Thirty Six Thousand

July 27, 2025
Equipment: Leica II, Hektor 5cm ƒ/2.5 | Ilford FP4 Plus, ISO 125
Location: London, UK

It’s my birthday next week. I’m turning 26, and I’ll admit it’s snuck up on me. Gone are the days I lay awake in anticipation days before my birthday. Part of that lies in the fact that I’m no longer getting a pile of Legos as a birthday gift, no doubt. But it’s also in no small part rooted in an anxiety about the future, a nostalgia over my bygone (but not too-distant) childhood, and a healthy, yet apprehensive, appreciation for the inevitable march of time.

Age, albeit not my own, was at the forefront of my mind while I was out with my camera this past weekend. The Leica II I was shooting with is 87 years old (the lens is a bit older still – the serial number suggests it was among the first batch of Leica’s screw mount lenses made in 1931). It is as much a piece of history as it is a camera.

Taking photographs with a museum piece is no easy feat. For starters, the film must be loaded from the bottom. This is an awkward operation, involving trimming part of the film strip so it aligns smoothly inside the camera. The Leica II has a limited range of settings available – you’re mostly limited to taking pictures in broad daylight, and the camera doesn’t have a light meter to tell you if the lighting conditions are sufficient to take a good picture. Keeping the lens pointed at the sun for prolonged periods of time runs the risk of the lens focusing sunlight inwards, like a magnifying glass, thereby burning a hole in the camera’s delicate cloth shutter. Unlike modern lenses, this lens is not UV-coated and not optimized for color photography.

Even if you get the exposure just right, the Leica II is a very slow camera. It requires forethought, deliberation, and patience to operate. Needless to say, the camera offers no auto focus. I’m often not fast enough to compensate, leading to missed moments.

Right, by the Leather Exchange on Weston Street. The family had been walking in a light pocket with great contrast, but by the time I lined up my shot they had walked into the shade. I’m still happy with the photo, but the moment I saw when I decided to capture it, and the image I had in mind, would have been an improvement. To the left, a skater practices on the approach to London Bridge Station. I tried to get an action shot of him in motion – a jump, maybe, or an ollie – but again, I couldn’t get the moment right.

So okay, we’ve established that shooting with an old camera is difficult, slow, and often frustrating. So why put up with it? Because its age makes it, and the photos it produces, unique.

There’s a certain humbling feeling when using a camera older than the modern ballpoint pen. Given the baseplate wording is in English, denoting it was built for export, it’s likely this Leica II spent all of its life in England. Walking through London, every shot feels like a trip through history – could I have taken that shot back when this camera was new? Or when it was 26 years old?

As a result, some images give a sense of timlessness. The fact that these images are shot on 35mm film only contributes to that feeling. It was in fact these 1930s “Barnack” Leica cameras, named after their inventor Oskar Barnack, which popularized the use of 35mm film for still photography. As digital cameras only became widely available after the fall of the Soviet Union, and film cameras hit peak sales as late as 1997, film has almost seventy years of relevance. Shooting with a film camera results in images which could plausibly range from the early 1930s until the early 2000s.

That temporal ambiguity leads to an instant nostalgia. Film photos, especially these ones with the imperfections of the Leica II, give a sense of a bygone era – despite being shot just a week prior. And that faux nostalgia is what gives film photography its magic. It’s an emotion intrinsic to the 35mm medium. While it’s possible to recreate that on digital, film grants it immediately and on demand.

All three of these shots, taken during my morning commute, could have easily been shot on digital. But consider the soft focus of the 5cm lens, the way the film captures the light on the stonework or through the trees, the shaded haze of the Guy’s Hospital back alley – to me, that softness is more emotive than the harsh sharpness of digital photography.

So yes, the age of this Leica II means it’s difficult to shoot. There’s a limited range of shutter speeds. Images are often over- or under-exposed. The lens is prone to light leaks and glare, and if you take the time to mitigate the above you’re likely to miss fast-moving moments. But when it all comes together, there’s a sense that the age of this camera is what makes it unique. I enjoyed shooting this camera because of how I felt taking a picture just as much as I enjoyed the pictures I took.

I’m turning 26 next week, not 87 or 94. I’m not particularly worried about growing older, at least not yet – I have some time before existential dread really sets in. But the Leica II is comforting in showing that no matter how old you get, your idiosyncracies, and the way you make people feel, will still offer relevance in an ever-changing world.