Now that I'm downsizing by getting rid of Fuji, I'm suddenly getting back the appeal of having one camera body, one master to it all. (Hold that thought!)
It's because the recent half-serious desire I had with Leica SL left me conflicted. To be sure, Leica SL would be the absolute best platform to adapt every kind of glass, lens design and flange distance permitting. At the same time, it's a big hulking body and not exactly "2nd body" type of a thing!
Worst of all, it would perform better with my Leica M lenses than my M240 so I'd always have these conflicts about the fun of shoot vs nailing the focus amidst wavy field curvatures. (Ok, this is not a particularly difficult question to answer... hold that thought?)
~
Let's get back to the premise: what exactly do I want to shoot? Right now and probably years to come, I want to keep Leica M and M mount lenses as my thing. They do things just right.
And going into the future, I also want to experiment a bit with legacy lenses of various origins. I would very much like to see what kind of landscapes and seascapes and things I could pull with a fast 200mm. Maybe try a tilt-shift lens against a building, that I would very much like to do. I might like to try an ultrafast 85 but not at those prices that M-mount native lenses command.
But for all intents and purposes I'm not currently too much of an experimenter. Let's say 95%-5% is a probable, realistic division between me shooting native M lenses and foreign glass.
~
So, why not the M10 then?
So far, I have successfully battled this particular desire. It is clear that M10-P is by every account a superior camera to M240-P, except for maybe the battery life. But M240 produces stellar images anyway. However, there are some things in M240 shooting experience that do drive me into occasionally lusting after SL or whatnot.
* The LV/EVF experience is not stellar.
* With wide angles / UWAs the need for TTL composing grows.
* Framing foreign or M-native lenses not supported by the framelines.
* Increased shutter lag while in LV.
* Tripod work.
All these items are actually all interlinked! The overall experience with low refresh-rate, low-resolution, image-tearing live view or EVF-2 is not stellar at all. Combine the fact that you can't zoom anywhere but the center while you focus on LV makes M240 super frustrating with tripods.
I was led to believe that M10 hasn't much improved with live view department, which essentially killed the GAS about it for me. And I was happy about it, not investigating much into the claims. But in case M10 had the live view capabilities comparable to 2012 Japanese cameras, I would be pretty satisfied.
~
M11.
My original idea was to sit on M240 and wait for M11 because currently I don't have those foreign lenses and my need for live view are very limited to those days when I'm out and about with my 21mm. The idea is to wait for M11 and see what it has in store. Preferably it has an all-new plugin EVF system and some internal features that help with the live view shooting.
M11 is to be expected within next year (assuming a 4-year cycle), it's a long wait. At the same time the rumored(/confirmed?) M10R might mean that M11 is going to be delayed. And let's not forget about the 6-12-month waiting list if one wants to buy new.
Another problem with M11 is that knowing Leica, it lacks something cool that was present in M10P, and then it means additional questions, such as if I should wait for M11P, two more years of waiting?
~
Side note.
Leica T and TL2 as secondary bodies to M10. These two gorgeous APS-C bodies are getting mighty affordable (with TL2 getting close to XPro2), and they sport very decent image quality with that Leica magic dust on the image processing and microlens alignment ensured to get a decent performance out of adapted M lenses. These T/TL bodies and M10 also share the pluggable EVF, the Visoflex 020.
~
Side note.
Money-wise, purchasing an SL to sit next to my M240-P is a bit cheaper option than to upgrade my M240-P to an M10-P.
~
Epilogue.
What was that one thought I told you to hold? Oh right, SL vs M and the IQ.
I am rather happy to say that these 13 months of Leica M ownership have honed my taste and my feelings about photography to a certain direction. With more certainty than ever I know what moves me deep down, what keeps me going. It is not just about chasing the best image quality within my preferred parameters (lightweight, compactness) any more but also the shooting experience. I window-browsed a Leica R lens the other day, a 50 mm f/2 was it. From the focus distance scale I noticed immediately despite its affordable price I wouldn't know about it as a lens of enjoyable shooting: its focus throw appeared to be very huge! Leica M, thanks to the rangefinder legacy, is also unique in that they offer fast fifties and other challenging lenses with very small (= quick) focus throws, yet thanks to RF they are super easy to focus accurately. The very favorable shooting experience of a rangefinder comes down to all these (probably hundreds of) little things that exist because of the mechanism.
And so I fully well know that for example taking my compact 35 Summicron with an SL to the streets would mean definite improvements in the pictures (because there's no need to focus-recompose moving targets, secondly SL won't mind focus shift or midfield astigmatism) but the rangefinder offering a stable view of the world and very reliable and unobstrusive focusing patch means I'm having more fun with it, I'm achieving the 90-95% level of focus accuracy super quickly. A year ago it was a tough pill for me to swallow but now I'm getting very comfortable about the fact that you pay a big premium to be able to forget about the pixels and just have fun on your shoots.
It's because the recent half-serious desire I had with Leica SL left me conflicted. To be sure, Leica SL would be the absolute best platform to adapt every kind of glass, lens design and flange distance permitting. At the same time, it's a big hulking body and not exactly "2nd body" type of a thing!
Worst of all, it would perform better with my Leica M lenses than my M240 so I'd always have these conflicts about the fun of shoot vs nailing the focus amidst wavy field curvatures. (Ok, this is not a particularly difficult question to answer... hold that thought?)
~
Let's get back to the premise: what exactly do I want to shoot? Right now and probably years to come, I want to keep Leica M and M mount lenses as my thing. They do things just right.
And going into the future, I also want to experiment a bit with legacy lenses of various origins. I would very much like to see what kind of landscapes and seascapes and things I could pull with a fast 200mm. Maybe try a tilt-shift lens against a building, that I would very much like to do. I might like to try an ultrafast 85 but not at those prices that M-mount native lenses command.
But for all intents and purposes I'm not currently too much of an experimenter. Let's say 95%-5% is a probable, realistic division between me shooting native M lenses and foreign glass.
~
So, why not the M10 then?
So far, I have successfully battled this particular desire. It is clear that M10-P is by every account a superior camera to M240-P, except for maybe the battery life. But M240 produces stellar images anyway. However, there are some things in M240 shooting experience that do drive me into occasionally lusting after SL or whatnot.
* The LV/EVF experience is not stellar.
* With wide angles / UWAs the need for TTL composing grows.
* Framing foreign or M-native lenses not supported by the framelines.
* Increased shutter lag while in LV.
* Tripod work.
All these items are actually all interlinked! The overall experience with low refresh-rate, low-resolution, image-tearing live view or EVF-2 is not stellar at all. Combine the fact that you can't zoom anywhere but the center while you focus on LV makes M240 super frustrating with tripods.
I was led to believe that M10 hasn't much improved with live view department, which essentially killed the GAS about it for me. And I was happy about it, not investigating much into the claims. But in case M10 had the live view capabilities comparable to 2012 Japanese cameras, I would be pretty satisfied.
~
M11.
My original idea was to sit on M240 and wait for M11 because currently I don't have those foreign lenses and my need for live view are very limited to those days when I'm out and about with my 21mm. The idea is to wait for M11 and see what it has in store. Preferably it has an all-new plugin EVF system and some internal features that help with the live view shooting.
M11 is to be expected within next year (assuming a 4-year cycle), it's a long wait. At the same time the rumored(/confirmed?) M10R might mean that M11 is going to be delayed. And let's not forget about the 6-12-month waiting list if one wants to buy new.
Another problem with M11 is that knowing Leica, it lacks something cool that was present in M10P, and then it means additional questions, such as if I should wait for M11P, two more years of waiting?
~
Side note.
Leica T and TL2 as secondary bodies to M10. These two gorgeous APS-C bodies are getting mighty affordable (with TL2 getting close to XPro2), and they sport very decent image quality with that Leica magic dust on the image processing and microlens alignment ensured to get a decent performance out of adapted M lenses. These T/TL bodies and M10 also share the pluggable EVF, the Visoflex 020.
~
Side note.
Money-wise, purchasing an SL to sit next to my M240-P is a bit cheaper option than to upgrade my M240-P to an M10-P.
~
Epilogue.
What was that one thought I told you to hold? Oh right, SL vs M and the IQ.
I am rather happy to say that these 13 months of Leica M ownership have honed my taste and my feelings about photography to a certain direction. With more certainty than ever I know what moves me deep down, what keeps me going. It is not just about chasing the best image quality within my preferred parameters (lightweight, compactness) any more but also the shooting experience. I window-browsed a Leica R lens the other day, a 50 mm f/2 was it. From the focus distance scale I noticed immediately despite its affordable price I wouldn't know about it as a lens of enjoyable shooting: its focus throw appeared to be very huge! Leica M, thanks to the rangefinder legacy, is also unique in that they offer fast fifties and other challenging lenses with very small (= quick) focus throws, yet thanks to RF they are super easy to focus accurately. The very favorable shooting experience of a rangefinder comes down to all these (probably hundreds of) little things that exist because of the mechanism.
And so I fully well know that for example taking my compact 35 Summicron with an SL to the streets would mean definite improvements in the pictures (because there's no need to focus-recompose moving targets, secondly SL won't mind focus shift or midfield astigmatism) but the rangefinder offering a stable view of the world and very reliable and unobstrusive focusing patch means I'm having more fun with it, I'm achieving the 90-95% level of focus accuracy super quickly. A year ago it was a tough pill for me to swallow but now I'm getting very comfortable about the fact that you pay a big premium to be able to forget about the pixels and just have fun on your shoots.