Vintage: Second Attempt at Leica IIIA

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season and that we can look forward to a better 2018. I wasn’t thrilled with 2017, but there’s plenty to be grateful for.
I’m home visiting family in Phoenix through the New Year. I brought my grandfather’s Leica IIIA (from about 1937) with me. I shot about half the roll in Seattle and then hastily used up the rest here in Phoenix in an effort to get the film to Tempe Camera in time to get it developed before returning to Seattle.

The result is a good news bad news story. The good news is that part of the roll came back with imagery. The camera is capable of firing and allowing light in to hit the film. Unfortunately, the bad news outweighs the good. I can’t figure out why the first part of the roll didn’t work. Nothing.  I used a light meter app for the settings, so there should have been something, even if poorly exposed. I can’t afford a 50% success rate, especially when some of the “successes” were blurry (user error). I’ll have to have someone look at the camera.

Here are a few of the images I did get. It’s pretty impressive that Leica made products that would work for 80 years and longer. That’s craftsmanship.