[Leica] M8 and the WAR

[photo.forrest at earthlink.net (Philip Forrest)]

Yep. When I was in Kuwait & Iraq in 2004-05, my Nikon D2h wouldn't even
turn on in the extreme heat. I'm lucky it worked at all after the
temperatures got cooler in September.
My M4 and M2 never failed me though.
Weather sealing is one reason I've always wanted a Pentax LX. I used
one for a month but decided not to purchase it. That camera was just
about perfect if you ask me. I'm still looking for one to this day.

Regarding cameras and combat, one of my photo instructors at DINFOS
told us about an incident in Afghanistan late in 2001. The discussion
was brought about by a student who asked the question "why would you
carry an all manual FILM camera with as a backup and not just another
body of the same type?" Our staff sergeant replied with a story that
went like this:
"I was in a combat camera unit and we were dropped into Afghanistan a
few months after 9/11. The team parachuted in and the C-130 made
another pass with all our gear loaded onto a palette in Pelican cases.
The crew members shoved the palette out the cargo door and all the
cases just separated since it looked like they weren't tied down. The
aircraft was flying at a few hundred knots and so were thousands of
dollars of gear. When it landed, Nikon D1's, F5's, F4's and pretty much
everything was destroyed. I had never even seen an F4 destroyed. The
only camera to survive was an F2 that was brought as a personal backup.
It was buried almost a foot in the earth but after it was dusted off,
everything worked fine. That's why you carry a manual backup in combat
camera."

I never forgot that bit of wisdom & am very glad I had two Leica M's
with me for my time in Iraq because the digital didn't cut it when
necessary some times. Other older journalists I met while there had
film backups as well. I saw a Canon New F-1, a few F2's and a few F3's
as backups to the digital gear everyone was using.

Phil Forrest