Leica M9: experience so far

funnily enough I just posted a thread about maybe switching to leica, as my 1d is too big, too heavy, no fun and makes me feel pervy

I toyed with the idea of switching in the 1d to a 5d/60d/rebel (:gag:) but I think it will still ilicit the same uncomfortable responce from the person being photographed (or maybe even a worse responce- "that's the camera my mum has, what an amateur"

I think there's something about the aesthetics of a leica which made it look like it means business- only the nikon d70 and the original canon 5d can match it on aesthetics.

The price of the m9 is killing me though, and i'm not sure if the m8 would be a bad decision. There is the x100 of course, but i'm interested in the rangefinder focussing, and the option to carry a 3 lens kit, I don't think I could live with a 35mm lens as my one and only, if it was a 50mm then maybe...
 
I think you are right - I wouldn't get an M8 as you'll always be wanting an M9. I had the same decision to make and elected to splurge and get an M9. Its likely M9 prices will drop anyway if an M10 comes out, and as with all stuff digital, you end up losing through depreciation. I'm happy that I'll make more than enough from the M9 to pay for itself a few times over.

Anyway, back to the latest M9 news from Tobers HQ. I shot a wedding last weekend with my very good friend and colleague Lee (he of SLIK images co-ownership fame). My kit for this was the 1DIV with 17-40 and 70-200, the M9 with 50 f2, and a GF1 with the 14mm f/2.5. Between the two of us we had about 7 bodies and a plethora of lenses so we were covered for every eventuality, as well as having a set of pukka Bowens lights with portable battery pack.

I had the pleasure of photographing the bride's prep whilst Lee did the boys. I definitely had the better option there I think as the bride was just stunning - absolutely gorgeously beautiful like you wouldn't believe.

I was quite comfortable using the M9 throughout the wedding. The pictures from it are just cracking - absolutely perfect. It takes a lot more concentration and attention than using the 1D, but it is well worthwhile. Manual focus takes a tad longer, but I know it's going to be spot on whereas I could never totally trusted my 50 1.4 to get it right.

So, I'm well chuffed with the results. The 1D was no slough either and came in very handy in the very dark indoor ceremony at silly ISOs. The Leica was still clicking away throughout the band and dancing though, able to focus in next to no light. I'd just love another M9 and a twin-lens setup with a 50 Noctilux and a 24 1.4. Now that would really be something special as well as v.expensive.

Incidentally, quite a lot of the guests spotted the Leica and asked about it. "Is that a Leica?", "What sort - M7 or M8" etc etc. Bizarrely it generated a lot of respect from those who knew what it was which was nice.

So, a real pressure job done with the M9 which performed faultlessly throughout and turned in some beautiful signature shots which the couple will really love.

Incidentally, there was a videographer there shooting with a 5DII with 24-70 and 70-200 all at widest aperture, and with a viewfinder over the rear screen. He edited a short 6 min video during the meal and showed it after the band finished. It was all converted to mono and was just stunning. Absolutely gob-smacking. He clearly knew his stuff and the results showed it - I was actually very envious and would love to be able to do the same thing.

For our part, Lee and I presented about 60 gently tweaked images on an iPad to the couple just after dinner and they were so pleased with them that it made all the long hours of prep, scouting and 17 hours on the day well worthwhile.
 
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What lens are you buying next for the M9? I'm looking into a 28mm f/2 ASPH to go with my 50 f/2 Summicron although Leica lenses are like gold dust just now.
 
Probably a 25 2.8 Zeiss I reckon. Maybe a Voigtlander 35 1.4. Cant afford any Leica lenses yet...
 
I popped to the Leica store in Mayfair, London. Had a chat with one of the blokes and even though I told him I couldn't afford to get one, he still got it out to show. Very nice bit of kit and I sooooo want to get one; (fingers crossed for the Amateur Photographer competition win). Think it had the standard 50mm on but felt nice. Heavy but not too heavy (lighter than the d300 by far) and felt very well constructed.

He also talked me through a few of the lenses including the wider angled ones (think he mentioned a 16mm and a 21mm...).

Focussing with the white square although different, felt good :)

Very nice helpful and knowledgable bloke :)


Now I need to win either the lotto or that ap one so I can go back for a training session :)

Liking the thread Tobers, keep up the great shots!
 
Laudrup said:
What lenses are you sporting on the M9? I agree about blending in with the M9, nobody gives it a second look.
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normally just a 35/2, but I keep a 21 and a 90 in the bag (or coat pockets). I might swap the 90 for a 75 eventually.

I've tried a 50 and didnt get on with it as well as I do the 35, so sold it. Also tried a non leica 40/1.4 which was lovely and sharp but didnt feel as nice to use.

I bought mine as soon as they came out, and used lenses were much cheaper and easier to get hold of
 
That's a nice 3 lens solution, I'm looking to go for 2 more lenses when the market settles down a bit. Would love to rent a lens or two just to see how I like them, but that seems only possible in America through lensrentals I think.
 
Tobers said:
I tried a Leica 28mm 2.8 Elmarit on the M9 today. It was a second-hand lens that LCE had in stock. Very small, compact. Image quality was sharp as you'd expect, with a little softness in the corners at f/2.8. I'm after a wider angle lens for landscapes and general stuff that needs a wide angle lens. At £800 it was a tad pricey and felt quite "used" with a bit of slack in the aperture ring, so I'll probably give it a miss.

I do have my eye on the Zeiss 25mm 2.8 Biogon though. However, I'd like something a bit faster for low light stuff. The Leica 24 1.4 springs to mind at a cool £4600 (!!), but there's also a Leica 28 f/2 at a mere £3000. My oh my what have I got myself into here?
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To me this actually seems like a area were the M9 maybe rather underated, ok theres the need for extra veiwfinder with very wide lenses but the potential to take high quality pics with a camera that weighs 700-800g total seems very appealing with the lack of autofocus less of an issue aswell.

I'v only moved up to SLR's from P&S recently and ended up with the 550D, 10-22 combination partly because it seemed like a good ratio of quality to weight. Lugging 1.5kg of camera on my neck with another couple of kg of lenses in my backpack is not something I'd look forward to say walking at 4000 meters in the Andies or Himalayas.
 
Landscapes, reportage and portraits are it's strong points, macro, sports shooting and wanting to shoot beyond 135mm are the weak points. I found most of my shots were between 21mm-100mm so the Leica M9 suited me. The only challenging bit is trying to shoot my son who is 18 months, but it takes practice.
 
I love the concept of the M9 and I'm finding my SLR more and more a burden every time I go out.
If I sold all my gear I could buy the M9 and with a little extra cash get a lens - as crazy as this sounds I am more than tempted......
 
Tobers said:
Then of course it was back over the road to the shop to have a play. I decided to pick 3 nice lenses to fiddle with, a 21 1.4, 24 1.4 and 50 0.95. Not that I had any money for any of this of course, but it has to be done. All these lenses are significantly larger than their f/2 counterparts (or 1.4 in the case of the Noctilux).
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Was I the only one expecting you to say that the first lens is free! :lol:
 
Ha ha!

By the way, one area the M9 sucks is white balance when it is set to auto. It consistently goes too cool when indoors, and is quite variable from one shot to the next. I'm not one to fiddle with manual white balance (too easy to forget you've set it when you go to the next location), so I just leave it on auto and sort it out in Lightroom afterwards.

The ability to sync many shots to the same white balance in Lightroom is excellent and it lets me get the right temperature for a specific setting and then replicate it across all the pictures in that setting.
 
Laudrup said:
Landscapes, reportage and portraits are it's strong points, macro, sports shooting and wanting to shoot beyond 135mm are the weak points. I found most of my shots were between 21mm-100mm so the Leica M9 suited me. The only challenging bit is trying to shoot my son who is 18 months, but it takes practice.
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Makes me sad its out of my price range as thats very much my range of shooting aswell.

Sorry to go OT a bit a bit but I'm wondering if Canon may have been listening to alot of peoples reaction to the M9 with reguards to a mirrorless system thats been rumoured recently. Rather than just compete with Sony, Panasonic etc for the cheaper crop market look to put out a full frame camera of a similar size to the M9.
 
Tobers said:
On the negative side, I have set the exposure compensation to work on the rear dial. This only works in aperture priority (obviously) and is a mistake. I must have twiddled the dial accidentally and ended up shooting for 10 mins on +1 2/3rds and couldn’t work out why the pics were so overexposed.
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I do think that leica missed a trick here by not putting exposure compensation (and ISO for that matter) on the shutter speed dial like epson did on their RD1.

epson208.jpg


it seems such a logical place to put it, you can easily see exactly what the compensation is, it's very manual which fits in with the ethos of the camera. it gives you one less reason to dive into the menus which can only be a good thing and it's less likely that you'll change it accidentally.

must admit, I'm another one with rangefinder lust though I'm not sure why as I've never used one. I'd like to though. perhaps part of it is the want to use really nicely made equipment

mind you, I'd be happy with an old epson RD1 and a 35mm lens (to multiply out to a 50). I know it's a nikon D70 sensor but those could still take good pics. only question is, why are they so expensive? I mean it's a, what, 6 year old camera..? it should be worth buttons but somehow they're still going for over a grand!

David
 
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ecniv said:
Focussing with the white square although different, felt good :)
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Strange. I've just got started with a Minolta CLE, basically a 0.6x Leica Rangefinder with 28mm frame-lines. Maybe it will take some more time (I'm just putting the first roll through it), but I'm not really comfortable with the small patch and the re-composition of the frame. What is the point of having super-accurate focus if you're then shifting the plane of focus again?

I want the rangefinder patch to cover the whole frame!

Size is lovely though and the mechanical quality of the lenses is just to die for (Minolta lenses, made in Germany).
 
I shot a wedding back in July with my pal Lee. We only do a very small number of weddings each year to keep them feeling "special". I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the M9 these days, and I decided to use the M9 for the wedding, along with my 1D, a GF1 with 14mm lens, and Lee's 1D, 5D, IR-enabled 20D and G9 (we were well kitted out!).

I found the M9 to be a really super companion throughout the day. In fact, I'd be very happy to ditch the 1D and get another M9 for wedding work. So light, simple to use, fast etc. My Zeiss 2/50 lens was a tad long in some circumstances, so my ideal setup would be 2x M9's, a 50 0.95 and a 24 1.4. OK - I'd settle for a 50 1.4. A 90mm f/2 in the bag would be handy too. And it would be a very nice small bag meaning easy moving through crowds, less attention drawn to myself etc. If I was serious about weddings I'd go for this setup and charge a lot to pay it back!

At high ISO the M9 obviously doesn't match the 1D, but I was shooting happily at ISO2500 on the M9 and pulling in some fab pictures. I used the M9 almost exclusively for the party/dance/disco pictures as well. Out of 1001 shots I took over the weekend, 426 were with the M9. The final picks yielded 341 of which 154 with the M9. When I look at my 4-star and above shots - the Leica overtakes the Canon at 14-11. I did want to use the Leica for some beach shots we did at dusk with a full set of Profoto lights and portable power pack, but ended up with the 1D to get the 70-200 reach I needed, plus I hadn't used Pocket Wizards on the M9 at that point (they work fine by the way).

I did miss focus on a few in-motion shots, but from my experience the results were better and more consistent using the M9 compared to the annoyingly inconsistent auto-focus on the Canon 50 1.4. I'm getting better at framing - often you'll see lots of Leica shots with the subject in the centre of the frame where the focus patch is. I'm much happier focusing and then doing a really fast recompose now.

I did find the auto-white balance on the M9 to be rather inaccurate and often far too cool. Obviously an easy fix in RAW and I usually take a white balance shot in a new setting to use in post processing.

Anyway, here's a few pics from the day. I was on bride duty whilst Lee did the guys. I got the better end of the deal I think! Aperture's are approximate by the way - I'm sure most were at f/2 not f/2.4 as the exif suggests.

ISO2000 50mm f/2 1/125th
20110716-L1730780-M.jpg


ISO1000 50mm f/2.4 1/180th
20110716-L1730755-L.jpg


ISO160 50mm f/2.4 1/90th
20110716-L1730709-M.jpg


ISO2500 50mm f/2.4 1/180th
20110716-L1730823-L.jpg


ISO160 50mm f/1.8 1/1000th
20110716-L1730841-M.jpg


ISO1000 50mm f/2.4 1/90th
20110716-L1730745-L.jpg
 
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Love the wedding shots. Mind you it helps no end when the bride is pretty!!

On a side note, have you had any problems with SD cards? I ask having read the article in this weeks Amateur Photographer mag.

Andy
 
ecniv said:
Very well done on the shots!
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Thanks! I loved taking them too.

Keebsuk said:
Love the wedding shots. Mind you it helps no end when the bride is pretty!!

On a side note, have you had any problems with SD cards? I ask having read the article in this weeks Amateur Photographer mag.

Andy
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Thanks as well. Yes, I had problems with the Sandisk Extreme 4gb 30mb/sec cards that the Leica shop gave me when I bought the camera. See earlier in this thread. They read this thread, contacted me and sent me an Extreme III 8gb instead. No probs at all with the Extreme III's which I use in my 1D's as well.
 
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A few of us on here now have M9s. Marac has just bought one too and this thread is useful to share expertise and hands on experience. Some very nice shots Tobers, I like the colours with the petals/dress.

With all the rain I've not been out as much with the camera, but I was lucky enough to snag this gem yesterday:

sb4tio.jpg
 
Ah - that'll be nice then, if a tad pricey.
 
Just pop that back in the box and I'll PM you my mailing address, RMSD is fine... Thanks

I have an old Cron 50/2 - Voigt 12mmf5.6/28mmf2/35mmf1.4/40mmf1.4/the legendary 50mmf1.1

I hope to own some genuine Leica glass one day but for now the Voigt's are magic enough for me.
 
The 50 Summicron is genuine Leica (or Leitz) glass, I think you may have the type 3 Summicron, but the good thing with them is Leica didn't make any bad ones. I've got a type 4 Summicron myself and it's very nice.

The CV and Zeiss lenses interest me too though, particularly the wider angle lenses.
 
Ok guys this is just getting ridiculous, can we please get this thread locked before I end up divorced and living on the street with nothing but an M9 to keep me company.

Aled
 
Aledafis said:
Ok guys this is just getting ridiculous, can we please get this thread locked before I end up divorced and living on the street with nothing but an M9 to keep me company.

Aled
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Don't worry mate I'll save the space next to me on the park bench, it's not so bad ya know!
 
Tobers, Laudrup & Marac....
I'm seriously considering investing but would need to sell some of my Canon glass and bits n bobs first. How helpful was the Leica shop in Mayfair? Do they mind someone bringing in an SD card and taking a few shots with one?
Really enjoying the write up on this Rangefinder. It does seem to tick a lot of boxes for me.
Thanks,
Matt
 
Hello matt, Reddot camera on Old Street is the place to go they are very nice and wont mind you taking an SD card to try out a display model. They have a few used M9s there but not THAT much cheaper than new :(
 
pragmatist said:
Tobers, Laudrup & Marac....
I'm seriously considering investing but would need to sell some of my Canon glass and bits n bobs first. How helpful was the Leica shop in Mayfair? Do they mind someone bringing in an SD card and taking a few shots with one?
Really enjoying the write up on this Rangefinder. It does seem to tick a lot of boxes for me.
Thanks,
Matt
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It's better than that. Book yourself on a free M9 Experience session at the Mayfair store and they'll give you an SD card with your images on it at the end of the session.
 
Marac said:
Hello matt, Reddot camera on Old Street is the place to go they are very nice and wont mind you taking an SD card to try out a display model. They have a few used M9s there but not THAT much cheaper than new :(
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Tobers said:
It's better than that. Book yourself on a free M9 Experience session at the Mayfair store and they'll give you an SD card with your images on it at the end of the session.
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Cheers guys,
Will do that then. Are you guys really enjoying the M9 then?
Thanks,
Matt
 
YES! OH YES YES YES YES!!!!........ hmmmmmmm yeeeeh!
 
Giving this a bump with what I've found to be some useful accessories for the M9:

The M9 grip:

10ql447.jpg


Grip again:

15gqidx.jpg


'Thumbs up' grip that attaches to hot shoe:

2efrka1.jpg


Soft release:

2i0gnld.jpg



In my opinion the grip and particularly the thumbs up really transform the handling and feel of the camera. The soft release is nice too as I wasn't too fond of the shutter button before. How are you getting on with the M9 Tobers and Marac?
 
The soft release is such a simple little thing but very worthwhile. I have one on my M3 and it really makes a difference.
 
Much to my immense distress, I've got to sell the M9 and Zeiss. Heartbroken...Details here.
 
Oh no, just read your last post after I posted this...added as an edit.

Great thread, will read it again at a more leisurely pace over the next few days and hope to add my own experience. I have a CZ 30/2 and Fat Boy 90 lens wise and over the next year will be looking to add a 21mm (Voit or Zeis 2.8) and an older 50mm 1.4b, but am more than happy with the 35 for the now. Still getting used to the rangefinder exprience on digital, and loving it.

Have had the SD card issue and worked that one out with some advice from Leica, waiting for the firmware update next year so I can get the bigger cards above 15 Mb/sec back in use.
 
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