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Taken at a BBQ held by a bespoke motorcycle dealership this morning. Leica M240 + 35mm Summarit f2.5. 1/100th &f5.6 @3200 iso (yes, guess who forgot to reset the iso when he came out of the workshops!) Gerry

Half a year ago I wrote a post "Sold my M9", where I said: I still believe this to be true. A 5D mark III is a great tool for portraiture, moving subjects and high iso shots, I would not think about trading this for another system for these applications. The fact is that the majority of serious camera's out there today is capable of creating good quality images. I bought a Fuji X100 to replace my Leica as a travel camera. The Fuji is a nice camera, the viewfinder is nice and modern. The picture quality is not bad at all (although not comparable to an M8 or M9 with a Leica lens at low ISO), the size is great and its looks are not bad (bought the limited black edition). The high ISO performance is great and the lens is pretty nice as well. On top of that of course the price is very reasonable. But I do miss something, the distinct look the pictures of a Leica rangefinder have, and the special feeling it gives me to take pictures with a Leica. This might sound esoteric, but after half a year, I believe that the last sentence of my "I sold my M9" post is where I made my mistake. I ended my quote above by saying: "I love Leica, but I love picture taking more." It turns out that what I love about the Leica is the whole process of picture taking. The way you frame the shot, the smooth manual focusing, the range finder window, the simplistic controls, the great look and feel of the hardware, and of course the phenomenal picture look and quality. None of the other camera's gives me the same satisfaction. So here we are, half a year later and I feel I made a mistake. I am not too sorry that I sold my M9 when I did, prices have fallen a lot since the introduction of the new M, and the specs of the new M look great. But I sold a set of incredibly good lenses (a 28mm ASPH summicron, a 35mm ASPH summicron, a 50mm summicron). Lately I started to look online for secondhand Leica camera's, the prices of the digital M's are dropping and I expect them to drop even more the coming months, so I couldn't justify buying one at the moment. However, last week I saw a great offer for a hardly used M7 that I could not resist. So here I am, with a beautiful M7, a bag of Tri-X film, waiting for my own b&w film developer kit to arrive to see my first results. I bought a secondhand Voigtländer 35mm 1.4 to start with and will patiently wait to see if any good offers for summicrons pass by. So there it is, my slightly embarrassing story. I'll be waiting for your "I told you so" messages. Meanwhile, it is good to be back, even though it will be in the analogue part of the forums mostly for now.