A friend lent me his fathers 1935 Leica mk2, this piece of history had formally been owned by a reporter for the Daily Express so had done the rounds.

You forget just how much is done for you "in camera" so with each shot it's, set the asa (once), pull out the lens, use a light meter, estimate the distance, set the shutter speed, set the aperture, wind on the film, and shoot.

Anyway I decided to run a little test to see just what was achievable and unachievable with two cameras 78 years apart.

For the Leica I used Ilford FP4 125iso b&w film, and for the post process on both it was Lightroom 3.

After b&w conversion in LR3, I gave the leica images a little noise filtration and cropped the IPhone images to roughly the same, then some minor vignette, contrast and levels on both.

Although by no means a scientific experiment the results were quite interesting and the smoother less detailed shots from the Leica I preferred.

Has photography really advanced that much, we still the same light source, that big bright one in the sky and although gear is far better technically , is that always so important?