i know, haircusts when you are young are no fun. luckily there is a lollipop waiting at the other end.

the image has a bit of history to it, at least for the gear head. it was taken with leica m7, borrowed from a good and obviously generous friend - thanks mike! - using a leica summicron 35/2 asph and a test roll of fuji new pro 160c (by the way, the posted scan if straight from the crummy jpeg scan by a 1 hour photo place, those colors are pretty stunning, even if they are more subdued on the web jpeg vs. what i have on my monitor on photoshop).

what is significant is that it is probably the last leica lens i'll ever own (unless i'm ever in the lucky position that i have more money that i know what to do with). i've been shooting leica m on and off for the last couple of years, last year mostly off. the reason i'm now finally hanging it up is that i simply don't have time for film anymore, but perhaps more importantly, the print quality is not there anymore. it used to be that i ran e.g. a film of fuji reala through the camera and dropped it off at chrome in georgetown and could receive some beautifully printed images back. now, film souping is no longer their core business, nor that of almost any pro lab, and the prints are done scanning the negs, who knows using what scanning profile/s, and then printed on a fuji frontier. the results are medioker or bland, at best.

if i had time to soup and print my own film, i'd love to keep on shooting it. if i could motivate owning multiple film camera bodies, i'd love to keep shooting it, since too many times i find myself never finishing the roll and next time i pick up the camera i wish i had another film-type loaded. don't get me started on the time it takes me to drop off the film or later pick it up. combine the fact of print quality and time contrains, i'm going to focus on digital from now on. if the urge to shoot film arises again, i'll simply get a used nikon f100 body, i cannot motivate spending hard earned dollars on having leica boyd + lenses sitting on the shelf at home.

having said that, i recently took the opportunity to pick up a nikon 17-55/2.8 lens and flipped my 18-70 d70 kit lens on fredmiranda.com. having a quality fixed f-stop zoom do makes a meaningfull difference.