A walk with my Leica M Monochrom, the CCD was replaced in 2017 (they can suffer from corrosion) so it should be good to go. I thought I’d take it for a spin around one of my favourite museums, Imperial War Museum, Duxford. It was a lovely sunny Friday afternoon and attached was a Summicron-M 50mm f2.

There’s something special about taking a camera out for the first time in a while, especially when that camera is a Leica M Monochrom. Mine has a bit of history: its original CCD sensor was replaced back in 2017 after the well‑known corrosion issues. Since then it’s been quietly waiting on the shelf, ready for the right moment. This week, I decided it was time to stretch its legs.

And what better place than one of my favourite museums, the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

It was a sunny Friday afternoon. The kind of light that makes you instinctively reach for a camera, and the kind of sky that flatters the Monochrom’s unique way of seeing the world. I paired it with a Summicron‑M 50mm f/2.

Walking through Duxford with a purely monochrome camera changes the way you look at things. Without colour, you start noticing shape, texture, contrast, the rivets on a Spitfire’s wing, the polished curve of a radial engine, the long shadows cast by hangars built for another era. The Monochrom’s CCD has a way of rendering these details with a kind of quiet intensity. There’s no filter array, no colour interpolation, just light and shadow.

I found myself drawn to the interplay of sunlight and metal, the way the afternoon sun skimmed across the fuselage of a Lancaster, or how the glass panels of the American Air Museum caught reflections like shards of silver. The Monochrom handled it beautifully.

By the time I left, the sun was dipping low, turning the tarmac into a sheet of glowing grey. It felt like the perfect farewell shot, a reminder that sometimes the simplest walks with the simplest tools can be the most rewarding.

The Leica is definitely “good to go.” And after this little outing, I think it’s going to be spending a lot less time on the shelf and using it for 'real' work.