As I was preparing to go out for one of my "photo shoots" last evening, my 4 year old son donned his "camera bag" and gave a big smile. What the heck; do you want to go on a photo shoot with daddy? Yea!!!

We headed out to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens about 45 minutes before sunset. What should be take a picture of? That big frog! (a brass statue adjacent to a fountain). OK, I set the shutter, aperture, and focus. Draped the M around his little neck, and told him to look and click. Click. First shot done. Then I showed him the film advance. No problem, easy as pie. How about a picture with daddy in it? Yea! He advances the film (I was impressed). Make sure daddy is in the white box. OK, I know, click. How about a picture of these flowers? Yea! Let's take one with you in it. Yea!! 36 exposures complete in 30 minutes (well know the 'keeper' ratio when the slides come back from Fujilabs. Let's go get a Slurpy.

What fun! Now that we have film advance and framing down, next week we start on focusing. He is already pretty familiar with darkroom techniques. Who knows, by age 6 he may be a competent M-shooter and a valuable addition to the Leica customer base.

Any other young M-shooters out there?

-- Dan Brown (brpatent@swbell.net), July 17, 2001

Answers

My son is 5 and has his own P&S camera-I need to get him a better one for his 6th Birthday coming up as he is becoming more interested in close ups and the one he has now can not focus close at all. He took a great group portrait of the whole family with my father in law's Canon SLR recently-straight horizon and everyone looking at the camera. I don't know that he'll be sporting an M6 around his neck anytime soon, but he does have some real interest in photography, and I will of course encourage him if his interest continues.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), July 17, 2001.

Well, I'm 40! That's pretty darn young if you ask me.

Neat, Dan. The earlier the better. I was 12 or 13 when I got my start.

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@mail.com), July 17, 2001.

Dan:

Nice story! I bought my daughter her own Olympus Infinity Stylus Epic camera when she was 7 or 8. Prior to that she had been using her daddy's camera on a regular basis to take photos! It's never too early to get them started!.................................

-- Muhammad Chishty (applemac97@aol.com), July 17, 2001.

This isn't M but it's Leica: my 13-year-old daughter has been using an R4sP for about 2 years now. A friend gave her his old 60mm Macro- Elmarit-R and I've almost let go of the R4sP so for all practical purposes it's her camera.

A couple of weeks ago she took it to camp, and her photos were all well focused and correctly exposed. She actually prefers manual to auto, pays attention to backgrounds, and understands how the meter reading gives a medium tone. BTW she lost the lens cap - no I didn't chew her out - does anyone have a spare to sell me?

-- Doug Herr (telyt@earthlink.net), July 17, 2001.

My first Leica experience was around age 6, when my dad was in the backyard and sent me into the house to "go get my camera." It was a black model D. It felt very heavy. Carrying it without dropping it felt like a very important mission. I started shooting with it around age 12. A steam locomotive. The prettiest girl in the whole school, who sat across from me. Sharon. I still have the picture.

Dad left it on the car seat one day and it got stolen. The insurance company replaced it with a IIIf. I was shooting with that from age 13 through about 19. After that I bought my own, an M2. That's how I got started.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), July 17, 2001.

I went to Spain with my oldest daughter (19) and taught her how to use the M's. She wants one for her wedding as well as my underused lenses. My youngest, (2 1/2) has a plastic point and shoot that belonged to one of the older kids, and likes to take pictures. We haven't put any film in that one yet. I didn't sell any gear I wasn't using any more, I just passed it on to the kids when they took an interest in photography. They are using classics, but to them they are good working cameras. It is fun to see their perspective of a subject from pictures taken at the same time you took yours. A picture is worth a thousand words is well taken when both of us took pictures of the same thing at the same time, but you see something totally different (composition, lighting, focus).

We can learn from the younger eyes.

Keep teaching them to shoot.

Mark J.

-- Mark A. Johnson (logic@gci.net), July 18, 2001.