And the M9 falls four feet to meet concrete. The filter takes the hit, the camera is undamaged, but that filter is jammed on and isn’t coming off.

The marvellous Richard Sintchak drops off a bag of lenses for me to play with. Time for a wander around Presidio and then across the Golden Gate bridge and up to overlook the Bay.

I think the M9 took a hit, because the rangefinder is rather out of alignment. Mostly vertically but also, sometimes, on the distance too. So it’s off to Leica USA as soon as I can dig up a copy of the receipt from the UK, and they’ll have to ship it back to me on the road. Slightly annoying to have a camera built like an brick on the outside and like cream cheese on the inside. I suppose it’s a common problem and an easy fix.

A quick response to a question several people have asked me, regarding the sharpness of the Leica M9 sensor, since it has no anti-aliasing filter. Well, ultimately, it can only matter on a print, not at 100%, but equipped with a Zeiss 50mm Planar, here is a 100% crop that should help answer that question. I think it’s incredibly sharp, for those of you who care about these things.