Don’t let them get inside your head in the shop!

In March 2023 I went to San Francisco for work. I was excited, big games conference, lots of good meetings and a Leica store 20 mins from the hotel. I was and am early in my journey with the M and wanted to nerd out with the folks in a store.

Enter the manager there who whilst chatty got in my head about how my Zeiss wasn’t good enough and I should really be shooting with Leica glass.

Now, he’s not wrong. The thing that makes Leica’s cameras is to use their own glass. They’re designed to work with it and the Leica lenses I have are stunning. I love making images with them, but, when I funded my first Summicron by selling all my other lenses I parted with my Zeiss 35mm f2.8 and I always regretted it so this weekend I found a used one, jumped on it and took it out this lunchtime when it arrived in the post. If you want to buy the f2 version, let me know ;)

It won’t come through in these shots but I’m so happy to have it back in my hands, and I’m increasingly of the opinion that while I really enjoy all the focal ranges at my disposal, 35 is special to me.

Special probably because when I was younger I shot using a 35mm film camera which had a 35mm f2.8 lens, the Canon MC.

Canon MC film camera - photo by Dmitri K. on Flickr

And special because when I got my first mirrorless, Sony A7, I also picked up a Zeiss 35mm f2.8 which I shot with almost exclusively for nearly 10 years and LOVED. You’re starting to see the pattern by now :D

I think that in my head 35mm is what a photo should look like. I’m not sure I’ll be able to train myself out of that now. I love 50, I really like 28 too, but 35, well that’s a photo, isn’t it. Aren’t brains silly?