[Leica] Trip to Brugge

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

Henry Ambrose <digphoto@nashville.net> asked:

HAS ANYONE MADE A PICTURE LATELY?  OR USED THEIR LEICA?

I've just returned from a two-day trip to Brugge in Belgium - my first
visit. Five cassettes of Kodachrome are now ready for despatch.

I used two bodies - an M6 and a IIIg. Normally I had either a 20mm
f5.6 Russar or 35mm f2.8 Summaron on the IIIg and a 28mm f2.8 Elmarit
or 50mm f1 Noctilux on the M6. My Russar and 85mm f2 Jupiter were each
probably used for about a dozen shots, but the 13.5cm f4.5 Hektor for
only three or four. (So for the next trip, the Hektor will probably be
staying at home.)

Working in the narrow streets of the old town, I found the 28mm to be
the most useful lens, followed by the 35mm. The only time I used 50mm
was when working in museums and churches, locations where I needed
that extra speed.

I had quite a bit of trouble with the M6 rangefinder when
photographing in museums and churches - the rangefinder patch would
'white-out' unless my eye was perfectly centred in the viewfinder
window.

Since I wear strong eyeglasses with thick lenses, I find it impossible
to see the entire 28mm viewfinder frame, so had purchased a Russian
copy of the Zeiss universal turret finder. On the second day of trip I
realised that when set to 3.5cm or 2.8cm, this finder shows a much
wider angle than the equivalent M6 frame. Checking the M6 finder
against a Leicaflex today, I find that these show fairly good
agreement with each other. But the frames of the Russian finder show a
markedly greater field of view -- a difference which increases as lens
focal length gets shorter. So I may have a fair number on
inadvertently-cropped slides.

Didn't see a single Leica being used by my fellow-tourists, tho my
IIIg did get a "thumbs up" gesture from a middle-aged guy going past
on a canal cruise boat. Only 'classic' cameras I saw were a late-model
Praktika and a what looked like a late-1950s/early-1960s Agfa Silette