[Leica] I.R. Collector

[Mike Dembinski <mdembin@it.com.pl>]

Self-deprecating title of this thread will be understood only by fans of
Hanna Barbera's excellent 'I Am Weasel' cartoons.

A few weeks ago, a brave soul (didn't archive so forgot who), stated that
many of us like cameras more than they like photography.

Wow. I thought about that for a while. Indeed a profound observation. This
would explain why I spend more time looking through the small ads in
photography mags than reading technique articles or looking at portfolios.
Why I'd spend lunchtimes looking at camera store windows rather than
photographing passers-by on city streets or visiting galleries. Why I spend
Sunday mornings at the Gielda Fotograficzna rather than snapping the
characters in Warsaw's many churches. Cameras and photography? This posting
made me search my soul. A 60%/40% ratio. Once it was less. Happy with a
single M2 body and 35mm Summicron-M, doing only black and white, home
darkroom, relative poverty. Today I have cameras and lenses everywhere, want
more more more of them, and the darkroom has long become the nursery. I do
only C-41 snaps (roll or two a week), processed at the local Kodak Express.

I am afflicted by something that also gets to golfers and anglers - better
results through better kit. Trying to stop this madness I've decided to
limit myself to cheap Soviet equipment, but even here I've begun seeking out
faster lenses, rarer bodies etc.

Yesterday my 5-year old daughter asked me to show her my Kiev-4a (current
toy). Soon we got onto the Leica M6. Then my Canon F-1.

The Canon she drooled over. 'What else does it do?' I took off the
pentaprism, then the focusing screen, showed her the mirror box, opened the
back, explained what the controls do. 'I like this more than those two (the
R/Fs)' Have you got another interesting camera?' I took my Exakta Varex 11a
out of the display cabinet. 'Look at the way you use the left hand to wind
on and the right to trigger the shutter and stop down the lens'. Obvious
5-year old interest. 'Does the top come off?' Opened up the vertical finder
and its magnifier. 'The image is the other way round... do you see? and
look, you can put on a pentaprism just like the one from the Canon...'  What
else does it do?' 'Look,' I said, opening up the back. 'Here's a little
knife, when you unscrew this knob, which comes down and separates exposed
film from what's left in the cassette... and look at the shutter speed dial
- - it gives you 'B' which works like this, and 'T' which works like this...'
I could see as deep an appreciation of the Varex as you could get from a
child this age.

'Dad, I like the Exakta best. Then the Canon. Have you anything else?' Got
down my battered FM2. 'What does it do?' Not much. 'Top doesn't come off?'
'Nope.' 'Don't like it then.'

I feel my daughter has inherited my rather sad fascination with photographic
equipment.... One day she will start to value optical quality as well as the
'toy factor'.

I feel I must get that darkroom back - for the sake of my sanity!!

Mike