Bumping this, as I've been doing it (more or less) for 5 months so far, and I think a review is in order.
To recap I've been shooting with one camera (Leitz Minolta CL... followed by the Bessa R3A, bit of a cheat, see below), one lens (Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm f/2) and one film (TriX) since some time in January. Lately I've been processing my own film as well. There's a
thread in Photos from Film showing shots from the first 14 films shot to date. Another one finished today, so that will get processed and scanned this weekend.
Exceptions: as you see above, I changed the camera from the CL to the R3A part way through (at the Stratford Film Meet, in fact). I liked the CL, but a few things were really bugging me and I decided to give the R3A a go, and never looked back. Both are rangefinders, but the metering on the R3A works better for me, and the viewfinder and focusing patch are superb. I'm glad I started with the CL though; the analogue metering needle is really good for giving you a general idea of how "far off" the metered value is from the shooting value, and it probably helped me trust my judgement over the meter a bit. It's just that having to wind on AND be in landscape mode before you can see the meter is a real bugbear; sometimes the "meter on a stick" seemed to stick a bit as well.
Second exception: we got ourselves our first grandson in April, and I've used my only digital camera, the wonderful Fuji X10 for colour photos of the baby and family. It's a whole different genre, colour, autofocus, etc. I don't think it invalidates the exercise.
What I haven't done: printed off images on a regular basis. I meant to do this, but only did a few. What I have done is post better (or at least notable, for some reason) images from each film on the thread mentioned above, and had a few helpful comments back.
What I'm learning: I think the relentless use of just one black and white film type is helping me to see the world in black and white again. I felt I was quite good at that over the first 5 or so years of photography with my meterless Werra 1 and a variety of black and white films. But after I started using colour negative and then transparency, my black and white stuff went to pot, and prior to starting this exercise I was still having trouble. You can see from comments on some of the shots that this continues to be a problem, but I'm getting better at recognising the danger situations.
I do think using a rangefinder exclusively for a while is helpful. It forces me to think about issues like depth of field, without having it served up before my eye. I reminds me that the scene in the frame is a section of reality, not all there is. It makes it easier to see what's about to come into the frame. And after practice, the lens focus tab makes focusing much faster; I really have begun to develop a kinaesthetic sense of where to move the tab for approximate focus, to be refined with the patch.
That said, I miss my SLR, and its range of lenses. I did think of trying to get more lenses for the rangefinder, but I think the compromises with the rangefinder become worse as the lens focal length gets longer (particular with the R3A's 1:1 viewfinder). I can't do macro; closest focus with this lens is about 2 ft 6.
My current idea is to continue with the rangefinder until I've done 6 months, then revert to the MX, perhaps with just the 35mm lens at first, then later a variety of lenses. But for a while at least, still just TriX.
Now what did
@Strappy think about his go at OCOLOF3M?
