Film photography & Flash : Leica M6, Noctilux and Leica Flash SF 20

I wanted to shoot with my Leica M6 with a flash for a long time and I’ve finally found a flash SF 20 at the Paris Leica store. It is the only flash compatible with the TTL fonction of the M6. It was a second hand of course because this model is not in production anymore. It’s in mint condition and works beautifully.
TTL stands for Through The Lens because there is a sensor in the camera which mesures the light coming through the lens.

In order for the flash to fire, your shutter speed has to be 1/50s or slower. Higher than 1/50s the flash won’t fire.
When you set your iso at the back of your camera , the iso value is displayed on the flash screen. In the viewfinder you can see the flash sign which shows that the metering system (arrows and the red dot) will take into account the flash. That’s the beauty of this TTL system ; everything is taken into account to mesure the perfect exposure ; the shutter speed, the iso, and the distance from your subject. So when you look into the viewfinder the arrows indicates if you are under or overexposed. The only adjustable data is your aperture ; you can’t change the iso nor the distance to your subject, and you don’t want to shoot under the shutter speed of 1/50s because your image might be blurry. So you have to adjust your aperture to get the right exposure. You have to turn the aperture ring according to the arrows inside the viewfinder. When you see the red dot, you have everything in line and you can press the shutter button.
So I went to the Bangkok Motor show to try the system and I shot some portraits of the beautiful presenters that were working for the car makers.
I shot 3 rolls this afternoon ; Cinestill BWxx 250 (black and White) Cinestill 800T (color) , and Kodak TX 400 . That’s the order of display in this article .

I demonstrate the functioning of the flash and TTL in my video :