Reviewing the Reviewer

 Today I stumbled on an online review of the Leica M10 which was less than completely positive. Most of the time when that happens it's someone who doesn't impress with their photographic knowledge, but this fellow seems to be a working pro. His opinion needs to be taken a little more seriously based on the better than average quality of his posted work. The way I'd sum it up is that given the type of work he does, I'm not surprised he prefers other platforms. That said, there are a couple of places where I think he at best fails to account for people who do things differently than he does, and at worst hasn't  stopped long enough to really think about a few things.

Which provides an opening for me to think through why I do what I do.

First, let's get the obvious out of the way. I completely agree with him that Leicas are absurdly overpriced. Now that I'm mostly retired, it's unlikely that I'll be buying any more of them.

Back when I began doing photography it was a little more complicated than that. As a working pro photojournalist from the age of 15, I couldn't afford a Leica then either. They wouldn't have worked for what I was doing at the time anyway. It was February 1971 when I started, with a borrowed Kodak Retina Reflex IV and three lenses for the first few months, slow and archaic and finicky. The Leica M4 was still in production, the M5 had just come out. The former wasn't an option because of the lack of a built in meter. The latter had not much size advantage over the other options of the time. More importantly, I was shooting a lot of sports. I needed longer lenses, and the rangefinder wasn't... still isn't... good at that. Thus I put my first earnings into a Nikkormat FTn and 50 and 135mm lenses. Those served me well, and I wore them out over the next two and a half years. I stayed in the Nikon ecosystem for a while, upgrading to an F2 and FM and better lenses, a different (slightly later) multi-coated 50 and 105 mostly.

About 1978 or so I got my first Leica, a IIIf found at a garage sale for an absurdly low price. I played with it in the studio, marveled at the build quality. The little early 1950s vintage 50mm f/3.5 was sharp, as long as one didn't shoot into the light. The early screw-mount body was slow to load, but in retrospect I could have used something like an M6 for the post-punk journalism I started doing about that time, if it existed yet. It didn't exist, not until 1986, three years after I was done with that work. So I used a Nikon. Years later I did shoot a few bands with an M6, and it was quite useful in that low-light up close photojournalism role.

For me, Leica happened in about 1998 or 99, when I was doing mostly street photography in Chicago and studio portraits. In that latter role it supplemented medium format. I'd shoot the big camera on a tripod with studio flash, and wanted something handheld for more spontaneous shots and the combination worked well. It was on the street though that the rangefinder was at its best.

Gradually as my photography moved out of the studio I developed a style rooted in the early photojournalism experience, a spontaneous approach of setting up a framework, letting the model play within that framework, and capturing whatever happened. Perhaps the timing was right, with Tri-X and Rodinal and gritty urban settings the look was successful for me at that time. I could have done it with other 35mm options, but the real answer is I enjoyed shooting with the Leica. The lack of a mirror let me get away with slower shutter speeds  in low light, the lenses were much better wide open than most of the competition and the shallow depth of field contributed to the look, and the ability to see outside the frame lines was well suited to the shooting style, allowing rapid adjustment. During these years I basically used two lenses, a 50mm Summilux and much less often a 35mm Summicron. Only once did I  try a longer lens, an ancient 135mm picked up on a whim for something like $65, and that for only a small part of one shoot.

The reviewers criticisms are more valid for digital, because Leica was at first late to that game. My M8 was an odd camera, sensitive into the infrared range, which sounds like a problem (and is for fashion work, where it can render some black fabrics as purple) but also gives a unique rendering of skin which can be pleasing. It was slow, with limited buffer, and erratic white balance. The 1.3x crop factor was strange, with a 35mm lens effectively acting like a 47mm lens. For some reason it also allowed remarkable print quality all the way up to 17x22 despite the relatively small sensor, by current standards. I used that camera right up until about a year and a half ago, when it was traded for the M10 and brought me more residual value than expected.

Until recently I haven't been shooting as much as several years back, and half of what I have shot has been on film. So the M10 hasn't really been pushed hard yet. The few serious shoots have gone well. The sets with Brooke and then with Chey produced excellent results. The M10 is faster, it's quieter (although still not as quite as the older film bodies), it's got a full frame sensor. It's the same size as an M6 TTL. That doesn't sound like much, but making the body a few mm thinner helps ergonomics tremendously, and also makes it joyful to go back and forth between film and digital bodies the same size and mounting the same set of lenses. I briefly thought the focus had wandered out of adjustment, but that turned out to be a lens, not the camera body. An old 50mm Summicron I'd bought 20 years ago for a very low price because it was cosmetically challenged finally gave out. Even Leica lenses aren't bullet proof it turns out, and I seriously abused this one as did whoever owned it before I did. It appears the rear element pair has started to separate. That's OK, I got my $300 out of that lens many times over. The only regret is that it balances a bit better on the digital body than the Summilux, and is a bit smaller, and I no longer really need that extra stop with improved modern low light sensor capability. So I'll be using it because it's there on the 'lux, not because it's essential.

I want to go after one criticism directly: The reviewer believes that rangefinders aren't accurate enough. I dispute that. Yes, they take a bit of practice. But today I pointed that 'lux at a test subject, focused quickly and shot a frame near close focus at f/1.4, and it was dead on. I can focus on a near eyelash just as quickly, and get it perfectly 95+% of the time, which is slightly better than I can do with auto focus. If he struggles with rangefinder focus, I'd say that's his lack of experience, not a lack of capability. And I'd argue that in really low light neither is easy, but the rangefinder is possible. One of those bands a few years ago, I got my shots in really poor light. A DSLR most of the time hunted without success for that same focus point, unable to get enough contrast to find it. One other factor: At age 17, I could manual focus my Nikon in any light, no problem. Today the eyes aren't as young, and manual focus on a ground glass takes a lot more care. The remaining options are auto focus, with or without EV, or a rangefinder. Any of those work.

The rest, I don't really disagree with him. If I were shooting weddings for pay as he does, I'd want a modern EV camera too. Most of the rest is personal preference. He doesn't mind over-complex menus, I do. I spent an entire career dealing with complexity, I don't need it in what I do for fun. He works 100 feet from his car, so a bag full of heavy gear and lenses is OK. I sometimes carry a camera 10 miles into rugged high elevation backcountry, so size and weight matter a lot to me. And so on.

Would I follow that path if starting out now? Probably not. I got in when pros were starting to dump analog gear and prices were more reasonable, and now they border on the absurd. My M8 was a demo at half price, and as a trade it covered a fair bit of the M10. All my lenses were acquired used. If I were a young photographer today, I might buy another IIIf as a toy, something to enjoy as a work of industrial art and use for fun and when not in a hurry, and then get something more cost effective for day to day work.