I did argue with myself a little bit when it came to this particular GAS hit, as of course there is an iiia on the shelf for completely manual shooting if I want it. something that takes no batteries, something that is completely manual and something that has near-zero chance of failure, ever.
What I really wanted was either another M7 or a complete departure from it i.e. Spending up to and possibly more than double what I paid for this M4-P on an M6 just to use it without batteries in struck me as a bit silly. The argument for having an M6 over an Leica M4-P is always “just take the batteries out” but that’s not an elegant solution to me. But quite often it occurred to me that whilst having the built-in meter was nice in some ways, in others it was just going to make me want for the M7 when using it. I thought a lot about an M6, and whether or not I should just save a bit more cash to get one. A deal was done for both, allowing my mate Alex to have one too… Because of this, they came at quite an attractive amount of money. That was until I saw a pair of M4-P’s on rangefinder forum a tatty one and a good looking one. The M4-2/P were probably the most interesting but looking to be going for a bit too much cash. I really like the shape, size and design of the “standard” M bodies. The M5 was interesting I like the sound of the meter and it sounds well designed, but again the form factor put me off. The CL, for budgetary reasons, being at the top, but at the bottom for the form factor. I also couldn’t afford another M7 or and M6 for that matter, so they were out. This basically ruled out everything pre M5. Anything with a black paint finish was therefore off the cards. The second sticking point was that it needed to be relatively inexpensive. The first thing on the list of requirements was that it needed to be black, with a silver chrome M7 that felt a bit bling, I didn’t want another silver chrome body. But before I could buy one I needed to make the difficult decision about which one I wanted. A stupid mindset I know! Anyway, long story short, it was clear for a while that a second Leica M body was on the cards. This was pretty much down to the fact that it’s 100iso and I couldn’t get my head around shooting a whole film that wasn’t at least 400iso in the M7… What if I went somewhere that the light wasn’t good enough for 100iso film? What if I didn’t finish the roll on an outing, I’d be stuck with a roll that was out of my comfort zone in my default camera. I bought it in March, wanting to shoot it in the Leica, but then didn’t shoot it until the end of July, on the day before I was expecting the Leica M4-P to arrive. The best example of this is having bought a roll of Ektar, my first roll of Ektar in fact. This has the annoying side effect of me just not shooting any film outside of my comfort zone, as when I come to load it, I only want to load it with film I know I can use almost regardless of where it goes. I’m also prone to getting frustrated with myself for always having loaded a film I don’t want to shoot. Sometimes I just feel like I’m carrying an expensive thing, and that it’s obvious to others that I am. It’s just a bit bling, and since it’s been summer and I haven’t been able to hide it under my coat as I did in colder times I’ve become a bit more aware of it. I’m not sure it’s a serious regret, as I do think it’s a beautiful thing, but once in a while, it does make me feel a little bit self-conscious. If I’ve had one small regret about the Leica M7 I bought, it’s that I bought a silver chrome one. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one way or another, it has fit perfectly into the role I hoped it would, and indeed gives me exactly the user experience I was hoping for… It’s the funny thing with these Leica’s, they seem to inspire me to write about them fairly quickly, especially this one. I recently bought a Leica M4-P, very recently in fact.
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