13-1-29

I would take this camera everywhere with me and use nothing but it if it would accept a 35mm lens without viewfinder adapters. It's enough to make me want to buy a more modern Leica but for some reason these relics justify prohibitive selling prices.

Photography nirvana isn't that difficult to attain. A decent rangefinder with a full frame sensor or film camera, smallish, built rugged. All of these things have been possible since 1953. 60 years later they tease us with allusions to this ideal and yet they never deliver, not without a cost anyways.

It makes no sense that I can buy Nikon's high end 35mm lens and a D600 for less than Sony's RX1 with all its limitations. And if Fuji can make an X-Pro1 with a 35mm equivalent for $1000 less you'd think they could do the same with a full frame sensor for not much more.

I'm happy Fuji is embracing the rangefinder aesthetic. I hope within a year or two (about the soonest I might entertain the idea of buying a new camera) Fuji will take this ideology and invest it in a full frame sensor camera body mimicking a Leica M9 (or whatever they call it now) with a true 35mm lens and I will find photographic bliss. Reality is the photo I took today was with a 60mm Micro Nikkor lens. This betrays in the moment my suggestions of what the perfect body/lens combination is.

But for today I'm looking for a Leica/35mm film combo for less and if I find it I might just start shooting more film again. I'm not holding my breath. And I'm pretty happy with what I'm capable of with my D700. Ecstatic really. But I'm not the complacent type. Though I'm not sure what type I specifically am.

Edit: That Leica M3 in the photograph is a pretty amazing camera.