anorphirith
Established
Hello everyone, I have been thinking about this for a while.
I love the design of Leica's M cameras; I think they are the most beautiful cameras hands down, and every couple month I get the urge to buy one. So I bought an M6 a little more than a year back ( I already sold it), played with it a bit, even got a .95 noctilux on it (got blurry pictures of course…). But the rangefinder focusing was so hard, especially in low light or low contrast. Aligning two rectangles to get the image in focus was fun at the beginning but was just getting more and more annoying and stressful as time passed by. I had a 5D mk II at the same time and a Hasselblad 500c/m that I was using much more, even though I loved the feeling of the small M6 hanging around my neck. The only practical way I can see the use of a Leica M nowadays would be with shooting at summarit or slower aperture, and at a 35mm or wider angle; because the time spent focusing on a fast aperture the subject is gone or the composition lost. So as much as I like M cameras they are so impractical that every time I am about to get another M, the memory of these dreaded rectangles discourages me. I am now much more inclined of using a R8-9 with those very sweet R lenses than an M camera...
As a compromised I bought a fuji X100 that I absolutely love besides the (relatively) poor construction. The autofocus makes it so much more usable, for example I could have never taken these pictures and gotten sharp images with any M camera
Or this one
I think M cameras reminisce of classical photography, they are great for someone who already owns reflex cameras and wants to take some landscape pictures, they’re also attached to the names of a few masters of photography so they are regarded as great tool, but today it’s more like a collector’s or an amateur’s piece. Even though very few pros are still using them for their work, I don’t think it’s wise to take them out for some serious shooting
If you are using a rangefinder as your main shooter, how do you justify the focusing? Do you only shoot landscapes?
How can you make sure than when you are shooting a head portrait with a 50mm at 1.4 that your image will be sharp, looking at dim rectangles on your viewfinder (the depth of field would be 3cm if you shoot at 1 meters away!!!! )
I love M cameras help me out here
I love the design of Leica's M cameras; I think they are the most beautiful cameras hands down, and every couple month I get the urge to buy one. So I bought an M6 a little more than a year back ( I already sold it), played with it a bit, even got a .95 noctilux on it (got blurry pictures of course…). But the rangefinder focusing was so hard, especially in low light or low contrast. Aligning two rectangles to get the image in focus was fun at the beginning but was just getting more and more annoying and stressful as time passed by. I had a 5D mk II at the same time and a Hasselblad 500c/m that I was using much more, even though I loved the feeling of the small M6 hanging around my neck. The only practical way I can see the use of a Leica M nowadays would be with shooting at summarit or slower aperture, and at a 35mm or wider angle; because the time spent focusing on a fast aperture the subject is gone or the composition lost. So as much as I like M cameras they are so impractical that every time I am about to get another M, the memory of these dreaded rectangles discourages me. I am now much more inclined of using a R8-9 with those very sweet R lenses than an M camera...
As a compromised I bought a fuji X100 that I absolutely love besides the (relatively) poor construction. The autofocus makes it so much more usable, for example I could have never taken these pictures and gotten sharp images with any M camera
Or this one
I think M cameras reminisce of classical photography, they are great for someone who already owns reflex cameras and wants to take some landscape pictures, they’re also attached to the names of a few masters of photography so they are regarded as great tool, but today it’s more like a collector’s or an amateur’s piece. Even though very few pros are still using them for their work, I don’t think it’s wise to take them out for some serious shooting
If you are using a rangefinder as your main shooter, how do you justify the focusing? Do you only shoot landscapes?
How can you make sure than when you are shooting a head portrait with a 50mm at 1.4 that your image will be sharp, looking at dim rectangles on your viewfinder (the depth of field would be 3cm if you shoot at 1 meters away!!!! )
I love M cameras help me out here
