To Use or Not to Use, That is the Question.

It’s staring me right in the face, this beautiful grey box with a silver chrome jewel inside it. It’s precise, elegant, and very refined, yet all last night I had trouble sleeping thinking about it. You would have thought that this magical grey box would have calmed my fears and given me a restful and blissful evening but no, this little grey box required two valiums to knock out my fears.

Yesterday I paid a great deal of money for it and I’m not even sure I want it. I walked out of the store where I purchased this box and began to tremble, but here I am and I don’t think I have any intention of returning it, but I’m not even sure I will ever use it. What a confusing state I’m in!

Yesterday afternoon I bought my first digital camera, a small Leica M240, that looks almost identical to the M6 I used to use, and even the M4 I used when I was in my twenties. The only difference is that one was film and the other has a card that records about 400 images before I have to change it.

I wish it were that simple, and maybe it is but last night I tried to keep my soul in check. I felt like it was ready to abandon me, reject me for my reckless faithlessness.

Film has been my confidant, my beloved, for forty-five years and why have I even been thinking of abandoning it even if it’s only very slightly. For me the newfangled digital world is something I mostly abhor, and yet for some time I have ruminated and thought that if I ever was to shoot a digital frame this new masterpiece of a camera with it’s perfect 35mm format would be my choice. So what do I do as soon as I make a little bit of money, I go out and spend it on a camera I’m not sure I want. Oh what a state I’m in.

Here I am at this very tiny crossroad with its various ups and downs. A person who is computer illiterate, who emails almost never, who only reads printed books and newspapers, and tries as hard as possible to avoid the digital world has with great reluctance bought a camera that begins to unite me with a world I want nothing to do with.

Here I am, a person who does not like retouching, compositing, or even looking at the frame until the image is developed, usually days later, buying an instant camera.

Here I am a person who does not like most digital reproduction as it looks sterile, lifeless, and often very cool, buying a small digital camera.

And lastly why would I buy a camera I probably could have borrowed from Leica to test to see if I felt comfortable with it before I went out and purchased it?

The answer to these and most other questions concerning this camera is for the most part, I simply do not know. I have some small incite but no clear definition.

I am a person for better or worse who does not test or try things in practice. It has to be something I truly care about before I will pick up any camera and make a picture. This camera if I ever use it will be handled like its predecessors, nothing ever will be shot without an attempt to make it significant. I don’t fool around with cameras. I learn my craft full speed ahead. Every picture is for keeps, and it stands on the contact sheet for eternity. There is no taking anything back.

These four hundred frames will be shot very deliberately and precisely. Nothing arbitrary, just as the film cameras that preceded it.

I bought this camera to use only when film is not effective. As usual I will keep only my toes in the modern world while my heart and soul stays firmly footed in the life and times I know best.

This camera is well made and beautiful as the objects I hold from the past but it no longer has the mechanical Swiss movement of a fine watch but rather contains the technology of the present. It represents both worlds to me.

I will continue to shoot film almost all the time but there will be a time, a moment on a shoot, where this camera will fill in the void that is there. It will be a small special tool for that special occasion.

We will all stay tuned to when that day arises. Until then my life and my work will remain grainy and will be filled with the unknown.

Life in all its varieties will be recorded using the reciprocity of light as its guideline, and ultimately brought to life in a very dark room.

P.S. I’m off on a far far away adventure for a week. See you again in two weeks.