What is this camera about?

Leica has just brought out this special titanium version of the Leica M9 digital camera. Launching the limited-edition model, Leica states, "The exclusive special edition Leica M9 "Titanium" is the result of a collaboration with Walter de'Silva, the prominent automobile designer. Responsible for groundbreaking design concepts for the latest models from the Volkswagen Group, the chief designer and his Audi Design Team have re-interpreted the design of the LEICA M9 just as he envisaged it. The outcome is a unique camera with a new interpretation of the characteristic features of Leica rangefinder cameras, which lends precision engineering, unique style and solid titanium to extraordinary formal design."

At a price that is intentionally outrageous, this is obviously aimed at the super-rich extravagant consumer and not intended to be a professional's workhorse in the way that the M2 was, in the early 1960s. The latter is still regarded by many as the best-ever Leica. I have one and enjoy using it, but it is getting too fragile to carry around all the time. I have also got used to the built-in metering of the current MP, launched about ten years ago, which is in most respects identical to the M2. Leica film cameras continue to be made in small numbers but the main production is now devoted to the digital cameras, including the successor M9.

With its 1950s styling, the latter is in some ways a bit of an anachronism. However, it has an overwhelming advantage over all other full frame digital cameras - its small size and simple viewfinding and focussing system, which show not only what is in the picture but what is outside the frame as well. This makes it particularly easy to use and has brought Leica a full order book.

Because of Leica's iconic status, the brand has tended to be taken up by the super-rich, although in fact the prices are within the same range as other full-frame digital cameras used by professionals and serious amateurs. The firm can hardly be criticised for exploiting this niche market, even though the cameras themselves end up in display cabinets or are rarely taken out of their presentation boxes. Who, one wonders, would want to buy a gold-plated camera covered with red crocodile leather and would they ever use such a thing?

As it happens, the Titan development programme led to some unintended technical developments, including the abolition of the frame illumination window and its replacement by LED illumination. It would be surprising if this feature does not soon turn up in the standard M9. I would be surprised also if a titanium bodied M9 similar to this special edition will not soon be on offer as a new professional workhorse, preferably without that peculiar strap.

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

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How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...

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Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...

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