[Leica] Leicas in Paris

["Steve Unsworth" <mail@steveunsworth.co.uk>]

I've just had the most amazing Leica day of my life here in Paris. I met up
at noon with fellow LUGer Guy Bennett and we ambled from Hotel de Ville to
rue Moufftard in the 5th - anyone who can't take street photos in rue
Moufftard shouldn't have a camera it's _that_ good. Took photos for an hour
and a half or so and then started to walk up the street back towards the
centre of town.

Along the way I was saying to Guy how I really envied Kyle and his ability
to interact with strangers, for example within 15 minutes of arriving in
Bucharest he was in a sewer shooting street kids (an exaggeration Kyle, but
you know what I mean), when this French guy says to me 'didn't I see you
earlier photographing with a Noctilux?' Yes I reply and pull out the Nocti.
He was shooting with an M6 and a new 28mm Summicron and had a 50mm Summicron
in his jacket pocket. So we wander along, the three of us talking about
photographers and Leicas when he asks if we want to see his 'lab'.

Sooo, we take the bus to his place. It turns out he rents two flats in his
block. One is where he lives and the other is his darkroom. What would
normally be the living room is where he keeps his prints and his Leicas. And
he is one serious Leica guy. At one point he pulls out an M4-P with one of
Tom's rapid winders, now I've never seen one of these in the flesh, much
less tried one. After trying it, all I can say is that as a left eye shooter
I want one, heck I need one! In addition he had all the lenses from 21mm to
90mm and about 3 or 4 M6s, all classics (including a silver one his 'Sunday
Leica'). Also there we are sat in a 4 by 4 metre room with three Noctiluxes
sat the coffee table :-)

His darkroom had 3 enlargers, one per format you might think, wrong! One per
print size, the one for doing 20 x 30 was huge - with a motorised column for
the enlarger body.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that several of his prints for his next
exhibition (subterranean Paris) had been taken with a Minilux, I want a
Minilux! The sharpness, everything taken on Tri-X and developed in D-76 was
amazing for a P&S. Correction it was sharp full stop. I thought Tri-X was
meant to have grain.

And then, just when you would think things couldn't get better we went to
his 'proper' flat to meet his girlfriend and drink some single malt whisky.

His name was Jean-Ever Le Roy just in case any of you have ever seen his
work.

An amazing day.

Steve

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