I too have a Leica IIIa in my past, but my story is not as nostalgic as
others. At least, not about the Leica
My first camera was a Brownie Super 27, which was sophisticated as
snapshot cameras went - two lens stops, two shutter speeds, which I
learned to use well. My first "real" camera was a used Argus C3
received as a birthday present. As soon as I started working weekends
at age 16, I saved most of my earnings for photography, first an
enlarger, and then a Pentax Spotmatic, which cost $250 at a time I
earned $1.25 an hour before taxes. Somewhere along the way, a relative
gave me a prewar Retina I. I used the Retina at high school alot,
trying to take candid pictures, but between guess focusing and slow
shutter speeds with the 3.5 lens, my hit rate was very low for primarily
indoor available light pictures.
So I decided to try to get an inexpensive rangefinder Leica. After
researching all the models and how to tell them apart, I picked a cold,
damp, foggy Saturday to go to the skid row section of Boston (on the
perhaps naive idea that anyone who might want to rob me was less likely
to be hanging out) and walked down Washington Street, going from pawn
shop to pawn shop. I eventually found a IIIa with an F/2 Summar lens.
I think I paid either $50 or $75 for it. This was around 1966, give or
take a year.
I never really warmed to the camera. The lens was not that great. The
Retina could outshoot it assuming I got the focusing right. The tiny
viewfinder was as unergonomic as the Argus or Retina - the Pentax was so
so much nicer to use than either or them. The Leica was too big and
heavy, compared to the Retina, to bring to school. One good use I found
was as a second camera, with infrared film and a deep red filter. One
time, when I was hiking with the Leica in that secondary role, I dropped
the camera and the shutter stopped working. I gave the Leica to a
mechanically adept friend who got it working again. He kept it until it
was destroyed in an apartment fire.
I did like how the Leica felt in my hand, its precision feel, and the
idea of owning a piece of history. But between the viewfinder, lens,
and, to be honest, my technique, it just did not produce good results.
Perhaps, however, the experience with the Leica primed me to fall in
love with an Olympus OM-1 from the moment I picked one up.
----- Larry Woods
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