Only a small selection of my photos appears here please visit my SmugMug Gallery for thousands more www.jhluxton.com

I have had an interest in transport and history, in particular industrial history, for my entire life, with photography supporting this interest.

An interest in railways developed at an early age as my maternal grandmother lived next to the Liverpool to Crewe railway line this combined with regular family holidays to Devon and Cornwall enabled me to explore the Great Western Railway and Southern Railway lines in the west country an area which I am particularly fond of along with Wales.

Visits to Devon and Cornwall also developed my interest in Industrial Archaeology, pestering my parents to take me to old mine sites.

I took my first photographs on my mother's Kodak 127 Bakelite Brownie mark 1 when I was about 4 or 5. I received my own more up to date Kodak 127 Brownie mark 3 for Christmas 1965 at the age of six.

In the early 1970s things changed. My grandfather gave me his new Praktica Nova 1 SLR, he was finding 35mm film loading fiddly and my father was not really interested. My family owned a newsagent’s shop I started browsing Amateur Photographer each week, though still being at school limited my scope for acquiring equipment thus the Praktica and its solitary 50mm f2.8 Tessar lens remained my workhorse until 1979.

I finally bought my first new camera in 1979 a Pentax auto 110 SLR outfit with lenses and flash. Seduced my its compact size I did not realise the quality implications when downsizing from a 35mm manual to a 110 auto only camera. Following disappointing results, the Pentax kit was replaced by a Rollei 35 compact whilst I decided what camera system to buy for the longer term.

In 1981 after reading a review in What Camera weekly of the then new Contax 139 and its outstanding 50mm f1.7 Planar lens, reputed to be the best lens available at that time, I realised this was what I should buy. By now I was a student armed with a credit card, acquisition was easy but paying it off took longer!

From 1981 to the 1990s I worked my way through several 35mm Contax system cameras a 137 before moving on to an RTSII in the early 1990. I switched to the Contax G electronic rangefinder system in spring 1996.

In addition, I also used a Rollei 35, Minox 35GT, Leica AF-C1 and Contax T2 compact cameras as well as a medium format Rolleiflex 3.5f TLR between 1982 and 2002.

My first experience with a Leica rangefinder came in October 1980 when I bought a pre-WWII Leica IIIa I saw for sale in the Exeter Branch of the London Camera Exchange. Unfortunately, the camera had a light leak and though repaired I lost confidence in it though a little later I was able to buy a much better post war Leica IIIf with coated 50mm and 90mm lenses. I did like the rangefinder focusing.

These Leica encounters sparked an interest in Leica cameras and a desire to own an up-to-date Leica rangefinder system - but cost always appeared to be an issue with other priorities cropping up.

However, in October 2016 36 years since I bought that Leica IIIa, I finally achieved my dream when I went off to Leica Store Manchester and bought a new M type 262 with a 35mm f2 Summicron and 75mm f2.4 Summarit lenses. A 28mm f2.8 Elmarit and SF-40 flash were added in 2018, in 2019 a second M body joined the line up an ME240, and in 2020 an SF-20 flash.

My first encounter with digital photography was in 1994 when I borrowed a then new Apple Quicktake 100 from work for a weekend. However, the quality was so poor, the cameras very expensive and the amount of storage capacity extremely limited. Thus, I never touched another digital camera for six years.

When Leica entered the digital market, I thought it might be worth revisiting digital and decided to buy the Digilux Zoom. The Digilux Zoom camera was a small Fuji with a Leica badge but much improved over the Apple Quicktake despite the lens suffering from severe barrel distortion. I realised it was not quite time yet to stop using my Contax G1 electronic rangefinder.

A succession of digital Leica cameras - Digilux 1, Digilux 2 and Digilux 3, V-Lux 1, and C-Lux 1 followed the Digilux Zoom.

The quality of the images produced by the Leica Digilux 2 I bought in 2004 were sufficient to make me realise I could live without a film camera and within two years all 35mm camera gear except for grandfather's now worn out Praktica were sold.

I have stayed faithful to the Leica brand during the 21st Century as It has kept life simple and why bother changing when you like the result?!

My current Leica line up comprises a DLux8, X1, VLux5, M type 262, Leica M type ME 240 with 28mm Elmarit, 35mm Summicron and 75mm Summarit lenses plus SF40 and SF20 flashes; supported, when necessary, by a Leitz tabletop tripod bought back in my Contax SLR days.

My interest in transport encompasses heritage railways, road transport and shipping, and from summer 2021 I began exploring the mainline railway network once again - something I have not done since the 1980s.

As well as transport I enjoy wandering around old industrial sites particularly those associated with extractive industries as well as visiting historic sites and buildings.

Currently I am working at digitising my extensive collection (over 16,000 slides and an unknown number of uncatalogued negatives).

What appears on this Flickr site is only a fraction of what can be found on my SmugMug pages at www.jhluxton.com.

As a real-world job, I worked as a teacher of History, Geography, and ICT for over 33 years before retiring to pursue my hobbies full time in December 2019.

John Luxton

February 26, 2025