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Simon Yates Photography
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It’s the better Leica,
The Leica M9 had lots of character, that special quality that’s hard to describe but oh so easy to see in your photos – but the M9 also had a lot of limitations and sometimes frustrating shortcomings, the look was second to none, but trying to shoot a few frames in quick succession and the camera could freeze and require you to take out and re-insert the battery. The LCD screen was good for reading menu text, but really viewing photos on it was more of a theoretical thing since the color cast and detail was horrible and zooming in to see if you nailed the focus would take seconds to render – I could go on and on, but as far as the system around the amazing imaging went, it was a barely working camera.
The typ 240 changes all of that and more – the rangefinder focusing is more accurate and it’ll nail more shots then ever before, the sensor is higher quality, the colors are more accurate, no more green cast and blown out reds. The LCD screen is beautiful and zooming in to photos is instant, files are now usable upto 3200 ISO – and it even has live view which can be quite useful when it’s too dark to RF focus or when you’re shooting at f0.95. Just everything about it is a huge step forward and makes for a much better camera.
If you haven’t shot Leica before, then this short review won’t be enough to tell you everything you need to know – but there’s countless resources available online to help you out there. But I will say this, the quality of the photos from the M typ 240 are far better than any Canon or Nikon DSLR can produce, the contrast, saturation, colors and sharpness the M combined with Leica lenses can deliver is out of this world – and when you do nail that shot, the Leica will make it look better.
The rangefinder system is much harder to use, manual focus, a very poor exposure system, very few bells and whistles compared to most modern camera’s – but that’s not what the Leica system is about – the Leica is all about slowing down, taking photos full of intent and art. So it’ll help you take beautiful photos if you’re willing to take on the challenge, but if you’re looking for features and something that can shoot 11fps, auto-focus, do subject tracking in sports of birding, or even has real lenses beyond 135mm or zoom lenses for that matter – get a D800 or a 5D Mark III instead – they’ll give you 90% of the image quality for 30% of the price and give you a much wider choice of lenses. If however you want that special range finger experience with that look that nothing else can product, than this system is for you – and the 240 is the best Leica made to date, by far.
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|A little buyer’s remorse–EDITED–growing to love it,
I often try to talk myself into liking something that I got ripped off on buying in order to justify getting ripped off. I feel a little bit that way with this camera. Before you say, “Oh you are a poor person; you aren’t the right consumer for a Leica; go buy a Panasonic,” let me interject that the M240 is my third Leica and I’m absolutely not afraid to spend money. I’m not going to return this camera or unload it onto craigslist or the like but I don’t feel good about how much it cost; it feels like a bad value. I would have been happy to pay $2-3k for this but for $7k+ I could have bought a Sony full frame and a bunch of new glass for it. The only reason I’m keeping this is because the images are breathtaking and I can use the $30k worth of Leica glass I already own and know how to use/like and not have to buy more lenses.
The good:
* Great colors
* Full frame resolution – picture quality is breathtaking
* Rapid Frames Per Second Capability – (More frames per second than my Monochrom)
* Live View on the screen – I can do Macro photos with a stack of spacers; can’t do that on any other Leicas except with a single spacer and goggles
* Focus Peaking – (very helpful with a Noctilux or other hard-to-focus lens or doing macro)
* Screen – screen tells me what my shutter speed setting is (helpful in the dark when I’m changing from 1/60 to 1s to B or whatever)
* Tripod mount is more solid than the Monochrom – instead of connecting to the baseplate the mount connects to the camera body itself. This is really helpful and noticeable.
* Accessories – I can use the Leica extended grip with finger loop on the M240. The extended grip on the MM does *not* have a fingerloop option and is noticeably flexible and less solid that the M24. I usually switch base plates on the MM back to the “stock” base plate instead of the “large grip” base plate because the large grip base plate is so flexible. The large grip baseplate on the M240 is solid as a rock.
The bad:
* Bulb setting maxes out at 60 seconds (or worse, at only 30 seconds at ISO >200). For some reason this really bothers me. I take lots of pictures with long exposures and now I will have to “stack” them if I want 3-4 minutes and I don’t know how to do “stacking” in photoshop and I don’t want to learn; I just want to take pictures. The monochrom maxes out at 240 seconds and that sort of bothers me but I have yet to need longer than 240 seconds for any shots and so I still love the monochrom.
* Dirty sensor from the factory – I don’t know if I just got unlucky on QC but the sensor had dust spots all over it and I had to clean the sensor 5 times in the first week I owned it because dust somehow kept getting on the sensor even though I didn’t remove the lens from the camera between cleanings. It is almost like something was dirty inside the camera body and migrating out into the sensor area and causing problems. I’ve never had such a problem with any other camera, whether from Leica, Fuji, Canon, Sony, Panasonic or anyone else
* System lockup – In the week I’ve owned it the camera has locked up on me where it wouldn’t respond to inputs from any button and I had to remove the battery to reset it. I’ve heard complaints about this on other Leicas; it has never happened to me on my Monochrom.
* Shutter button feel – unlike the shutter on my Monochrom, which feels like a camera shutter, the shutter on the M240 feels like the button on my iphone. I hate it.
* Menu System – the menu system is complicated and gives me a headache. The reason I use a Leica instead of a Sony, Nikon or Cannon is that I don’t need to read a 300 page manual to know how to use it; shutter speed, aperture and focus is all I need to know. Other than White Balance, nothing in the menu structure is helpful for me and it is just screen after screen of headache. If I wanted to tolerate menu systems and little buttons I could have saved $5k and bought the Sony.
All in, it takes great pictures and when I combine that with my level of laziness I will end up keeping it. But I wish I’d bought the Sony instead. Or just stayed with my crappy, cheap Fuji cameras for color because they work fine for 1/10th of the price. The M240 isn’t 10x better than my Fujis, it is just 10x as expensive.
EDIT: after spending another month with the camera it has grown on me appreciably. The three features that I didn’t fully appreciate are:
* Ability to Use “R-lenses” – I have started using a ton of lenses I never had access to–Telyt 350mm APO, Telyt 500mm APO and Telyt 180 APO are all excellent lenses and relatively inexpensive. There are numerous R Leica lenses that are excellent including Vario lenses that give one the flexibility to have a zoom lens if traveling with space constraints or the like.
* Live View – see above re R lenses–the reason I can’t use the Telyt 180, 350, 400, 500 or…
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|Great camera with still some flaws,
I bought Summilux 50mm/1.4 ASPH newest lens which is an absolutely gorgeous piece of glass. I would recommend this to anybody who wants to do street photography as well as some portraits. I never used a 50mm before but I am using this all the time as a general purpose lens which is extremely capable. Specially it sees almost in the same way our naked eyes see around which is really great. My new love for 50 mm is probably due to Leica for its great smallish Summilux as well as gorgeous small camera which allows me to carry it around easily compare to bulky SLRs. I taste in photography has changed too. My photography was more object oriented before and now more subject oriented. I used to find an object to capture and use all the technique to amplify it; now I see the whole subject that goes beyond an object and try to capture that with its context around and with that I inclined more towards the street photography style. I believe thats a good transition for me and thank Leica M to facilitate that.
Lets get to the Leica M features that matter to me. Can’t talk much about its design and ergonomics as it is a legend in that department which is known to the world. The features I noticed first and liked them are:
1) Focus peaking – thats awesome addition to a rangefinder and focusing a range finder is not easy all the time – when done right it is dead on but there are time when it is not very easy to do. The people like me coming from long SLR background may find it difficult to focus using 2 overlapping images; though I’m comfortable doing it most of the times but not always. Eye strain is another factor in focusing any camera and specially rangefinder in low light situation. Focus peaking on live view is really the saver in this.
2) The classic look – can’t say enough about it 🙂
3) The black-chrome finish when couple with chrome colored lens – its just something absolutely beautiful
4) The easy navigation. Specially the ISO change, even though I desire a dedicated button for ISO change but what it is today is great too. Keep the ISO button depressed the push up/down arrow button.
5) Ease of taking along – most important feature is this to me. I am carrying this camera virtually everywhere unlike my SLRs. It easy to carry around due to its size and shape including the lens size and also it has that love factor – I love to carry it around.
6) The dead accurate range-finder focusing – I am not comfortable using it in every light situation but when it can used – its is dead accurate.
The things I didn’t like:
1) Length of Camera strap; and hey I am just 5’6″. When I put the camera in my messenger bag with open flap it does not go fully in the bag due to the short length of the strap even when fully extended. Too bad.
2) The base plate – quick access of the SD card is pain in the butt. So the battery.
3) Recycle time – I missed few shots due to that. Sometimes the click just doesn’t work even after 1 minute or 2. Is that only me?
4) Magnification while reviewing the pictures through “play” button. It responds slow at times- very annoying.
5) Battery life – not very long sorry can’t agree with people claiming it has long enough battery life
6) Battery charger – the fact that it requires a long ugly cable does not look like “leica” design. A compact interchangeable socket connector would be much portable solution. Very disappointing un-leica design
Debatable desire:
1) I know Leica purist may not like it but I think a dedicated ISO knob would be useful, placement of that could be challenging but hey thats why the expensive design engineers are for right!
2) The battery is quite large compare to the camera and it takes between 1/3rd to 1/4th of them camera body. Leica could be made slimmer with the battery in a projected enclosure acting as embedded grip. Width wise battery could be half inside and half project (enclosed).
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