Trade M4 for M5?

[Steven Dooley]

Get the second M body to match the lenses in your kit - you won't regret it.

Personally, I give the M5 high marks but I know it is not for everyone. I have the M4 and M5 combination and I couldn't be any happier.

 

[Nokton48]

Leitz did more to shoot themselves in the foot re: M5/CL sales or lack of same than any imagined horrors of the M5.

Righto.

Question: Imagine (today) how many M9 units Leitz would sell if they simultaneously released a version selling for a fraction of the price? ***THE M9CL*** which sells for two-three grand?

Answer: Close to zero, as what happened with M5. Unfortuately for Leitz it was their ultimate Wetzlar technical endeavor. A highly misunderstood shame, IMO.

 

[Nokton48]

Actually I played with the Leica CL today at Midwest Photo, for the first time ever. My wife was busy looking at Canon digital stuff. I'm surprised by how -LOUD- the shutter is in the CL. Not a stealth camera, it dosen't -sound- like a Leica to me at all.

So you gets what you pay for.

 

[Ljós]

Actually I played with the Leica CL today at Midwest Photo, for the first time ever. My wife was busy looking at Canon digital stuff. I'm surprised by how -LOUD- the shutter is in the CL. Not a stealth camera, it dosen't -sound- like a Leica to me at all.

So you gets what you pay for.

It is true that the CL sounds different from a M, and is louder overall. But one thing to be considered - because you said you were playing with it - that all cameras sound quite a bit louder than when in use, when fired without a lens. And if you had a lens attached: a dryfired M or Cl without film in it sounds louder than one with film. I find, noticeable so. So, again, I agree that the CL is not as nice acoustically as an M (I had a CL at one time, loved its compactness, the handy shutter wheel, and found the meter to be a nice feature, but now consolidated on two Leica M2), but playing around with a "naked" camera one needs to be careful not to compare apples and oranges.

Greetings!
Ljós

 

[rpilottx]

At the Moment . . .

At the Moment . . .

Thanks for all the comments. At the moment, I have decided to just keep shooting with the M4. I honestly don't take enough photos anymore to justify another M other then a GAS attack. And I don't want to go through the hassle of getting the M5 in the mail and having to send it back if I don't like it's handling. I will wait until I find a camera store that has one I can handle before making a decision. And I still have the Nikon F and Canon S90.

I normally use an incident meter but just ordered the VCII to go on top the M4 and make my kit even smaller (Minolta Incident meter is huge). It is interesting that I am going back to technology which predates even through the lens metering which became common in the late 1960's. Will report on the VCII in a few weeks.

By the way, I just had to loan the Nikon F with lenses and meter to a high school student. She is taking a traditional photo class and her parents only had digital. Love it.