[Leica] Back to Venice

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

Last week I was back in Venice, trying to avoid getting my feet wet
while giving my Leica shutters a little badly-needed exercise. Since
“What gear should I take on a European city holiday” is a frequent
question on the LUG, here’s details of the kit I used this time.

For the first few days, Venice was partly flooded by the ‘aqua alta’.
I was so tired from the workload of pre-vacation deadlines that I was
in zombie-mode interested mainly in grokking the city and the antics
of the tourists walking along the nati-flooding duckboards, and in
ingesting lots of Italian wine and good food, plus the occasional
grappa. I decided that flooded streets and tiredness were nature’s way
on inviting me to have an accident with my Leicas, so opted to use my
Contax TVS II until the dry land reappeared.

On the third day, I decided it was time to buy some waterproof boots,
reasoning that spending money on boots would near-instantaneously
banish the waters. It worked like magic, but it took a lot of
willpower to swap that little titanium ‘brick’ for a loaded Domke once
the waters had receded!

For the test of the trip, my main camera was a Leicaflex SL2 fitted
with a 28-70mm Vario-Elmar, but with a 21mm Super-Angulon-R in reserve
for those times when greater angular coverage was needed. My
indoors/nightime camera was my M6 and Noctilux. (I also took the 85mm
f2 Jupiter, but in the haste of packing forgot the screw-to-bayonet
adapter ring!). I used 200 ISO Ektachrome in the SL2, and 400 ISO
Fujichrome in the M6.

When in Venice and Florence last year, I'd used rangefinder kit, but
the prospect of not having to kep swapping lenses made the 'flex/zoom
combo attractive. I'd thought about getting a Tri-Elmar, but since
wearing glasses means I can't see all the 35mm frame, let alone the
28mm, I'd have had to mess with either a TEWE or Zeiss universal
finder. The R zoom was much cheaper and continuously variable, while
the 'flex lets me see the entire frame.

The zoom was a real timesaver for me, through my wife wasn't so
happy - apparently the time I normally take mesing around with lenses,
caps & hoods gives her time to look around a bit more.

Looking through the SL2 viewfinder, I sometimes noticed verticals near
the edge of the frame bowing outwards as the zoom approached 28mm, so
simply moved the control back a tad until the offending vertical
looked straight.

What would I do different next time? I think I’d add a SBOOI finder to
the M6 so as to have less viewfinder masking, and maybe leave the
Jupiter behind in favour of the 135mm f2.8 Elmarit-R for the few times
when I’d have liked a narrower FOV.  The 90 degree finder would have
been useful when taking SL2 shots indoors from improvised supports.
And if I could avoid it, I sure wouldn’t take an SL2 and M6 both newly
back from repair by Leica, but like I said, those pre-departure
deadlines were pretty fierce.

Last year I had bad problems with M6 rangefinder flare in Venice and
Florence, but this year I tried moving my eye from side to side (as
suggested by the Solms repair department), and I was always able to
get the rangefinder patch to clear enough to make the rangefinder
useable. It's a slow & fiddly procedure (eye position is very
critical), but it seems to work. But it remains a bad mis-feature
which made my glad I'd made the 'flex my main camera for this trip.

It seemed to me that this year more churches in Venice are displaying
“no photography” signs. I’d guess that the real problem is that the
ubiquitous flash from ‘point-and-shoot’ cameras is bad for paintings
and frescoes, but that staff don’t want the hassle of having to
explain to Joe Tourist that he can’t take pictures, but the guy with a
fast lens can. Noctilux Man only got caught being naughty a couple of
times... Next time I'll take a hand-held meter so I can set the
exposure before raising the camera so as to minimise my own 'exposure'
to official eyes.

I got some very strange looks from people who saw me shooting in the
streets at night. but no-one uttered the time-honoured line "Did you
know that your flash isn't working". (One time in the USA, someone
looked at my TEWE finder and said, "Gee, isn't it amazing how small
flash units are getting?")

I only saw one other Leica-user (with an R8) during the entire ten-day
holiday, tho I did see a slightly scruffy black SL on sale in a camera
shop window - also a copy of the Italian edition of Laney's book which
had gone a few hours later, presumably to an Italian Leica user.

So now I’ve got a great pile of film ready for processing – real soon
now just as soon as I get rid of the streaming cold which hit me a day
after getting back to cold and rainy England.

Regards,

Doug Richardson