It's close to six months I've been shooting Leica M, and it's going ever so strongly. I got two new Cosina Voigtländer lenses (in 21 mm and 50 mm) on order to fill out my lens catalogue -- with a serious 75 mm lens it'll be complete for me.
Life's pretty great. Leica Q still shoots amazing shots but using it can feel somehow second-tier experience. Not to mention about the PEN-F, even though it has such a great shooting envelope, should I choose to make an attempt at making use of it.
The center-weighted metering is now in my backbones and it's my muscle memory (probably in the eye muscles) that knows to spot 18% gray. I shoot in manual mode more and more as I get comfy. (When I shoot Aperture priority, I seek out middle grey and lock exposure on that reading half-pressing the shutter.)
I even ditched auto-ISO. On M240 it works exactly as well as other cameras, but when you combine it with the aforementioned technique in M mode, it suddenly doesn't exactly do anything helpful.
With Leica M, life is indeed simple. Simple is very good, in this instance. The camera doesn't do errors, you do. You have difficulty focusing? Take a microfiber cloth and clean all the window surfaces. Buy a tele lens and have difficulty getting sharp photos? Buy a small magnifier and screw it onto the viewfinder. I love these physical solutions to physical problems.
The downside to this immense simplicity is the money. Damn if these things cost money. While I don't swim in debt and do very well for myself, my income and that stuff is certainly strongly undersized for a Leica shooter. Of course back in the day things used to cost, today you don't hear much about cameras or hifi costing 3 months' salary, but apparently it was a thing back sometimes.
In particular this money factor salts my wounds as I forked over 200 euros on a freakin' viewfinder while over at M4/3 camp they celebrate $70 lenses that admittedly produce amazing results.
Besides money, the bodies weigh a great deal. Even if I could afford it, don't know how enjoyable would it be to carry two bodies on me.
Fuji
----
I sold my last Fujifilm camera soon after Leica Q arrived in the household, but Fuji is the one brand I could fall back to. Direct controls, Leica-like design philosophies, great feature set by designers who know street photographer's needs.
Fuji is a great platform even if the lenses are expensive being only APS-C. You can have your main body of the latest generation, a backup body from the previous generation and a backup's backup, all for half money of a Leica M body, used.
The native Fuji glass is nice, if a bit clinical. Here are the biggest niggles I have with Fujifilm -- get clinical and great micro contrast, or get bit of character but soft-looking images. There are supreme options from a growing 3rd party set of makers. Fujifilm's focusing aids for manual focus lenses are the absolute best in the EVF camera world. The crop factor also helps a great deal when zone-focusing even if the fly-by-wire lenses feel crap compared to real SLR/rangefinder lenses.
The weather sealing of most Fuji bodies doesn't hurt either. And the little things like ultrasonic sensor dust-up.
Olympus
-------
I still have my PEN-F and the Panasonic 35-100. What a nice little lens. Perfect size for what it does and what I need from that focal range. Sad that in Fuji/Leica world you can only replicate the 75mm equivalent FL out of the zoom range, while still remaining as close to the physical dimensions of the little m4/3 gem.
Micro-4/3rds are in a really nice place but the big weakness is that the small native lenses don't render "FF-like". Now, if you shoot birds or sports it's not a problem but the focus transitions give a very digital impression in many cases. If you go with the Olympus PRO lenses, you get very beautiful rendition. But then again, the lenses are too big for my tastes. Olympus has a magnificent feature set in their cameras, it's just not geared towards street shooters at all. IBIS makes for pretty crazy things.
Before the M, I had my shit figured out. I had Q do the wide/normal photos and then PEN-F and the 35-100 worked telephotos (or the 7.5mm Laowa to handle ultrawide). Things were beautiful. I wonder, why can't I go back to the arrangement.
I can't say I long for the simpler days, because with Leica M I live them right now.
The solution?
-------------
Am I seeing a pattern here? Fuji bodies are nice, Fuji native lenses are a bit expensive for what they are; Olympus bodies are nice, M4/3 lenses render poorly...
Hmph. Am I having an epiphany here? Don't sell PEN-F because it's just crazy enough of a camera but don't buy any small, ugly rendering native lenses to it either. Instead I should probably go further with my Leica M glass and then purchase an adapter so that I can use my Leica glass for telephoto, landscape things. Oh my.
In conclusion
-------------
Yeah... I should probably warn you not to read this crap lol
Life's pretty great. Leica Q still shoots amazing shots but using it can feel somehow second-tier experience. Not to mention about the PEN-F, even though it has such a great shooting envelope, should I choose to make an attempt at making use of it.
The center-weighted metering is now in my backbones and it's my muscle memory (probably in the eye muscles) that knows to spot 18% gray. I shoot in manual mode more and more as I get comfy. (When I shoot Aperture priority, I seek out middle grey and lock exposure on that reading half-pressing the shutter.)
I even ditched auto-ISO. On M240 it works exactly as well as other cameras, but when you combine it with the aforementioned technique in M mode, it suddenly doesn't exactly do anything helpful.
With Leica M, life is indeed simple. Simple is very good, in this instance. The camera doesn't do errors, you do. You have difficulty focusing? Take a microfiber cloth and clean all the window surfaces. Buy a tele lens and have difficulty getting sharp photos? Buy a small magnifier and screw it onto the viewfinder. I love these physical solutions to physical problems.
The downside to this immense simplicity is the money. Damn if these things cost money. While I don't swim in debt and do very well for myself, my income and that stuff is certainly strongly undersized for a Leica shooter. Of course back in the day things used to cost, today you don't hear much about cameras or hifi costing 3 months' salary, but apparently it was a thing back sometimes.
In particular this money factor salts my wounds as I forked over 200 euros on a freakin' viewfinder while over at M4/3 camp they celebrate $70 lenses that admittedly produce amazing results.
Besides money, the bodies weigh a great deal. Even if I could afford it, don't know how enjoyable would it be to carry two bodies on me.
Fuji
----
I sold my last Fujifilm camera soon after Leica Q arrived in the household, but Fuji is the one brand I could fall back to. Direct controls, Leica-like design philosophies, great feature set by designers who know street photographer's needs.
Fuji is a great platform even if the lenses are expensive being only APS-C. You can have your main body of the latest generation, a backup body from the previous generation and a backup's backup, all for half money of a Leica M body, used.
The native Fuji glass is nice, if a bit clinical. Here are the biggest niggles I have with Fujifilm -- get clinical and great micro contrast, or get bit of character but soft-looking images. There are supreme options from a growing 3rd party set of makers. Fujifilm's focusing aids for manual focus lenses are the absolute best in the EVF camera world. The crop factor also helps a great deal when zone-focusing even if the fly-by-wire lenses feel crap compared to real SLR/rangefinder lenses.
The weather sealing of most Fuji bodies doesn't hurt either. And the little things like ultrasonic sensor dust-up.
Olympus
-------
I still have my PEN-F and the Panasonic 35-100. What a nice little lens. Perfect size for what it does and what I need from that focal range. Sad that in Fuji/Leica world you can only replicate the 75mm equivalent FL out of the zoom range, while still remaining as close to the physical dimensions of the little m4/3 gem.
Micro-4/3rds are in a really nice place but the big weakness is that the small native lenses don't render "FF-like". Now, if you shoot birds or sports it's not a problem but the focus transitions give a very digital impression in many cases. If you go with the Olympus PRO lenses, you get very beautiful rendition. But then again, the lenses are too big for my tastes. Olympus has a magnificent feature set in their cameras, it's just not geared towards street shooters at all. IBIS makes for pretty crazy things.
Before the M, I had my shit figured out. I had Q do the wide/normal photos and then PEN-F and the 35-100 worked telephotos (or the 7.5mm Laowa to handle ultrawide). Things were beautiful. I wonder, why can't I go back to the arrangement.
I can't say I long for the simpler days, because with Leica M I live them right now.
The solution?
-------------
Am I seeing a pattern here? Fuji bodies are nice, Fuji native lenses are a bit expensive for what they are; Olympus bodies are nice, M4/3 lenses render poorly...
Hmph. Am I having an epiphany here? Don't sell PEN-F because it's just crazy enough of a camera but don't buy any small, ugly rendering native lenses to it either. Instead I should probably go further with my Leica M glass and then purchase an adapter so that I can use my Leica glass for telephoto, landscape things. Oh my.
In conclusion
-------------
Yeah... I should probably warn you not to read this crap lol
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