Is an M9 a good wedding camera ?

I often shoot wide open. Reason for it is, I love it! I could'nt care less about 'the fashion these days' or what style other photographers earn their money with...🙄
All that counts is that I like my pictures and to keep my clients happy...

EdwardKaraa said:
Well, the fashion these days seems to shoot everything with razor thin DOF at close range. The sad state of our hobby/art.
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To answer the OP's question.
I have a friend who is a wedding photographer who shoots two M9s. He has had a lot of problem with Moire on suits and has to often employ some flash, even with a Summilux. None of the above were issues when he shot Canon 1D.
 
There's more than one pro wedding photog who shoots with a DSLR and 70-200, and a M9 with a couple of primes. There are pro wedding photogs like the redoubtable Riccis Valladares who shoots with a pair of MP's loaded with Tri-X and Pro400H and no SLR at all. I can only imagine what kind of skill, resources and confidence a person would need to produce world class wedding imagery with two film RF's in today's mega-digital world.

RF usage will lend itself to a certain kind of style, and really, I think it's about whether the bride and groom are happy with the style of photo you regularly produce with a RF, and what allows you to shoot with the most skill.
 
Can't see a major problem with it. I have shot only one wedding, with an M6 and an M2 and a 50 and a 90, years ago. I now know too much to try that again. I think good flash experience is important for weddings. I am impressed by some of the posts on the pnet wedding forum. There are a lot of true professionals there. More than one maintains they could get through many weddings with just a 35 1.4. Leica make an M version of that.
 
brides and grooms usually dont really care with what equipment you are shooting, unless they are self into photography or read something about Leicas, Hasselblads etc...
All they are interested in is, what you produce at the end of the day. A very few wedding photographers made a name as a shooter where the medium actually matters. Riccis is probably one of them. And then its still about their style and not about their equipment. I know dozens of very good wedding pros who shoot digital mainly and use film cameras on the wedding day as well. From Holgas to Hasselblad, from Contax 645 to Leicas. A very few clients will see or care about what cameras are used to produce an excellent outcome.

Look at Stefan Soeser. In my humble opinion one of the leading wedding pros and by far the best Leica Wedding shooter out there. He shoots on Film Leicas and scans them with his Imacon Scanner to get the superb results he is after.
I can imagine that some clients just book him because of that whole Leica Film thing, but most clients will book him because he delivers outstanding results. No matter what equipment he is using.

Archiver said:
There's more than one pro wedding photog who shoots with a DSLR and 70-200, and a M9 with a couple of primes. There are pro wedding photogs like the redoubtable Riccis Valladares who shoots with a pair of MP's loaded with Tri-X and Pro400H and no SLR at all. I can only imagine what kind of skill, resources and confidence a person would need to produce world class wedding imagery with two film RF's in today's mega-digital world.

RF usage will lend itself to a certain kind of style, and really, I think it's about whether the bride and groom are happy with the style of photo you regularly produce with a RF, and what allows you to shoot with the most skill.
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I know how smart arsed this will sound, but I genuinely believe that by asking the question you show that you either don't know the m system well enouhg, or are not that experienced with weddings, either way I'd advise against shooting only with M's, not that it can't be done, just there are times when a Dslr is going to be slightly easier. I always shoot a few rolls of B&W on my M6 at my weddings, but it's kind of self indulgence on my part, I love the results and it gives me something different to the digital, but I don't think clients would be aware of it as it's subtle.
 
rxmd said:
Er, what??
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Well, at least in my experience, which goes like this:

I've only had two photographs where moire showed up (both on blue synthetic fabric, coincidentally). Shots were both taken in RAW.

Because it annoyed me so much, and I couldn't seem to ditch the moire on PS CS5, I ended up buying Capture One just to get rid of them (I got a little obsessed about it, I know).

Later on, I revisited the photos and decided to convert them to B/W, and in both cases, the moire disappeared in the B/W conversion. I tried this both in grayscale conversion in ACW and converting the colored photo to B/W using Silver Efex. Consistently, the moire vanished by the mere B/W conversion. Odd, right? But I'm happy it worked anyway!
 
Bobfrance said:
To answer the OP's question.
I have a friend who is a wedding photographer who shoots two M9s. He has had a lot of problem with Moire on suits and has to often employ some flash, even with a Summilux. None of the above were issues when he shot Canon 1D.
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Thanks. It was just the issue with moire I was particularly interested in.
 
bobbyrab said:
I know how smart arsed this will sound, but I genuinely believe that by asking the question you show that you either don't know the m system well enouhg, or are not that experienced with weddings, either way I'd advise against shooting only with M's, not that it can't be done, just there are times when a Dslr is going to be slightly easier. I always shoot a few rolls of B&W on my M6 at my weddings, but it's kind of self indulgence on my part, I love the results and it gives me something different to the digital, but I don't think clients would be aware of it as it's subtle.
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Obviously otherwise I wouldn't have asked. I've done a few weddings. Mostly I intend to do black and white film with a few colour images thrown in as an unexpected bonus. The M9 is just so that I only have to have one set of lenses. It would of course get used for other things but pointless as a wedding camera if it causes undesirable results of fabric. i.e. brides dress/veil and/or grooms suit.
 
Oh well...

'Of course the main reason for including the AA-filter would of course be dealing with moiré. However, in shooting extensively with the M9 over two months I only had that problem with one image!'
source:
http://www.ottoschulzephotographers.com/blog/leica/leica-m9



135format said:
Obviously otherwise I wouldn't have asked. I've done a few weddings. Mostly I intend to do black and white film with a few colour images thrown in as an unexpected bonus. The M9 is just so that I only have to have one set of lenses. It would of course get used for other things but pointless as a wedding camera if it causes undesirable results of fabric. i.e. brides dress/veil and/or grooms suit.
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rxmd said:
I don't think moiré on wedding veils is a good reason to discard a camera, there are probably other, more pressing criteria.

The most frequent case seems to be that where you have two layers of fabric overlapping each other, and there the moiré is already visible to the naked eye and has nothing to do with the sensor.
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Aliasing caused by incomplete sampling of an analog space to create a discrete model of that space is not relevant to human vision which is (as far as we know) a purely analog process. Moire' is an artifact of caused by digitization. Humans do not digitize spatial information.

On the other hand constructive and destructive wave interference caused by light passing through layers of screen-like fabrics would be observed by humans and recorded by both film and digital imaging.

Morie' in spatial digitization depends on many factors including the pixel spacing, the angle of the light and focus. Defocusing barely visible to the human eye and invisible in prints caused by motion, miniscule DOF degradation or diffraction can reduce morie' levels.
 
I don't think it's the capability of the camera so much as the photographer's skill set at wedding photography. In the right hands, an M9 I am sure would be plenty capable.
 
Keith said:
This reminds me that RFF member riccis valladares shoots weddings with Leica rangefinders ... predominantly in black and white.

His work is well worth checking out. 🙂
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Annoying that both photogs mentioned in this thread have the most irritatingly slow flash websites ever. I can take only so much of looking at 'loading 12%....' if I want to look at pictures.... what's taking them so long? If anything is wrong with the whole wedding photography business it's the crappy websites. grrrr!

Ok, done, thanks 🙂
 
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