Since I was little, I always watched my dad take pictures of the family and things that interest him. It seemed like he always had a camera in his hand. Sadly, in 2003 he passed away after a long battle with cancer. Upon his death I inherited his camera gear. I suppose I looked at it as a passing of the torch. I decided to buy a Canon 20d to use with his lenses and immediately fell in love.

Since that time, I have gradually traded and sold all of my dads camera gear. I felt it was just a stepping stone to bigger and better things. As my love for photography grew, I began to develop an interest in landscape photography. One day searching the interest for pictures I came across a website called Stuck in Customs by Trey Ratcliff. His use of HDR photrography widened my horizon and has helped me tremendously in becoming a better photography (visit his website here). Today, I often utilize this technique.

I don’t travel a lot but often enough that I found out quickly the difficulty in carrying camera equipment. Also, I don’t like sticking out in a crowd and I always felt when caring my dSLR I was being watched. Eventually, I came across a photographer, Steve Huff and his website. He traveled taking pictures with a rangefinder camera, mostly a Leica m9. I recognized the camera but initially thought it was just an “old fashion” film camera.

As I continued to research and began looking at the variety of pictures on the web taken with this remarkable small camera, I fell in love. With the blessing of my lovely wife, I decided to sell my collection of dSLR’s and lenses. I definitely believe I made the right decision.

The Leica m9 is a remarkable camera. I’m amazed that a camera so small (in regards to dSLR) can create such phenomenal pictures. I truly believe the quality is second to none. Post processing (image editing) has now become much easier because the quality of the images often times need little processing.