I just heard a camera rumor I really want to believe. Really. I want to believe this.

 

When I was teaching photography at the University of Texas at Austin, in the College of Fine Arts, I had a wide range of cameras at my beck and call. Bob Solomon, who taught before me, had stocked the lab with 8x10 view cameras, and amazing lenses. I had the usual menu of decent 35mm cameras from Canon, and a couple of medium format cameras. But I also had a "secret device" that nearly always made wonderful images and was easy to use and even easier to carry around. A camera so stealthy and yet so advanced that it became legendary to those photographers who craved an M series Leica rangefinder camera but didn't have the budget to snap one up. I still have that camera. All metal. A fast lens. Easy to load film into. Of course it was "full frame". And it had a special feature; when the metering battery ran out of juice the camera was still fully usable in a full manual mode. In the day you could buy one at just about any camera store for around $175, brand new. In the box. Need high ISO performance? You could load fast film into this miracle camera. Need super resolution? You could load Panatomic X film into this camera and shoot at ISO 32. Psychologically impaired about shifting between color and black and white in the camera? You could use only black and white film for the life of the camera. Or color. Either way you always saw the world directly; through an optical finder. 

The lens on the front was a 40mm f1.7. Built in. Or built on. Rangefinder coupled. Ready to rumble. If your PX625 battery was good to go you could make use of the camera's built in light meter AND its automation. The camera featured shutter priority automation. Did I already mention the rugged, all metal construction? How about a leaf shutter that synced with flash at all shutter speeds? Well, my camera is about 49 years old and still banging away. I can load a roll of Tri-X in it and be out the door under a minute flat and I'm pretty sure the camera will be right there with me. The magic of the whole set up, besides the small size, low price and speed of operation, was its great,  permanently attached lens. All so advanced for a camera introduced in the early 1970s.

Yep. You know I'm writing about the Canon Canonet QL17III. Still sought after today by avid film photographers. because....why not? 

There are some fun, compact digital cameras on the market that seem like the logical descendants of the ancient Canonet but most of them come these days with a fixed lens that's too wide. Something like 28mm or 35mm (equivalents in this angle of view as well). But to my mind the attribute that made the Canonet a standout was the actual focal length of its lens. 40mm on full frame. Nearly exactly the diagonal measure of a 35mm frame of film. Close to what and how the human eye sees. Maybe the Ricoh GRIIIx comes close. It's also available with a 40mm equivalent. Not a full framer but at least the same angle of view. 

Cue the rumor! It has been rumored that Leica is working on a second model of the Q3 camera and the main feature differentiating it from the original Q3 is the inclusion of a fixed, 43mm lens. Not any run of the mill lens either. This one would be an f2.0 APO Summicron. Just to anchor my thoughts about the lens --- the 50mm f2.0 APO Summicron for the Leica M series cameras costs a cool $ 9,295.00 as of this afternoon. And it's considered one of the finest lenses in the world. 

I have no idea if the rumor is true. I have no idea if the alternative, "long" lens Q3 will be priced in the same range as the 28mm Q3 but if it's even close in price it's going to be just insanely popular. Well, that's my own spin, I guess. I'd certainly love one. Especially if the lens is even close to the performance of the current M 50 APO. That's exactly the right focal length for me. Just exactly right. Not that I need yet another lens in that range....

In fact, I do have two 40mm lenses in the drawer already. One is the Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic MC II. It's in the M mount. The other is the Voightlander 40mm f2.0 Skopar in the Nikon F mount. Both are really nice. But the Leica 43mm lens would likely put these two to obvious shame. 

A cinema note: Legendary cinematographer, Gordon Willis's favorite lens was the 40mm. He used to have a formula he used when shooting movies (like The Godfather and Manhattan). He described it as "40:40". He liked to use the 40mm focal length positioned about 40 inches above ground level. Found it very, very natural. 

Anyway, I heard the rumors this morning and after I finished with a little busy work I grabbed my Q2 and headed out to celebrate the possibility of a Q camera with an absolutely perfect lens on the front by shooting a bunch of black and white frames in our downtown area. I forgot to cover the red dot on the front of the camera with black tape and guess what? No one tried to steal my camera! No one looked at my camera. No one recognized my camera. None of the street criminals that so many live in fear of seemed to have any interest at all in a small, black camera. Just no interest. None. Not even a single dentist looked at it with envy...

So I gave up worrying about it altogether. If you feel the need to worry about your camera wherever you go I would suggest that the possession of it is causing you more pain than pleasure. You might be better served to just give up on owning a nice camera altogether and just use your phone. But be careful. The phones get stolen far more often. It's so unjust...

First day in a while with high temps that struggled to hit 90°. As a bonus we even got some rain. 

Get on the list for the Q3 - 43mm camera as soon as the pre-orders start. I have a feeling that no matter how quickly we push the pre-order button here in the U.S. we'll have a year ahead of us to salivate over the possibilities. I'm sure the Swiss and German photographers will cut the line and get theirs first. We are no longer the "preferred" international customers for high end stuff. More's the pity. 

Photos from the "out and about." below.