Travelling light - small camera liberation

Oskar Barnack, the man behind the original Leica camera designed the system to use 35mm movie film because of his asthma. A smaller lighter camera gave him the opportunity to walk and take photos which erstwhile equipment prevented due to its large size — 35mm was and is a miniature format. Yet today super-zooms and cameras including my own EOS 3 whilst undoubtedly robust, it is a big camera and does not make for long journeys on foot in my book. I have done it and for me I found the camera was not getting used because of its weight at the end of the day. You can read more about that in a previous blog post.

Having bought the M2, the plan was not so much to replace the EOS 3 but to have a smaller, lighter camera to use on occassion on walks. The reverse has happened, the M2 is fast becoming the only camera I use. From walks to pub gatherings and taking the odd silly snap down a night club, the M2 has become a a fantastic camera.
This is a short blog post of why I think this and perhaps this might work to your advantage.

Today is a good case in point, I woke up at 3:45am (early I know but sunrise shots do require early shots) and in the event wasn’t overly enamoured with taking my EOS 3, neither a tripiod or indeed taking the Mamiya. I just felt like taking it easy today, and thankfully with a smaller camera like the Leica M2 with a small set of replaceable lenses you have a lightweight, very robust system that can be flexible as well.

On arriving to the starting point Burton Mill Pond it took a while for the light levels to increase before I could start shooting (I was starting with Tri-X at box speed) but this didn’t bother me too much as shortly with the ease of holding the camera pretty steady at 1/15th (which is at least a stop or even two-stops slower than I can hold with an SLR with a 35mm focal length lens) it soon became apparent that not having the tripod wasn’t a hinderance. (I was shooting at f/5.6 with infinity ever so slightly out of focus, to emphasise the morning mist)

The other bonus with a small camera is that you can get into nooks and crannies and places where I find it hard to hold a camera securely or steadily. One of the best cameras for this is possibly the Olympus XA which has a decent fast 35mm (f/2.8) although the rangefinder patch is quite faint on many of them now as they have aged and they’re not quite as durable as the mechanisms in say a Leica or indeed the new rangefinders from Voigtlander or Zeiss (Cosina basically.)

Maybe some day you should give it a try, go out with a smaller camera: a decent digital compact, or a nice simple film compact, or maybe even dip your toes into a rangefinder system if you like the feel of it. It’s perhaps not for everyone, but the simplicity of the M2 is where I find my creativity is growing because I’m not worrying about meter settings, exposure compensation dials, auto-focus methods and so forth. Don’t get me wrong, the EOS 3 is a fantastic camera, but more often than not, I’m finding the M2 to be a much more favourable companion. The EOS 3 has definitely become pretty much my telephoto camera.