I’ve never really got it, Leica rangefinders – old fashioned, under-specified, expensive – who wants or needs one..?
The first time I considered Leica (and I mean Leica M rangefinders) was back in the days of film, my kids were arriving and it wasn’t practical to carry the two of them plus 20kg of camera gear. But back then the Contax G system was around – well built, well specified, auto-focus and lovely to use, a small bag with two bodies, 21, 45 and 90mm lenses, FP4 and HP5, was all I ever needed for working outside.
Recently, however, I rediscovered the Leica M – full frame sensor (so one up on Fuji), compact, quality and with the odd nod to modernity – live view and decent ISO sensitivity. I also discovered I could hire one for a day, so I arranged to do so – as luck would have it, over a gloomy pre-Christmas weekend in London and Oxford; a M Typ 240 and my Fujifilm X100S to compare it with. Let’s just get this thing out of my system…
It’s heavy, even with just a 50mm f2 lens, in all but even lighting the metering is pants, ISO performance is good but lags behind the X100S, no auto-focus (that took a while to get used to; pretending to myself I was only practicing so it didn’t really matter), auto-bracketing isn’t flexible enough, only one memory card slot (and you need to take the baseplate off to change it – what on earth is all that about??)
So, would I ever buy one? Err, yep. I just did; the pictures speak for themselves…
PS: see my recent images from Mumbai and the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, some Nikon but lots of Leica.
