It takes more than a Leica to become Bresson

Every time I see Sam, I realized how lazy photographer I am. We were doing the same thing, taking pictures, in Paris. He had a huge, at least 10kg backpack on his shoulders, filled with accessories, lenses and stuff, including my favorite, a magnificent super wide lens, and I, on the other hand, was walking around with a 220g camera, no accessories, nothing! To make the matter worse, I had even forgotten to bring my 200g tripod with myself to Paris! And as if it’s not shameful enough, that was the only thing I forgot to bring with myself!!! And then, he was running around, taking pictures, walking around the monuments to find the good spot, changing lenses one after another, and I was gossiping with Talayeh and taking some shots once in a while, as I was talking (my favorite activity!) between several proposal to sit down somewhere and have a coffee or a drink! You know, carrying around a 220g camera is not easy at all!



As a huge fan of Henri-Cartier Bresson, I was always so tempted by the idea of walking around everywhere with a tiny Leica and freeze the moment, that when Leica introduced a new fully manual D-lux 2, I didn’t think for a second to order it. Well, back then, I had no idea that you can do the same, with your bulky SLR and all those sets of lenses, but to be honest, I’m not that devoted anyway.

I mean, apart from a long list of problems and short comings, including inferior picture quality, not being able to use different lenses or filters, specially the one that I miss the most, Polarizer, and awful a lot of others, it gives you a huge advantage: it is not as intrusive as a SLR with a bulky, photo journalistic lens! and if you want to be a people’s photographer, it worth all the pain indeed.