My beloved Leica M8.2 has the dreaded vertical line syndrome, so I've had to mail her off to the repair center in New Jersey. I'll probably get her back in 2 or three weeks.
In the meantime, I've decided that I really hate my formerly beloved Olympus E-P1 because (1) the shutter and aperture controls sit right under where I hold the camera, so even tiny bumps screw up the exposure, and (2) the batteries won't hold a charge anymore, and that cuts down on the amount of time I can go out shooting.
So the Olympus is going to gather the dust I've brushed off of my first real film rangefinder, the sturdy and faithful Canon QL17.
The next few weeks will be a challenge. The camera is 40 years old, but still humming along so that doesn't worry me (I'm actually older than the camera, so if it fails, I'm probably next). What worries me is that I've come to depend on the Leica's LCD screen to check my exposure, and now I'm shooting a camera without a working light meter. A few years back, I'd calculate exposure by watching what the light was doing, and eventually I learned to trust what I was seeing and forget about the meter. So now I'm being forced to regain that skill, and I'll have do my best to make sure not to lose it again.
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