[Leica] Available darkness - a Northern affliction?

["Simon Pulman-Jones" <spulmanjones@lbs.ac.uk>]

For the past few days I have been driving myself slowly mad wondering
whether to buy a Noctilux that I have seen at a (relatively speaking!)
reasonable price, knowing that if I didn't make up my mind it would be sure
to be gone soon. In spite of it's technical shortcomings I love the pictures
I get with my very early (1960) 35 Summilux wide open - as well rehearsed on
this list it has a wonderful glow which appears to be both clear and soft at
the same time. But it's also the content of the pictures that I like - the
35 Summilux is what I use most often for pictures of relaxed people in
softly lit social contexts - and so I suppose I'm definitely an available
darkness kind of person.

And yet... the same questions that go round and round on this list are going
round and round in my head. Grain size... slowest hand-holdable speeds...
portability of the lens... shorter or longer focus travel on the lens barrel
for speed and/or accuracy of focus...

The moment I pick up the phone to order the Noctilux a voice sounds in my
ear telling me to use a Summicron carefully and develop well to minimise
grain size...

And so I have been going slowly mad, and out of the madness an idea dawned.

Thinking about my lens use over and over again I realised that when I was
recently on holiday in the south of France it was definitely a Summicron and
Elmarit time. Even in the shadows there was enough light, and even in the
evening too. And being from further north I noticed that the sun went down
so much more quickly that there wasn't much of an available darkness period
anyway. So I wondered whether Leica-available-darkness wasn't in fact an
affliction of those of us from Northern parts, where days are often gloomy
and evenings are long drawn out. And I remembered that one of the most
eloquent advocates of the Noctilux on this list, Ted Grant, is from Canada,
and that another Northerner's consolation, single malt has seemed as much a
LUG topic as the Noctilux.

So is this available darkness madness that I have fallen into because of a
'cheap' Noctilux in fact just another sickness of angst ridden, gloomy
Northerners? An Anglo-Saxon, Celtic kind of a thing? Did those German, and
Canadian, lens-meisters invent super-fast lenses just to give us an
especially difficult photographic dilemma to gnaw away at with a bottle of
the finest at our side?

Do I just need a blast of the bright southern light of common sense to
banish this Noctilux fever? Or should I pick up the phone and tell the
dealer to send me that northern gloom-buster? :-)