A Leica full circle
I bought my first Leica in 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. It was a second-hand M240, and I just needed it to get my creative juices flowing. Nothing was happening; my work evaporated overnight, and I thought this would be a great time to try something new. It was love at first touch. As much as you might hate it for the pricing, Leica cameras do feel absolutely great in the hand; you're compelled to pick it up and use it. If I were to describe it to you, it feels like a new iPhone, but you don’t hate yourself after using it because you've spent hours scrolling through social media. It’s just a nice, chunky, premium piece of metal that’s also great at what it does. The images from my M240 on my everyday cycle rides were fantastic, and the small form factor really made me want to take this camera everywhere I went. Even with my Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4, the camera performed superbly!
I’ve used that camera for quite some time, but the thing is that (and I can already sense the haters popping up) a Leica doesn’t really shine until you put some Leica glass in front of it. I’m trying to be objective here, and I’ve done numerous comparisons of lenses: the Zeiss 50mm f/1.5 ZM, the Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4 MC, the Summicron 35mm, the Summilux 35mm Asph FLE, the Summilux 50mm Asph, and plenty of various Sony lenses. The contrast and color rendition that you get from Leica lenses really is incredible. And just like that, with time, I found myself to be the owner of a Leica M240, Leica M6, Leica Summilux 50mm Asph, and Leica Summilux 35mm Asph FLE. If you’ve already done the math, that’s around £8000 in second-hand gear. Pretty steep for a hobby. I do photography commercially as well, but it’s mostly architectural and documentary, and most of it requires large resolution files, bracketing, and focus stacking. Not to mention that a high dynamic range is a massive benefit. Thus, the only camera to ever make me money is my trusty Sony.
During the lockdowns, none of that mattered. I wanted a small camera to document daily life, so the Leica was perfect. Between March 2020 and January 2021, I took 6000 photos with that M240, and quite a few film rolls went through my M6.
Then the issues started. I live in London. We don’t get snow here, practically ever, but one day in January 2021, it snowed relatively heavily for London, so I decided to grab my Leica and capture some street shots. Sadly, some of the snow got into the hot shoe mount. My camera started acting up, so I gave it to the guys at Leica to get it fixed. That relatively simple fix took three months… In the meantime, I bought another M240 in silver, so when the old one came back, I immediately sold it.
A few weeks later, I started noticing a weird line across all of my images. It was very, very faint, but with time, it started becoming more and more obvious. Turns out the sensor had a row of dead pixels, and I had to return it and exchange it for another black M240. By that point, I started thinking about switching to a Leica M10, realistically only because of the form factor. The M10 is noticeably smaller than the M240, so I finally decided to sell my black M240 and get a black M10. It was a great choice.
I’ve owned my Leica M10 since June 2021. I’ve shot 25000 photos with it since. I love it. It’s my favourite thing that I own.
If you’re waiting for a “but…”, you won’t be disappointed.
I don't recall exactly where, possibly Japan or the Dolomites, but I got back home afterwards, and one of the photos was incredible. This rarely happens, but I really liked that photo. It was captured with my M10. I started working on post-production for it, and then it hit me. The sky was a bit blown out, and there was no data to retrieve it. If you try to recover blown-out highlights from a Leica, you won’t be able to; it’ll all come out weirdly desaturated and… “mushy.” I started thinking that this wouldn’t happen with my Sony. Plus, after so many years of shooting exclusively with a Leica, the manual focus started to annoy me a bit. I was again thinking that this wouldn’t be an issue with the Sony.
And so it began. I’ve recently started shooting my Sony again, forcing myself to take only the A7r3 wherever I was going. It’s great. It’s amazing. I feel like having all of that technology really does help me be a better photographer. I will keep my Leica M10. I love it and still think it’s the best camera for everyday meetups and casual trips. However, I’ve already started noticing how many more good photos I’m capturing with the Sony.
After all these years, do I regret spending all this money on a Leica? No. I still think it’s a fantastic system. The need to focus on what you’re capturing, slow down, think about the image, it all comes with a Leica, due to the forced manual focus and intuitive rangefinder. I feel like these cameras have seriously improved my creativity.
Knowing what I know now, would I still start my journey with this system from scratch? No. The issue is that this system is ridiculously expensive. It’s not even about the bodies themselves; it’s the lenses. They’re fantastic, absolutely mind-blowingly amazing, but at this price, they’re also a sign of insanity.
Do you own a Leica? Do you like it? Is it your only/main camera?
