Easter days

Before I get bored over the Easter days, I decided at short notice to take the next and logical analog step. After I sold my film developing cans around 25 years ago, I quickly ordered them on Monday morning Intuition current tool. One too many times I was annoyed at the local film developing shop, which I felt was ruining my films. In any case, the postman rang the bell on Tuesday after briefly changing the order form via Twitter. Why am I actually paying for it? Prime?

Chemistry aside, time seems to have stood still in analog film development. Everything still looks the same as it did before, when I retreated to the darkroom in the bright sunshine. These old, learned processes probably caused me to briefly shout at my wife when she opened the bathroom door slightly while threading my film into the developing spool. But I quickly noticed that I no longer put the film under the blanket like I used to, but rather in the comfort of a dark bag. Nevertheless, my heart rate increased briefly...

In any case, the two-phase film development with HCD 80 + 20 on the Kodak T-Max400, which was new to me, produced very satisfactory results. And suddenly I no longer had any scratches in the film and the water spots were also minimized. My son had built me ​​great holders out of Lego for film drying in the bathtub.

I chose the combination of the film developers HCD80 and HCD20 because I exposed my film in strong sunshine and hard light. The HCD80 takes care of the shadows and the HCD20 takes care of the highlights. I think that worked brilliantly. You can enlarge the sample image below by clicking on it.

Inner Alster in bright sunshine - the shady sides of the houses can still be clearly seen.

Well, that was the first hurdle overcome. And so that I don't get bored over the Easter days, I quickly went to my trusted Leica dealer on Saturday and expressed my interest in an old, run-down Leica M3. I can try these out for fun over the holidays.

I've been interested in the Leica M3 for a long time because it has this impressive viewfinder. While most Leica viewfinder show life through a 28mm lens, with the M3 viewfinder life begins at 50mm. This is of course optimal for longer focal lengths. Especially in combination with my Noctilux, I expect it to make focusing easier. And actually: the rangefinder fits my Noctilux perfectly. In order to try it out, however, I had to run around with a 6x gray filter all day. ISO400 and aperture 0,95 is not a really great combination in sunshine...

In addition to the optical properties of the Leica M3, the shutter sound is pure sex. Hammer!

Will this Leica M3 from 1962 stay with me permanently? I do not know that yet. Although the rangefinder works really well with my Noctilux, the times don't really run smoothly. I'll probably have to talk to my Leica dealer again...

Update shortly after Easter: I now know that this M3 isn't staying with me. The times weren't running smoothly and the camera tore the second film when I was rewinding it. Nevertheless, working with long focal lengths from 50mm with the Leica M3 is a real blessing. At some point I'll probably have a camera like this...

Update: Meanwhile it is an M3 moved in with me...