisis averted!

So, I implore you at this busy time of year to check your cameras. The ones that have sat idle for some time are particularly vulnerable. It's not just cameras that are on this list. Think of light meters and flash units too. You never know, doing this may just save an expensive piece of equipment from an all too familiar fate.

Unhappy accidents

I suppose some might see this as the Achilles' heel of film photography: mistakes can't be erased. Here, I went to open my Leica and realised I hadn't rewound the film. I stopped myself in what seemed like the nick of time. Well, it was for some frames, but not this one here.

How do I feel about this aspect of film photography? I'm philosophical. Sure, I wish this frame had not been fogged, but I see such events as part of the medium. In a sense, the element of danger only adds to the thrill when it all comes together. C'est la vie.

Shanghai travelogue part 2: enter Ilford HP5 Plus

“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.”

— Robert Adams

In this instalment of my Shanghai Travelogue I’ll be looking at the second approach I took to shooting in China, namely with 35mm black and white film. Here, I was very much on home ground: my Leica M6TTL being my camera of choice and Ilford’s HP5 Plus my film. It’s an approach I am intimately familiar with, and, in the spirit of Adams’ quote above, one I enjoy for its simplicity. Waking up in Shanghai, with somewhat more than a pocket’s worth of film in my possession, was indeed a heady experience.

Million Matches, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film

I chose HP5 Plus because I know it and its development routines intimately. Many people begin to ask themselves what equipment they need when travelling to new locations, almost as if they are starting again with their photography. Instead, I prefer (and indeed recommend) familiar equipment and technique. Why change your way of working, just because you are going to be somewhere different? Increasingly, over the past few months black and white has become my preferred style, and films like HP5 Plus have been a mainstay.

The majority of my shots were exposed at 320 with a view to developing them in Perceptol. This is something like my default black and white mode right now. One loses a little speed (hence 320 not ‘box speed’, 400) and development times are long, but for me there is something of a holy trinity of sharpness, good tonality and well-controlled grain. My manual 35mm rangefinder camera allows for a contemplative approach to shooting, but when one is in the flow it also allows for speed of reaction too. Choose an aperture and shutter speed, part focus the lens, and shooting can take place almost instantaneously. I’d wager I give the best autofocus systems a run for their money with my camera so primed.

Sports Statue, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film

Builders in the Mist, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film exposed at 1600

On a particularly misty day (which you can see in the shots), I decided to shoot at 1600. This flexibility is another virtue of HP5 Plus. It would mean another developer (this time LC29), but gave me a twofold advantage: speed when shooting on the underground trains, and small-ish apertures for street shots in the mist. The grain is somewhat exaggerated at this speed, but I think it complements the mist and was an effect I had visualised at the time. If my pursuit of 320 and Perceptol came from my earlier days of wanting to suppress grain for a cleaner look, my embracing grain at 1600 represents a more mature self who has made his peace with the medium and its quirks. There is beauty in grain. As ever with film, the key thing is to assess the situation in front of you and try to use your knowledge of printing and development to see a finished print in your mind’s eye.

I’ll be looking at my experience of shooting large format film with my Intrepid Field Camera in the next instalment. I hope you enjoy the shots.
 

Street Chef, Leica M6TTL and Ilford HP5 Plus film

Courtyard Tree, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film

Commuter, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film exposed at 1600

Street Silhouettes, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film

Shanghai Lights, Leica M6TTL and HP5 Plus film

On buying gear: enjoyment not evolution

A great deal of ink has been spent in the photographic press on the question of the superiority of digital photography over film and the former’s inexorable rise to prominence in the industry. Fear not, for this is not yet another film vs digital tract; I think my own position of a ‘either or both, as you desire’ is a subtext of my blog, if not something I have broached on occasion.
 
I think a better question, in this golden age of availability of photographic equipment and consumer choice, is ‘what aspects of your photography do you enjoy?’ Then there is a related question: how might an answer help you shape your engagement and buying choices?
 
I am enamoured with small format cameras that have the potential to make big prints. My Sony A7II fits this bill very well, and there are other Sonys that fit the bill even better (I have in mind the A7 ‘R’s and their iterations, and naturally we could add other makes and models). I like to walk around with a piece of technology with this capability in my hand. The digital viewfinder has the ability to aid rigorous focussing and this is an integral part of large-print making. 
 
Yet I am aware that the experience of using the Sony A7 viewfinder leaves me a little cold. For this part of my photography I look to my Leica M6TTL and mostly black and white film. An uncluttered viewfinder in combination with the most simple operation brings me closer to my subject and lets me focus on the moment. The thought of the exposure being laid on film, together with my understanding of how to process and print my images - in short, my visualisation - is integral to my existential photographic pleasure. (Lest my struggle for the right words imply an otherworldly dimension to this, I think this is a largely technical and mechanical effect - belonging to the medium.) Do my Leica negatives compete with my Sony A7 for large prints? Of course not, nor do I expect them too. The point is that the Leica brings a quite different dimension to my practice.
 
When I analyse my choices in the acquisition of equipment, I realise that I have made some very conscious decisions regarding what I enjoy, and moreover that I live with the compromises of my chosen media because I see them as integral parts of it. Living with limitations makes you work with them, and before too long you begin to enjoy them too. Critical photographers will ask not just what they need, but whether what they have is still right for them. For me, simply possessing it means that it must continue to be chosen - or be replaced by something else that gets me closer to this photographic enjoyment.
 
So look not on your equipment as a marker in an evolutionary scale of advancement (the old digital bettering film), its increasing age signalling a need for replacement, but as an indication of your photographic enjoyment. ‘Upgrade’ if you must, not to abstractly improve your equipment, but to better serve your personal and idiosyncratic needs.
 

Photography advertising, the invisible influence

The other day I came across a reproduction of a Leica advert from the late 1990s. They were advertising the then latest incarnation of the famous Leica rangefinder, the M6 TTL. As you might expect, the advert is aspirational and contains a carefully crafted studio shot of the camera.
 
The advert got me thinking about photography advertising, and more specifically its influence on me. We live in a world of sublimated desires driven by consumer advertising. We might not always reflect consciously on the effects of advertising, but they are measurable and real, as the gargantuan advertising budgets of the multi-national corporations attest.
 
What if my regard for my Leica M6 TTL was a product, albeit an indirect one, of this advert from the late 1990s? I don’t think I remember it specifically, and yet it has something of an uncanny familiarity. I had a little chuckle to myself, rolling this possibility around in my head. It may not be the whole story - I should hope not, a big chunk of my practice nought but the fulfilment of a market instruction - but there is a strong possibility that my desires were at some level shaped by the adverts of the time. It is sometimes said that we acquire in later life the cameras we once lusted after in our youth and when money was too short to make the dream a reality.
 
I wonder what other photography advertising has helped to shape my choices and paths through equipment and practice? I wonder which ones have shaped yours?