Leica

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    Now, I haven't indulged myself in camera-envy in a very long time. Despite the fact that I have been in the past involved in various roles professionally in photography. Also, I've owned quite a few good film cameras over the decades: Canon F1, Nikon F, Olympus OM2 & OM2SP, MPP 5x4 plate camera, Bronica 6x6 SLR, Mamiya C330 TLR, Pentax Spotmatic, Olympus Pen, etc. and have used many more in employment, from Nikon F2 to Toyo 10x8 & Sinar 5x4  monorails; even wind-up Robot 35mm cameras for Schlieren photography. Anyone who knows their gear will know this places me firmly in the Seventies & Eighties, work-wise - but I've been doing a lot of other stuff since then...
    Since the advent of digital photography and its now near ubiquity however, I've not experienced the desire to own a camera in the way I used to. I suppose it was the knowledge that the technology was not yet mature enough and hadn't caught up with the analogue world of film (some might argue, myself included, that in some respects it never will) and that investment in a piece of kit would necessarily disappoint within a very short time as things moved on. OK for professionals who can offset stuff against the tax bill, but for the rest of us, a camera now is an actual investment - and none of us wants to invest in something that quite frankly will be crap in a year's time. In fact, I've only relatively recently taken an interest in making photographs again since camera phones have got to a point where it's possible to take decent hi-res images with tonal qualities I can live with. I thought that the world of dedicated cameras was probably dead to me, especially at my age.
    However - enter Leica - again. Already world renowned as the makers of the finest optical instruments known to man (and a few good cameras, too,) they've recently brought out a new digital camera that boasts the usual Leica blend of specifications and quality - The M10 Monochrom. Battleship build, full-frame 35mm 40-megapixel sensor, large screen and the famed Leica rangefinder manual focussing, all in a beautiful monochrome body, retailing at the not inconsiderable, no - eye-watering price of £7,250, body-only. And it's called Monochrom, not simply because it is actually  monochrome in hue, but because it only shoots black & white. Really. Add to the tally the cost of a lens for one of these babies - around £1800-£2000 for a basic 50mm f2 Summicron (one of the finest standard lenses made and no mistake) and upwards of 12 grand if you want the f0.95 jobby - and we're talking most peoples' family runabout or a good secondhand sportscar for the same cash. And don't get started on all those exotic specialist lenses - the full monty will put you firmly in house-purchase territory.
    Ordinarily, this kind of pricing would set me off on a loud and declamatory monologue on the evils of capitalism. Not so in this case: this thing will out-perform a 10x8 film camera and has tonal qualities and light-capturing abilities that, to be frank, when I was in the business we would have said sounded like science fiction. This might not be Leica's first Monochrom, but it looks definitive enough to be a pretty sound investment for many years of image-making, should you have the resources to afford one.
    And so for the first time in probably twenty-five years, I've got the camera-envy bug again, albeit too late and to be honest, I'm too poor to justify such a thing: a small mortgage at my time of life is not really an option for something I can actually live without. I just really wish that wasn't the case. Keep doing the lottery...

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