The Leica M3 is the camera that changed how 35 mm rangefinders worked. It was the first Leica with a bayonet mount, the first with a single combined view and rangefinder, and the first that felt as if every control was designed around the photographer’s hand rather than the factory’s production line. Mine is a double-stroke version, serviced, used weekly, and it remains the most exact mechanical device I own. There are smoother cameras, lighter ones, quieter ones, but none that give the same sense of mechanical certainty.

The 50mm f/1.5 Zeiss Sonnar from 1939 is one of the great optical designs of the last century. It belongs to an age before coating, before marketing language replaced observation. It was built to interpret light, not to control it. Mine is one of the last pre-war uncoated examples, mounted on a Contax IIa body from the early 1950s — the bridge between the pre-war world and the modern one.

There are vintage lenses you respect for their engineering, and then there are lenses you fall in love with because of how they render the world. The Carl Zeiss Jena Pancolar 50mm f/1.8 Zebra, in its radioactive 8-blade form from the late 1960s, is very much the latter. This is a lens that reminds you why character still matters — whether you’re shooting on film or adapting to digital.

The AGO Film Processor bridges home development and lab-level consistency. From 510 Pyro to C-41 and ECN-2, it saves chemistry, compensates for temperature drift, and delivers repeatable, professional results at home. Not perfect, but a game-changer for anyone serious about film developing.