[Leica] happy new year and thanks to all LUGgers!

[Rei Shinozuka <shino@ubspw.com>]

happy new year and a heartfelt 2001 thanks to the LUG.

in january of 2001, i was perfectly happy with my 1990 vintage m6
(0.72) with 21 and 28 elmarits, 35 lux (old style) and 90 cron (old style)
and had been for about 10 years.  my style back then favored the
elmarit wide-angle pair and f8 or so for everything.  more precisely,
i'd set the shutter to the reciprocal of the focal length and set the
f-stop from there.  it delivered lots of depth of field, and i and
my style was complacent.

not long after finding the LUG this spring, i got a gander at
tony rowlett's page and other posted examples, from which i got the
craving for--and shortly thereafter--purchased a noctilux.  this stirred
things up quite a lot for me.  the sudden need for the ultimate in
focusing accuracy in turn precipitated the search for and acquisition
of an 0.85 classic.  then, a few  LUGgers put up some 75 lux images,
which brought that beast into the stable, and around the same time i took
full advantage of an opportunity to ugrade the 35 lux and 90 cron to their
newest and most aspheric counterparts.  the famous leitz table tripod
and a pair of eyepeice magnifiers closed out my equipment budget for
the year.

motivated by all the film developing and darkroom talk on the LUG (much
by mr. "xtol" rabiner), i finished a long-abandoned process and completed
my basement darkroom this year and now i do my own B&W, after a
10-year hiatus.

perhaps most simply and importantly, the LUG has really motivated me
to shoot film.  my average over the last few years had been perhaps 2
rolls of fuji press through the contax T2 a month and maybe 2 or 3
through the m6 on vacations.

starting on june 23 2001 i shot a roll of delta 100 with a noctilux on
loan, and from there, i count 105 neg pages (mostly leica) in my
binder from june 23 to december 31, 2001.

thanks to brian for running the show. i've been using the internet since
the early 80's, and its greatness has always been about people, not
technology.  brian k reid has helped out on both counts.  groups like
the LUG would be impossible without the internet and in my opinion THAT's
the excitement of the net, not all those dot.bombs.

so thanks to everyone on the LUG for reintegrating photography into my
life, have a great new year and take pictures along the way!

i'll be there!

- -rei
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