Since 2015 I have used Leica M cameras for event work. ‘Event work’, as in a professional fashion. ‘In a professional fashion’ as in paid Embassy powwows, corporate conferences, family photography, proms, dances, university reunions, and so on, in and around Tokyo. Prior to that, I used a pair of Nikon dSLRs.
Relevant links:
ohmage to the Voigtlander Nokton 40mm F/1,2 Aspherical
ohmage to the LTM (M39) Canon 35/2
Food, and a thought - Yumoto Kobayashi
Fujifilm X-H1 VS Leica SL PT 1 - basic handling
Leica M10 extremely short wish list
Instant ohmage - Leica SL's haptic miracle
Terse report - Leica SL's awesome WB and sharpness
Terse report - When will the MP war stop?
Arrived, the SL has
Differences between Leica's e39 Tele-Elmarit 90mm lenses
Sharpness epiphany: 50mm 3rd-gen Summicron-M & Summilux-M ASPH
Leica Rumors - MGR Bresson, Leica, MS Optical viewfinder magnifiers compared
Nagano, Japan: through the Summicron 50
last Sakura of the season: 90mm Summicron + 50mm Summicron
The 50mm Leica Summicron V3
Leica M & Canon 35/1,5 LTM: a sonsy couple
The pre-ASPH Leica Summilux-M 50mm at Disneyland on the Sony A7r
ohmage to the LTM (M39) Canon 35/2
Somewhere along the way, I borrowed a mate’s M9. Its simplicity blew me away. So did the sharpness of its tiny lenses. The next thing I knew, I was bidding on a used M240 and offloading the Fujifilm cameras I hobbied around with. I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer. I am a still life and event photographer on a normal budget. Believe it or not, Leica users like me exist.
While I don’t think that Leica cameras are necessarily better than Nikon cameras, the things that initially drew me to the digital M have kept me there. Among them are the following:
Bright OVF
Ease of focus
Natural eye contact through the non-TTL viewfinder
Solid, compact bodies
Uniformity of controls between bodies
High reliability/simplicity of software and hardware
Native DNG files
Amazing branding
And more
As with every photography - and for that matter, every audiophile - product I use, output quality is assumed. The M provides clean high-ISO files, sharp images, and great colour. But if it supplied all of that in a hard to use body, I’d pass. For me, the M’s viewfinder is the simplest, most direct way to frame subjects. Its fully integrated shutter speed dial - with detents for both full and half stops - is as natural as they come.
But there is more.
Thanks to its bright non-TTL optical viewfinder, the M is a breeze to frame and focus on subjects in most light. Unlike a dSLR’s viewfinder an M’s never darkens based on the speed of the attached lens. For their part, dSLR viewfinders never display the spatial/temporal delays, jello effects, image tears, colour shifts, banding belts, muddy colours, and more that plague EVFs to some degree or another. Neither do they phase in and out of parallax like a rangefinder does. And neither the OVF in a dSLR nor a rangefinder is capable of the WYSIWYG framing and focusing that a mirrorless camera is.
For me, no EVF advantage, be it WYSIWYG viewing, magnify and pan, or other, applies to event photography. I need operational speed and simplicity, viewing and framing transparency, and natural controls. If that can be done with a camera that doesn’t strain my eyes, awesome.
The M, for all its triumphs in framing, focusing, and haptic simplicity, has a few shortcomings that keep it being a perfect event camera. Largely, these hangups could be eliminated with minor adjustments to the body.
1. Lockable shutter speed dial (X-Pro 3)
In five years of shooting M cameras at events I have lost only one frame due to mismatched flash sync speeds. But one time is too many. Whilst running here, snapping there, and running another place, and snapping again, I accidentally nudged the shutter speed dial to a setting higher than the M10’s maxim flash sync speed. This created a dark line where two heads should have been.
The fix: Either put a lockable depress nub on the top of the dial (as seen in the X-Pro 3); or, like the M10’s ISO dial, mount it on a rising, lockable strut.
2. Hard detent on ISO dial at A setting (M10/M240/M9’s shutter speed dial)
In the field I rarely change ISO, but sometimes, I must switch from one flash to another, or suddenly go from flash to non-flash. If the venue is sufficiently dark, changing ISO values is a bugger. Simply put, I can’t see the dial value at which it is set, and the dial rotates without hard detents or stops at its extremes. Unlike the shutter speed dial, there is no hard detent at the ISO dial’s A setting. This makes it impossible to count backwards or forwards by feel.
The fix: put a hard detent at the A setting so that users can count backwards or forwards to and from the ISO speed they want. For reference, check out the shutter speed dial from the same camera.
3. Quieter shutter (See M10, X-H1, even the M240)
In switching to the M10 from the M240, I was happy about everything but the camera’s shutter. The M10’s shutter may not be louder than the M240’s, but its snick is higher pitched. It echoes more in really quiet venues, and, in contrast to a few extremely well-damped mechanical shutters out there, it is positively loud.
The fix: migrate the M10P’s shutter into the next M. Or take a look at what Fujifilm did in silencing the shutter in the X-H1. Either one would be a big improvement.
4. Add a programmable button (M240)
The M should be simple. The M should be precise. The M should be operable easily with or without gloves. But for events, it would be great to have another programmable button. I would assign it to flash exposure compensation, or, for when the lights go down, ISO. A single button wouldn’t break the M’s ethos.
The fix: bring back the M240’s video/record button, but make it fully programmable.
5. Internal storage (Zeiss ZX1)
I’ve never lost files at a paid event, but I have had SD cards get all political on me and sunset themselves. I know, no one needs two cards and those that say they do are deluded. But that simply isn’t fair - especially for the professional. And SD cards are notoriously breakable. Three of mine have disintegrated in the last year, and one, which has kept the same form, took the political route. I think there is enough space in the M to instal another another SD card. But even if there isn’t…
The fix: certainly there is space enough to cram in 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash storage configurable for backup or overflow.
6. Larger battery (see Leica M240, Canon EOS R)
The M10 is the slimmest digital M. In fact, it is as slim as an M6. Inside it houses a partially starved M240 battery. As a consequence, the slimmer battery returns commensurately slimmer battery life. I could shoot an entire event with the M240, chimping, culling, re-taking, and on and on, and still have 10-20% battery left at the end of an evening. With the M10, I have to carry an extra battery. Ideally, one should be able to NATCH (NAthan’s Take & CHimp) 800-1000 images per charge. However, when NATCHing like a pro, the M10 returns no more than 600 images, per battery.
The fix: simply move the SD card to the other side. This would allow more room for a larger battery.
End words
Event photographers that use Ms of any stripe are vanishingly few. We are also vanishingly discriminate. We carefully choose the cameras we use. And no camera is simpler to use than the M. Every iteration of every digital M has improved, sometimes drastically. Things like internal storage, larger battery, and programmable buttons are some of the minor leftovers. Lockable shutter speeds and ISO dial detents would drastically improve the camera’s reliability for event photography. Addressing the above, Leica would transform the current digital M from a good event camera into the best event camera.