Please note that posts about the Leica M9 and Leica lenses on this blog are not aimed to be a 'review' in the strictest sense. They should be considered as highly opinionated, biased and therefore not very objective. However, in the technical aspects they do try to be factual. All the posts which have me babbling about the M9 are gathered under the label 'Leica talk'. Click here to see them all...
The fuzzy aspect
The M9 tends to take better pictures in comparison with the Canons I used (350D, 40D, 5DII).
I know, it's the photographer behind the camera who takes the photos, but what I mean is that it seems to go right more often.
Perhaps I should say: with the M9 I tend to take better pictures.
With the M9 I set the aperture, I focus (yes, that was a bit of a learning curve, but I'm getting better at it) and I concentrate on composition. When I snap, the result seems to be more often what I hoped and expected it to be. There's less thinking involved (should I change to spot metering or not? oh wait, the M9 doesn't have that option, never have to think about that again...), which for me seems to work.
Now, if that's me, forced to work harder through the manual settings of the camera, or if it's the camera itself, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's both...
The machine simply forces you in a different direction.
I don't know why exactly, hence the 'fuzzy'.
Perhaps it's the viewfinder, perhaps it's the manual focusing, or perhaps it's the feel and shape of the camera, or its size, or perhaps it's the knowledge how much money you spent (funny, when family found out about the price, they immediately wanted to see my first total crappy M9 photos, somehow expecting miracles... "you payed that much, so they must be good". Shows that people out there still think that good photos are made by the camera, when we all know it's really the photographer) or perhaps it's all of the above.
Also, when it's a crappy picture I cannot blame the machine, or have doubts about auto focus, metering settings, tweaked micro focus or any other menu setting that might have gone wrong.
Options
If you read for instance about the newest auto focus options on the newest Canon models, with their how many focus points, with the ability to be set in a million different combinations, with a number of options per point, or block of points, through numerous menu settings, you wonder if they're not missing the point (no pun intended).
It adds a lot of frustrating variables to the question 'are my settings ok?' if your photo isn't...
Mind you, I'm not bashing Canon or DSLRs.
I took many happy photo with my Canons. They started off this hobby, which I still enjoy very much and I understand there's a market demand for better auto focus, so they will deliver it (or try to), these machines depend on it.
And when browsing through my 5DII photos, with a lot of them I really doubt if I could - on sight - pick which one was the Leica and which one was the Canon (talking 5DII here, the 40D and 350D clearly lag behind the full frames).
The 5DII is extremely capable with a good lens. It's a great camera - the best Canon I have used.
Was handling the 5DII a while back with the macro lens, and it was very noticeable how smooth it all operates electronically compared to the M9. It's fast, quick and responsive. It makes the cameras hard to compare (what I also noticed quickly was how heavy the 5DII is, how confusing the menu and buttons if you haven't used it for a while, and how bulky it is to handle with a bit of a lens mounted).
Overall, I think the lack of options on the M9 is just a logical consequence of the different approach to photography. The idea that it is, and should be, the human factor determining the outcome, and placing that idea central. That the electronics are an almost evil necessity to support digital and should be limited as much as possible.
Then add the fact that the electronics aren't an obstacle (although as stated earlier, they don't seem to represent 'state of the art' and there's definitely room for improvement, mainly in processing speed), the great Leica lenses, the lower weight, and you have a package that should become a success.
Application
Obviously this all also depends on the application of the camera.
I like city trips, shooting street scenes or whatever I come across, and I like to do it especially in the evening (take photos). The M9 is perfect for that.
But if you're into wildlife, action sports, or moon shots, the M9 will be a useless brick.
Depending on what you like to photograph, you might actually want to have both types of cameras around (rangefinder and SLR) or the M9 might simply not be the camera for your style of photography at all.
I don't think the M9 can beat my 5DII with 100mm macro lens mounted. No praying mantis is going to be impressed by a Leica (although they might think it's pretty).
Weight
I'm also very happy about the weight, with which I started these posts.
It was a major reason for me switching to Leica.
Carrying the M9 around the whole day is a breeze compared to the 5DII. I have two lenses now (looking for a 90mm F4 to complete the set - darn, where to find the single lens without paying the additional bundle for the macro stuff I don't need? Why isn't that lens sold just as the single lens?) and the total package is small and weighs around a kilo. It's a joy to travel with, seeing how little space it all occupies.
The 90mm I'm looking for will add another 200 grams and is also pretty small.
Yes, it does limit the options. I will keep my Mark II for macro for instance. The Canon 100mm macro IS is a superb lens (as is the EF-S 60mm macro). And for long range the Leica isn't suitable. Not having my 70-200mm F4 around will make me loose out on some shots (I still love that lens, a lot of my personal favorites were shot with it), but I can live with that. I hope the 90mm will cover at least a bit of that loss.
Knowing I have cut my travel weight by some 5 kilos without loosing on the quality - gaining in some aspects - and this different back to basics approach to photography, definitely makes it worth it.
If it wasn't for the price I might actually add the M7 and try out film (that would be a first, I'm a digital child...), but the M7 is as steeply priced as the M9, so that will have to wait...
After party
I wrote this piece before leaving for Hong Kong and some additional remarks after returning and reviewing the photos I took there.
The 50mm Summilux F1.4 is everything they claim it is. I had my doubts after my quite limited use of shooting it mainly wide open or close to wide open (F1.4 to say F2.0), which is the most difficult range for this lens. It's known to be not too sharp out of the center when shooting it wide open and at the lowest apertures focusing becomes a challenge.
Shooting it with narrower apertures in Hong Kong showed it can easily compete with the very sharp 28mm Elmarit I also own.
Severe pixel peeping did show some chromatic aberrations. On the Summilux it's easily fixed by moving the red/cyan slider under Lens Corrections (talking Lightroom here) somewhere to between 0 and -10. Sometimes it's gone already when turning on defringing on all edges. For the Elmarit it requires -5 on the same slider and +5 for the blue/yellow slider.
Without these corrections it's not noticeable though on regular size, I'm really talking extreme detail here when viewing at 100%.
All in all I'd say that everything they tell you about Leica lenses is true: they are superb. Well, the two I own seem to be anyway...
Less positive about the camera
Battery wears down quite fast. I have two, so no harm done, but with my 5DII I could shoot for two days on one battery. With the M9 I hardly made it through a full day. Flipping through the photos on a coffee break probably isn't the best idea if you need to save power.
The electronics are lagging. It's all too slow. I do hope this will be a different story for the successor of the M9. It's not a big deal for the end result, but when you are used to more responsive equipment it does become slightly irritating.
When using the timer (the innermost position of the power button) the camera fires already (starts the timer) at the first stop of the shutter button. I understand why, but when you're used to waking up a sleeping camera that way, you're in for a surprise if you forget to turn the power knob back.
Wake up time is slow. If the camera sleeps and you want to take a picture quickly, you're too late. After a while in Hong Kong I changed the setting to let the camera go to sleep after 10 minutes, in stead of the 2 minutes it was on. I'm not sure if sleeping is a real power saver - it might, maybe the change to 10 minutes caused the rather quick battery drain - but next time I'll probably turn the option off completely.
I do miss the focus check on the LCD. As mentioned before, it's a step back compared to the 5DII, and although I do seem to develop a sense of 'this is ok and this is probably not' (mainly by not going for the highest zoom - one step before seems to tell it more accurate) a higher resolution LCD would be welcomed by me.
The strap provided by Leica is a shame. There's fine threads coming out of it on the side that blow in my face and mouth when I'm taking a picture. Feels a bit like running through a spider's web. For a camera this price you'd expect a little bit more quality on that not so unimportant accessory (ok, this is me whining, but I had to mention it... I'll be looking for a better strap soon, after shaving the present one...).
The 'one issue'
Red edge, I noticed it too on a few photos shot with the 28mm Elmarit. One was particularly nasty, since it seemed to produce green edge on the other side. That one is also jokingly called 'the Italian flag syndrome'...
I didn't fancy the photos particularly, so it isn't a big deal, but I have to admit that fixing this in post is troublesome. The annoying part of it is that it seems to be very scene specific. On the vast majority of photos I took with the Elmarit, this problem doesn't occur. I does seem to need specific lighting, with lots of highlights and the light striking from a specific direction. Apparently a new firmware is around the corner, and rumours have it that Leica specifically addresses this 'red edge' issue with the new firmware... let's wait and see...
Overall I wouldn't want to go back though, the above list consist of only small irritations, which quickly drop away when I look at the photos, and especially after seeing the many people lugging their big Canons and Nikons around in Hong Kong, some humongous backpacks included.
I couldn't help but snicker a bit (I know, I know, that's petty, but I just couldn't help myself...). That was me, not too long ago, I know how it feels, and the M9 feels a lot better... In fact, my one extra lens in the bag around my neck was so light that at some occasions I thought I had forgotten it somewhere: where's my photo bag! oh, still around my neck... a scary byproduct of these lenses.
Well, this concludes my rambling about my new camera for now... if there's more to tell, I will keep you posted...
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