About five years ago, the technician who did my processing retired, and I began using a new lab. The young man who sat at the desk in the office took my 35 mm film cassettes and, when I returned, handed me my negatives and contact sheets. The third time I picked up an order he said to me, “You use a Leica, don’t you?”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“You can always tell,” he said.

You can.

For several decades I had used top-of-the-line Nikons, first an F and, when that was stolen, an F3, with the Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4 lens. I always have my pictures printed full-frame, so composing is very important, and the Nikon F’s show you about 99% of the exact image in the viewfinder. That is the great advantage of a single lens reflex (SLR): The downside is that when you press the shutter release, it takes time for the mirror between the lens and the viewing prism to swing up out of the way so that light can reach the film. And it makes a noise – clip-clop – that is a problem when shooting candids in close quarters.

The results I got with the Nikons were frequently unsatisfactory. Too often my timing was off, so I just missed the picture I thought I had taken. And there was a lack of clarity that persisted no matter what film I used.

I noticed that Sebastiao Salgado pictures had technical qualities I admired: The images were sharply defined, and the blacks, whites and the whole range of grays had the vivacity I wanted. Salgado is famously a Leica photographer.

Then I read some Leica promotional literature that claimed the delay time from pushing the shutter release button until the shutter begins to move was only 11 milliseconds. I called Nikon technical support in New Jersey and asked what the delay time of the F3 was: 55 milliseconds. The difference was 44 milliseconds, more than 1/25 of a second – an enormous period of time, more than enough time for a facial expression to alter from what you want to something you do not.

That was very exciting: Unfortunately Leicas are made by the successor company to Ernst Leitz GmbH, a German firm, and I claim no virtue for it, but the memory of the Holocaust makes it impossible for me to buy German goods, especially ones made by firms whose products aided the Nazi war effort.

Fortuitously, I read in George Gilbert’s “The Illustrated World Wide Who’s Who of Jews in Photography” the story of how the Leitz family, Protestants and democrats, acted in the late 1930s to save their Jewish employees and dealers once Hitler’s intentions became clear. Many were hastily trained how to use the camera and sent abroad as “sales representatives.” Elsie Kuhn-Leitz was arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo when two women she was helping escape to Switzerland were intercepted at the border. This heroism made it possible for me to buy my first M6 without a sense of desecration.

The M6 is really a simple camera. It has none of the automatic features that even a cheap point-and-shot camera has. The photographer loads the film and advances it with a lever, sets the diaphragm opening and the shutter speed, focuses the lens, and rewinds the film at the end of the roll with a crank. The photographer makes all the decisions: He takes the picture, not the camera. And everything works to perfection – especially the lenses, the chief glory of the Leica system. My pictures finally had the qualities I envied in Salgado’s work, what the young man at the lab recognized as “Leica” pictures.