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Every year or so I dig through this site and do house cleaning on the images that I’ve posted. I look at every photo and end up deleting what I no longer feel is my strongest work. The last time I did this, I also scrubbed some of the other content, and removed the information for my Kodak Tourist from the hardware section. I’m thinking I might have to add it back soon.

The last time I used the camera was the summer of 2004 when I loaded a roll of Provia 100 into it, and never finished that roll. I think I kind of wrote it off since it was scale focus, and at the time, I wasn’t comfortable with scale focus. I wanted something with a range finder to be super accurate, so I never really used the camera.

Flash forward four years. Now that I’ve been shooting with my Leica on the street, and am getting more & more comfortable with it, I’ve come to realize that having the camera focused to a certain distance, and knowing how to work at that distance makes getting a shot incredibly fast compared to just haphazardly positioning myself, and taking a moment to focus with each shot.

With this stigma about working without a range finder gone, I pulled the tourist out of the box it has been in for the past four year. Knowing what I know now about shooting on the street. what I’ve discovered amazed me.

The Kodak Tourist is the most agile, ergonomic camera I’ve ever held.

1. The balance when held in the right hand is amazing. The weight is significantly less the my M3’s, so the torque on the hand when trying to hold it at certain angles that exists with M3, just isn’t there. As far as I can tell, there really isn’t a way to hold it with one hand that requires the repositioning of the hand into a way that makes tripping the shutter awkward, or impossible. This means it should be very easy to approach a subject with the camera hidden behind my back, or to the side, and still be able to raise to the eye for a quick shot without having to juggle the camera. If any of you have ever shot in the past few years with a camera that doesn’t look like a dSLR, compact point & shoot, or a cell phone, you should understand the benefit of extra stealth. Anyone who spots something this different looking will be staring at you from blocks away, and that often doesn’t make for the best photos.
2. The Leica family of cameras are known for their quiet shutters. Let me just say this; next to the sound of the Tourist , the M3 sounds like a thunderclap. The same goes for advancing of the film. It is just dead silent.
3. I have two tourists. They collectively cost me $20.

I have some film spooled to 620 so it will fit this camera, and have patched the pinholes that have developed in the bellows. The next time the sun decides to show itself around here, I think I’ll take it our for a spin and see how it goes. If all is well, I might have to add back it’s info page, and have a few photos to show from it. Ideally, the different in quality of the lens, can be more then made up for by the increased negative size. Then I can have a good compromise for when I want better resolution then the M3, but don’t want to break my arm carrying my Speed Graphic around.