First steps and some helpful links

In this post, I would like to describe my steps into Leica land and to give you some useful links.

I have started my Leica "adventure" with the following steps:

1.  regular visits to the local Leica gallery, thus getting infected with the Leica virus,
2. thereafter, regular visits to Ken Rockwell's Recommended Lenses for the Leica page, to get an idea what Leica camera and lenses to buy at which price,
3. finally, the acquisition of a Leica M6  and an Elmarit M 90/2.8 at Andrej Borodin's Fotokor shop for used camera gear,
4. the acquisition of a used Summicron 50/2,
5. the acquisition of a Minolta 5400 film scanner to be independent of a wet darkroom,
6. the decision to use mostly slide film as source for my black and white images,
7. the decision to use Ed Hamrick's Vuescan scanning software and to follow the tutorial of Tim Gray on scanning b&w negatives.

Alternative choices would have been

• to visit the well-known  Leicashop in Vienna and buy the equipment there,
• to use Silverfast for scanning my negatives and slides,
• to use a Nikon Coolscan scanner,
• to start with a 35/2.0 Summicron instead of a 50mm Summicron,
• to buy a Leica M7 instead of an M6 or M6TTL, see Michael Reichmann's page for details.

After about eight difficult weeks, I had acquired all the necessary hardware and software, and all the information and tricks to produce images. That is where I came out of the tunnel. My experiences with my Leica system so far:

1. for me, a Leica M is meant for taking images of people, for getting into the crowd. It forces you to get close to the action. There is no 200mm telephoto lens available to stay away. You will have to get involved with the life around you.
2. The rangefinder covers a larger arear than the lens (hence, the framing lines in the rangefinder window). This is a much more important advantage than I have thought. You will have to experience it in practice. This fact means that (i) framing, and (ii) waiting for the decisive moment is much easier than with an SLR.
3. The Leica handles extremely well; even changing film is not a real problem any more.This took me about 10 rolls of film
4. The M6 makes me think much more before pressing the shutter: only 36 exposures on a roll of film!. I take less images, but quite often I get a "keeper".
5. I strongly miss one important advantage of digital photography: changing sensitivity at the push of a button. If my Leica is loaded with a ISO 100 film, that's it. No way to change ISO when it gets dark (and bright again).
6. Rangefinder focusing works quite well for me.
7. In part, the secret of Leica images seems to reside in the blurred part of the images, if this secret exists at all. Bokeh is wonderful in case of my 50mm Summicron. I never thought before that the unsharp part would be that important, although I use my lenses close to full aperture most of the time, as a personal preference for portraits. It appears that my Canon EF 50/1.4 and 100/2.0 cannot compete with the Leica lenses.
8. The Leica M6 is so discrete and quiet. People feel much more comfortable when I use the Leica than when I aim the Canon "gun" at them.

When do I prefer the Canon 5D MkII? In several situations:

1. for color images,
2. for nature, landscape and for macro,
3. for sports photography,
4. when using flash,
5. when I do not trust my photographic skills or when I am impatient. 

Finally, I would like to point to the following page of Kirk Tuck and to his readers' comments, which give a good impression of the differences between an SLR and rangefinder.

A most helpful page on the Leica system, containing an outstanding discussion of  important aspects like lenses for a Leica M camera and other valuable information is Erwin Putts' Tao of Leica. Highly recommended!

If you want to read about taking images with a Leica or if you are interested in improving your shooting and post-processing, then visit Thorsten Overgaard's excellent pages at http://www.overgaard.dk/ Thorsten provides some of the best information on (Leica-)photography that can be found anywhere.

You will soon find some more Leica images in one of the next blogs.