Finding myself in danger of becoming a machine-gun photographer, I decided to try to slow myself down a little, to think more about
what I want to take pictures of, more about what makes a good composition, and one way to do that is to restrict the number of
photos I take. Not easy to do with a digital camera, other than loading it with very small memory cards; and that wouldn't work
very well, as there would always be the temptation to take larger cards along, “just in case”. Another goal in the back of my mind
was to teach myself a little more about exposure, and not rely so much on the in-camera metering, though I haven't used Auto
modes for a long time, preferring aperture priority, with an occasional foray into shutter priority when circumstances require.
I often make use of exposure compensation (after chimping the histogram, or checking the blinkies), but the actual details of the
exposure pass me by, other than dialing in the aperture (or shutter speed). I have rarely used the Manual mode.

One day, on a whim, I picked up an ancient Zeiss Ikon Ikophot selenium exposure meter in a charity shop, and an idea immediately
sprang to mind: get a manual film camera, and go back to the basics. And the obvious choice was an old Leica! After assiduously
studying Paul-Henry van Hasbroeck’s splendid book “Leica - A History Illustrating Every Model and Accessory”, I settled on a
Barnack Leica, and bought myself a IIIf (from eBay), and a 50mm Elmar f2.8 (from a vintage camera specialist shop), learned how to
cut the film and load it (it requires a 4 inch long leader, compared with the 1.5 inch leaders on modern-day film), and am now in the
process of relearning photography by going back to basics (with not a battery in sight!). I decided to concentrate on black & white,
as I think this is the real essence of film photography, and this gallery will document some of my efforts. I'm starting by trying
the different B&W films that are currently available, and experimenting with yellow and orange filters. For the present time I'm
having the films developed and scanned by a specialist film processing lab in Birmingham (UK).

I cannot give up playing around in Photoshop, though, even with film photgraphy – that would be a step too far! So the images
presented in this gallery have been edited, for example in levels, contrast and clarity in the excellent Camera Raw filter in
Photoshop CC, a bit of judicious sharpening, sometimes a bit of cropping and occasionally a touch of lily-gilding using the equally
good structure slider in Silver Efex Pro.

The first row of images are of the camera itself (and meter), the remainder are images taken with the camera,
scanned to jpegs and (lightly) edited in Photoshop CC.

Films I have tried include (so far...):
Kodak BW400CN
Ilford HP5 Plus
Fujifilm Neopan 400CN