I was a photojournalism student at the University of Missouri in the early ’90s when I discovered the Leica M. In contrast to the massive steel Canon and Nikon bricks we all used at the time, Leicas were small, elegant and unimposing.

Image from a fantastic New Yorker article on the Leica mystique

Despite my lavish $4,000 annual income, I vowed to acquire one. Luck would smile upon me (in the guise of a friend’s crazy photographer boyfriend) and I soon had not one, but a pair of well-used M2s.

My big Nikons (and later Canons) were the workhorses, with their choice of wide-angle and telephoto lenses, motor drives and fancy light-meters. Framing in an SLR was precise, showing you exactly where your focus was and what you would be capturing on film.

But I always had one of those little Leicas tucked away under my arm, loaded with forgiving Tri-X black-and-white film. In the large, bright viewfinder, everything appeared in sharp focus with transparent lines to show you *about* where the edges of your frame were. Focus was fast, but not precise- that’s why God made Depth of Field. There was no built-in light meter. Most of the time I’d set exposure by experience and let the film’s latitude take care of the details.

The Leicas were all about shooting fast and loose, ideal for catching quick, unguarded moments at unexpected times; the perfect tool for making pictures when you weren’t Making Pictures.

Fast forward about 10 years. Digital had finally stopped sucking and I bought a pair of Canon EOS 10d SLRs. Instantly in love with the ease of digital, my old Leicas were immediately relegated to the closet. I’ve been an digital SLR user for years now, but I’ve continued to long for that fast and loose, go-anywhere camera in digital form.

My first experiment with digital point-and-shoots (an Olympus C-5050) left me insanely frustrated. Yes, it captured beautiful images- sharp, plenty of resolution, great tonal scale. But it lacked what I consider 2 fairly critical features- the first being the ability to see what the hell your taking a picture of. The Olympus had a joke of an optical viewfinder (more of a small tunnel for aiming) and the now-standard answer of the LCD on the back of the camera. That’s great if you want to make sure you’re not cutting grandma’s head off, but even the largest P&S LCD lacks the fine detail and resolution needed to really see what your subjects are doing and what else is going on in the frame.

In an attempt to solve this problem, I found this Voigtlander hot-shoe mounted 35mm viewfinder. Like the Leica’s, the image was large, bright and detailed. The frame lines weren’t exactly precise, but close enough. Mounted in the Olympus’ hot-shoe, I thought I was finally getting somewhere. Unfortunately, I was never able to work around a second critical problem.

The single most important feature of the fast, candid camera is taking the damn picture when you press the button.  Not kinda-approximately-when-you-press-the-button-after-I-check-the-exposure,-focus,-wind,-cycle-of-the-moon,-call-your-mom-now, but NOW. The Olympus, likely in some madningly-Japanese attempt to upsell real cameras, would SOMETIMES take the picture when you pressed the button. No matter how well you set prefocus and exposure or disabled the nanny features, sometimes the camera would just think for a second or two.

The Olympus eventually ended up as a Christmas gift to my far more patient father, and I went back to my Canons.

image from DPReview

Last year, on the spur of the moment I decided I wanted a small camera to keep in my bag. I wasn’t looking for a Leica replacement, but simply something that was a) very small and b) had better resolution than my phone. After playing with about a dozen cameras, I decided on the little Canon Powershot SD1000. It was tiny, well-built and (to my shock) quite fast. It starts up almost instantly and as long as I pre-focus, the shutter lag is almost non-existent. Image quality seemed perfectly acceptable- a little noisy, contrasty and over-sharpened, but usable for the kinds of visual note-taking I intended. Alas, it too had only a tube-like optical viewfinder and no hot-shoe, so I was back to LCD framing.

Or maybe not.

I decided to bend out a bit of sheet-metal into a crude hot-shoe and super-glued it to the top of the camera. As with my Olympus experiment, the framelines aren’t exact but are surprisingly close.

I played around with the positioning of the finder on the top of the camera and eventually settled on a position slightly offset from the center of the lens. Why? So my nose could comfortably lay aside the camera.

Finally, instead of framing a shot like this:
I can frame a shot seeing this:

I replaced the hand strap with a loop of bungee cord. I can carry the camera tucked discretely under my arm but still grab it and shoot almost instantly.

The last changes I made were to the camera settings themselves. Because I have no focus confirmation in the optical finder, I turned on the “beepbeep” focus lock sound and also reactivated the fake shutter sound to get audible confirmation that the camera had in fact followed my orders to take the picture.

Also, to minimize the problems with blown highlights and over-sharpening artifacts, I rooted around and found the “color effects” menu where I found custom settings for sharpness, contrast and saturation, all of which I turned way down. It’s not perfect, but I’m now able to get very acceptable black-and-white images, like this one.

Is it perfect? No. There are loads of new options out there to replace my old M2s, including an actual digital Leica M and I may eventually buy into one of them. But for now (and for relatively little money) I’ve got a happy little solution for fast and light picture making.

My beloved Leatherman Charge Ti

I’m ‘that guy.’ You know, the guy in the office you find if you need a knife, a screwdriver or a pair of piers. I’m the dude everyone calls ‘MacGyver’ (both in that jokey to-your-face way and, I’m sure, in that creepy behind-your-back way). My boss has brought my nickname into 21st century and calls me Jack Bauer, which is cool ’cause she also allows me to torture people with electrified lamp cords.

I haven’t always been this way, but having spent 10 years traveling to places like civil-war-era Macedonia, Papua New Guinea and post-Katrina Louisiana, I’ve acquired a few hard-to-shake ticks. I never let my gas tank get less than half-full and I always carry a Leatherman.

History

Grandma’s original SAK

Grandma has a tradition. When the boys in my family turn 12, she sends them a Swiss Army Knife. For all of high-school and college, it served as my one-and-only multi-tool. Being young and even stupider than I am today, I abused it repeatedly and managed to break both of the knife blades. I still have it, but it’s long since been retired from active use.

Supertool

By the mid-90’s, I’d finally arrived at my current place of employment, and I started getting mailed off to remote parts of the country and globe to cover news events. I carried lots of equipment- cameras, laptops, tripods and lights, and found myself in need of a more substantial tool to make minor and even major repairs. After a trip to REI, I became the proud owner of a then-new Leatherman Supertool.

The LeatherWoman

It was monstrous by comparison to the little Swiss Army, but it could do so much more. The piers were a godsend and (hallelujah) it had locking blades. I still have a scar on my right index finger from that original SAK closing up on me in use, and I’ve never trusted a non-locking knife since then.

Even Lee D. Zlotoff, the creator of MacGyver, recently admitted that today Mac would almost certainly favor Leatherman tools.

It served me very well for a few years, but it was just too large and heavy. Just as annoying, it was a chore to get any of the tools into use, requiring 2 hands to open and (seemingly) 3 hands to unlock the locking mechanism to close it back up again.

Thankfully, the geniuses at Leatherman had just the answer I was looking for, and the Supertool passed into the guardianship of my wife, who dubbed it the “LeatherWoman”. It has served a hard 10 years, but it remains her primary tool of choice around the house.

Wave hello, dear

In 1998, the world saw the introduction of what I still consider the best-designed multi-tool ever conceived, the Leatherman Wave.

A couple of my Waves (new and old style)

I still marvel at the intricate elegance of the design. In comparison to the Supertool, it manages to pack in even more functionality (scissors, yes!) yet is smaller and lighter. Most revolutionary for me were the instantly-accessible locking knife blades. I’ve always found the simple knife to be my most-used tool (from slicing apples to cutting up boxes) and now they were literally a finger-flick away.

I carried it on assignment to Taiwan when a massive earthquake hit the island (7.6 Richter). A year later, it came along in my pocket to Vietnam. I didn’t do anything heroic with it on either trip, but it proved invaluable none the less. It repaired a jammed tape mechanism, cut open UN MRE meal packets and cans of food. I used it to madly chop the tops off of water bottles to catch the… um… ‘output’… from a violently ill colleague.

It also accompanied me to the hairiest spot I’ve ever been. In 2001, I was assigned to a team working undercover to film the inside of a sex slavery ring in Macedonia. At the time, Macedonia was still in civial war, and the assignment took us from one side of the front lines to the other and back again. We posed as clients and, wearing hidden cameras, filmed inside clubs and hotels where the imprisoned girls were forced to do unimaginable things by the vilest scum I’ve ever met.

As journalists, we were of course unarmed and had we been caught I have little doubt what would have happened to us. My sole source of meek comfort: the little Wave in my pocket and it’s quick-opening blades. I knew that it was no match for an AK-47, but I admit to irrationally wrapping my fingers around that little block of steel on several occasions.

I’m sad to say that I no longer own that original Wave. I managed to break one of the screwdrivers and when I sent it to Leatherman’s excellent warranty service department, they sent me back a brand new tool. They could’t have known…

Gilding the Lilly

I have a couple of copies of the Wave, but my favorite and current daily companion is a Leatherman Charge Ti (which I consider a Wave in fancy Titanium trim). It’s a little bit bigger than the original, but it improves in a number of small ways- interchangeable screwdriver bits, better blades and (by far its best feature) a pocket clip. I use it enough that every pair of jeans I own has a thread-bare right front pocket.

It traveled with me to cover the horrific aftermath of Katrina (and the less-remembered Hurricane Rita). On both trips, we spent an inordinate amount of time drenched in a mixture of floodwater and sweat. Again, it proved invaluable in countless small ways- (again) repairing camera and sound equipment, opening food containers and jury-rigging a brace for the antenna of our satellite phone. You know those infrared, touchless paper towel dispensers in public restrooms? Guess what- they don’t work without power. I was able to ‘liberate’ the roll using the Leatherman, earning the gratitude of a small crowd of people trying to clean up after a long, nasty day working in the flood waters.

After I returned home, the tool spent about a week buried inside of an equipment case. It had been wet with polluted flood water, and when I finally dug it out it was nearly rusted solid. I considered sending it back to Leatherman with a letter explaining the situation, but I decided against it. It deserved better than to be returned and throw away. I spent a few loving hours over a weekend with some WD-40 and a wire brush scrubbing it clean. It still retains a few scars, but it still works beautifully.

Little guys

I’ve picked up a number of mini tools over the years. Most have simply been too small to be of much use, but I do retain a soft spot for one of them.

Mini SAK and a Leatherman Squirt

While Leatherman’s full-sized tools have long since displaced the Swiss Army Knife for my purposes, their little tools just don’t do it for me. Their current star is the Squirt, which I’m sure has its following. But for my money it’s too big to be invisible in my pocket but too small to be very useful. On the other hand, the appropriately-named Victorinox “Classic” is just about perfect.

It’s smaller and lighter than a USB drive, but for small jobs on small things it’s fantastic. For fixing eyeglasses, trimming your nails and digging out splinters, there’s simply no peer. I don’t carry one all of the time, but I very often find myself wishing I did.

A new beloved?

Earlier this year, Leatherman introduced their latest method to suck money from my bank account, the Skeletool. It’s a weird-lookin’ thing, but the basic premise is this: start with a full-size tool, pare down weight and bulk while retaining the most important functionality. Skeleton. Tool. Get it? Yea, those marketing folks don’t get anything past old Brainiac here.

Skeletool

I was skeptical about it and managed to hold off buying one for something like 3 whole months, but I have to say I’ve been very pleasently surprised. Despite being the same basic size as a Wave, it is noticably lighter and thinner. It’s a joy to carry, and the things it does (knife, screwdriver and pliers) it does as well or better than any multitool I’ve used.

But I’m not yet convinced and I may never be. I’ve been carrying a Wave-based tool for nearly 10 years now and I’ve developed an almost automatic response to problem-solving with it. When I carry the Skeletool, I find myself wishing I had scissors (for fingernails), or the serated blade (for crusty bread) or the wood saw for, well, wood.

For now, I’m carrying it a day or two a week to see if it grows on me. But I have to admit- when I slip the Charge back in my pocket it still gives me the warm-n-fuzzies. Like coming home after a long, hard trip abroad, it just feels right.

Seldom (as in never) have I put finger to keyboard with the sole intent of bashing a lowly computer input device. However, I feel it is my duty as a mammal with hands to warn the world about the ergonomic evil that is Microsoft Sidewinder Mouse .

A brief word about your humble messenger: I could be accused of being a computer input device slut (or connoisseur, by my way of thinking). I use a different mouse and keyboard combination on each of the 4 computers I use regularly. I have a hoarded stash of discontinued favorites: mice, keyboards, trackballs and Wacom tablets that I rotate frequently, like one might use a stable of antique British sports cars. I justify this sickness to myself by reveling in the fact that I’ve successfully avoided severe RSI despite having spent no fewer than 12 hours each day for the last 15 years using computers.

Upshot- I’ve used my fair share of mice ranging from excellent to poor at best.

The other day, my friend (I’ll call him G) called my desk and told me to look on my shelf. He’d left me a present… the aforementioned Sidewinder. He cagily said he didn’t get on with it and thought I might want to give it a try. This should have been what experienced inner-city homicide detectives call “a clue”.

I plugged it in and starting mousing. It’s ergonomic, kind of in the same way a cheap Chinese-made box cheese grater is ergonomic. To say it is angular is an insult to the science of geometry. While the shape may appear at first glance to have been line-drawn in crayon by a pre-pubescent Halo 2 fanboy, in use it becomes clear that there was a great deal of thought put into making every corner, bump and button as awkward and functionally counterproductive as possible.

One might argue that its shape is meant to give it a mean, aggressive, almost weapon-like appearance- appropriate for a mouse targeted at 1st-person gaming fanatics. I see the point, but would concede it only if firearms were routinely designed with their muzzles pointed backward into the face of the shooter. I suppose I’ll concede the point those who consider the suicide bomb vest an inspirational design.

The side buttons look as if a coke-addled Star Wars prop master glued them on as George Lucas screamed at him to match some feature of Boba Fett’s helmet. They provide a tactile feedback similar to a wrench turning a rusty lug nut.

The much-touted internal weight system is an ingenious design that somehow manages to make the device feel progressively worse each time you add or remove weight. By the time your give up, you’re consumed with yearning for the halcyon days before you decided try mess around with it.

My greatest ire is left for the display. Yes, this mouse- a device which by its very nature is meant to be COVERED BY YOUR FUCKING HAND- has a little screen on it. It manages, through the cunning design choices of both a red backlight and crappy, stair-stepped font, to ooze the technological sophistication one associates only with 1970’s-era LED digital watches.

So desperate is my loathing for this mouse that in the 3 days I’ve been using it, I’ve managed to learn almost a dozen new keyboard shortcuts. Give it another week and I’ll most likely be computing entirely through a command prompt window.