[Leica] second installment of comments from first time user

[Byron Rakitzis <byron@rakitzis.com>]

Hi,

I'm back from my holiday in Utah, and I wanted to say that it was a great
pleasure tooling around with my M6+35/2. I used the camera for the kind
of "happy snaps" you'd expect to get on holiday, and I also took the
camera skiing and hiking with me. It fit quite easily into the pocket of
my jacket.  The temperatures were down to single digits (farenheit!) just
before xmas so there was lots of snow and ice to take pictures of.

I don't have any film processed from this trip yet, as I've just come
home.

I've processed and printed some of the pictures I took on the rental
M6 I had with me in the Netherlands in November. Most of them came out
really, really well. Some of the rolls I printed were Tri-X developed
in Rodinal which is not a combination I really thought I would like but
I *did* like it and so I'm probably going to be going into a phase of
developing for more pronounced grain for a while.

I'm sold on carrying a rangefinder camera around everywhere. One of
the things I like the most about the setup is that the 35/2 lens has
a wonderful square lens hood which protects the lens quite well, even
without the cap. So, I can carry the camera around with no lens cap,
just the shade, and always be ready to take pictures. This is something
I've done for years with my Nikon anyway: there is a wonderful metal
shade for the 35mm lens which screws in to the filter threads.

Anyway, I already managed to put a gouge into the lens hood when I
dropped my M6 onto a steel grating. Dropping cameras is not something
I do for fun, and I was really glad to see the hood absorb the damage.

As I said last time, I'm most interested in the focal lengths 35/50/90.
For the 50mm lens I'm really tempted to find the older style summicron
with the clip-on round lens hood. This is the lens I rented, and I was
very happy with it. Given my experience that and with the 35mm hood,
I don't think I'd want to go for the new 50mm with the built-in hood.

And as for the 90mm, I'm not sure it matters all that much since I will
probably not sling the camera around so much with the 90mm lens mounted.

As for the 90mm lens though: supposing I go for a second m6, does it
make a lot of sense to think about a 0.85 finder? I'm thinking about the
comments regarding focusing accuracy. If so, given that the M6 TTL is
out now, and the old M6 is discontinued, is this in fact the best time
to get an M6 (non-TTL) 0.85? I'm wondering if these beasts will become
scarce in the future.

Regards,

Byron.