Taking Bad Photos with a Leica
On the ephemera and physicality of photography
This is a response to TA Hall’s splendid article Outgrowing Leica Lust, by Seeking the Leica Experience. It was a delight to see such robust references in a medium article, and I give TA a 10 for research, there is one insight missing from the article however which I believe I can provide. TA doesn’t own a Leica. I do. This is an article about the Leica experience specifically devoid of post-purchase rationalization. Leica has meant a lot of different things over the years. For many, it has been a stand-in for any model of rangefinder camera. In recent years ‘a Leica’ may not even refer to an M mount rangefinder but any of their similarly expensive digital offerings: the Q, the SL.
Leica the brand has morphed over its hundred years in business. Once trading on novelty and innovation, its current lineup runs over twice the cost of its 80s models, adjusting for inflation, and over four times its 50s models. Modern Leica is a luxury brand dealing in cameras. In this article I’ll set out to respond to what a Leica can and can’t deliver, in both of its iterations.
In Response to TA Hall
“I saw Leica as the ultimate ‘end-goal’. If I didn’t end up with a Leica, it would be as if I never once did ‘real’ photography… I saw Leica as the ultimate ‘end-goal’. If I didn’t end up with a Leica, it would be as if I never once did ‘real’ photography.”
Before the rambling begins, I owe it to TA Hall to respond to their article up front.
“There is no such thing as ‘iconic photos taken with a Canon/Nikon/Olympus’ sentiment the same way there will always, year after year in history, be a remembrance of historic photos taken with Leica. That’s the power of branding.“
If we’re going to play this game, I can think of at least one famous photograph shot on a Nikon (Maybe two). And while there don’t appear to be any notable famous photographs shot with a Canon except perhaps those by late career Annie Leibovitz and Gregory Heisler, it may be of interest that one of the most famous photos of the Leica photographer using his Leica, was shot with an Olympus.
“Without question. I thoroughly enjoy the range-finder, vintage styling. It is unquestionably part of the appeal and experience, the design is pleasant to feel, hold, and look at. It also provides a nice conversation started with hobbyists and non-photographers alike.”
This is a point which I totally agree with. Nothing gets uncles at a wedding approaching you quite like a Leica. If I had to concede what appeal really got me out shopping for a Leica, I would much rather it be the good looks than any appeals to ‘Leica glow’. As an aside, just visit r/Leica if you’d like to cure yourself of any belief in the inherent appeal of all images shot with a Leica.
“Yannick Khong has some interesting food for thought from a technical perspective on what factors responsible for good image quality… In fact, constructing lenses with less elements and using a certain combination of coatings (I am not familiar enough to further detail) is suggested to create a sense of ‘lifelike’ images, or at least what is responsible for the lifelike quality, ‘microcontact’.”
Yannick has come up several times in my series, the Glossary of Photographer’s Woo, both in the article about Microcontrast, and the follow up on Low Element Count Lenses.
If you’re curious, here is Yannick’s play:
See this lovely shot? The reason it seems to have a sense of depth you can almost reach out into is because it was shot using the original Leica 50mm Summicron. Later versions of the Summicron lost this, but it is readily apparent in the original, and while it is much more expensive, the most recent Summicron also renders this sense of depth.
Looking at another shot by the Voigtlander Nokton 1.2, we can see plenty of sharpness, but none of the lovely sense of depth which is so present in the Summicron.
Why is this? It has to do with Leica’s glass choices, as well as the way light behaves. Since light is both a beam and a wave, certain glass which was available to early 50s glassmakers can take advantage of this physical property. This is all obviously bullshit, as I hope you are becoming aware. But doesn’t it sound compelling if I say it with a sense of authority and throw in a little bit of accurate physics along the way?
The actual way photographers convey depth and life-like rendering is through composition and tonality. Steps anyone can learn, and which a lens can at absolute worst hamstring. The absolute best a lens can do is get out of your way, and many modern lenses do this handily.
One last piece on lens rendering before we move onto ergonomics. TA Hall I commend you for unearthing a Shane Hurlbut article I haven’t seen since my honours year in Why Cinematographers Want Flat Glass. This is the source which informed my assertion that the famous ‘Cooke Look’ is partly owed to uncorrected barrel distortion. It’s worth noting, however, that this distortion is easily corrected, and just as easily added.
The Leica Experience as the Rangefinder Experience
“In a rangefinder camera, such as the Leica, you view and focus through a separate window rather than through the optical system of the lens. Once you start with an SLR, it’s very hard to switch over to a rangefinder. If you’re not careful with a rangefinder, it is easy to cut off some of the bottom of a picture and leave too much room at the top. I think that, at a certain point, some of the great photographers who had used Leicas for a long time, like Cartier-Bresson, didn’t even look through the eyepiece to focus and frame. Susan Sontag told me that she didn’t realize that Cartier-Bresson was taking her portrait when he was sitting across from her with his camera in his lap.” — Annie Leibovitz, At Work
Leica is the only company still making full frame and 35mm rangefinder cameras (Pixii from France started making aps-c rangefinders in 2020). When rangefinders were more ubiquitous, the word Leica was sometimes used to mean any rangefinder camera. Now that there are no new models for comparison, Leica own the rangefinder workflow, at least in the digital space (before Pixii, there was only the Epson R-D1 from 2004–07). But is there are tangible difference between the Leica experience and the workflows of any other rangefinder camera? No. There isn’t.
In comparison to SLR designs, Rangefinders have several significant advantages: There is less delay between pressing the shutter release and image capture, lenses can extend elements right up to the shutter (where slr lenses must leave clearance for the mirror), shutter actuations are quieter, the viewfinder does not black out. You’ll note that all of these advantages can also be had with a high quality mirrorless camera,
And yet many, myself included, still enjoy using rangefinder cameras. Some, like me, are enamoured with archaic technology for its own sake, others find their own way around it.
Todd Papageorge’s Walker Evans and Robert Frank, an Essay on Influence offers a fascinating sentiment on the way differing preview mechanisms on rangefinders and view cameras (as employed the Frank and Evans, respectively). Or at least, Stephen Shore seems to believe he does. I cannot find it in the essay itself, but by Shore’s assessment:
“It was in this lecture that Tod proposed the ideas that he would later develop into his Los rather Eans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence. Looking at both Evans’s and Frank’s work, it occurred to me that Evans and Frank were, to some degree, influenced by their camera’s respective viewing systems. Let me explain. Evans used an 8x10 view camera like mine. The camera sits on a tripod. The image is projected by us parde down and backwards, on the ground glass upside down and backwards, on the ground glass on the back of the camera. In order to cut out light, to be able to see the image on the ground glass, you drape a cloth over your head, as well as the camera’s back. When you make your final, exact framing decisions, you can see absolutely nothing beyond the image’s edge. The dark cloth blocks everything else out. The Evans photographs Tod showed had the sense of being small, enclosed worlds. The world of the image ended at the frame. While I knew that the sky or a road continued beyond the frame, there was still a sense of finality to the image. The Robert Frank photographs were something else. There seemed to be more of an implication of the world continuing beyond the frame. Frank used a 35mm Leica. Looking through the Leica’s viewfinder, you see a clear, rectangular image with a smaller, white rectangle inside. This smaller rectangle delineates the picture’s frame. So, unlike the 8x10, where you see only black beyond the image, with the Leica you see how the frame is placed on a wider scene. You see a little bit beyond the picture’s edge.” — Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
This is a compelling way of conceptualising the rangefinder experience. I have a number of observations on rangefinders which I believe support this:
Rangefinders make you more willing to accept mediocrity. The fiddly focus and imperfect viewfinder found on every rangefinder make it more compelling to give up on clinical perfection and just hit the shutter. Comparatively, an SLR or mirrorless camera gives a much more precise interpretation of the lensed image.
The area surrounding a rangefinder’s bright lines are always apparent. Some external finders and masking finders limit this, however this feature is prominent in the vast majority of rangefinder designs and is both an advantage and disadvantage. Proponents of the speed and physicality of rangefinders will say that you’re able to see what is coming in and out of the frame. Undeniable is the fact that your composition exists within a larger world, entirely separate from SLRs where the viewfinder is its own world, and the ground glass of a view camera, where on an 8x10, one cannot even get back far enough to see their composition in its entirety
“a photographer using an 8x10 camera never sees the whole picture on the ground glass. With a 4×5, you can stretch your arms to hold the dark cloth and stand back far enough to see the whole frame. But you never can back up far enough with an 8x10.” Stephen Shore, Modern Instances
Rangefinders are more intuitive to focus, and yet arguably slower and definitely less accurate. I defy anyone to precisely focus a rangefinder faster than a contemporary autofocus system, but imprecise focus is part and parcel of the rangefinder experience. Relying on focus-and-recompose ensures that any recomposition will throw your focus point slightly out (and this presumes a perfectly coupled rangefinder in the first place). Add to this the fact that rangefinder novices often find contrasty corners of their subject to align the focus patch, resulting in focus on a subject’s ears rather than eyes. Rangefinder focus (and for that matter, preview) is inherently abstracted from what the lens sees. What this means practically is that an SLR user may have a better time confirming correct focus in the corners, but a rangefinder user will much more rarely turn the focus ring in the wrong direction.
It may feel like all of these points are about focus, and that is because focus is precisely what a rangefinder does. It’s a method for focusing a lens, with a light-tight box and a shutter attached. What’s left is a kinetic and abstract camera. The photographer is kept at arm's length from the lensed image, and so must rely on their capacity for previsualisation and reaction. If there is one intangible appeal I will employ, it is that a rangefinder camera does seem to encourage you to spend less time with the camera to your eye: in as much as a camera can make you feel more connected to the outside world it is in how a rangefinder’s viewfinder offers little that your unencumbered eyes can’t already see.
Leica as innovator
“After one transatlantic crossing, he visited Germany and bought one of the new Leica 35 mm cameras, for $42.00 and spent the next few years on the other end of ridicule, enduring sarcastic remarks and innuendoes from American news photographers who regarded the Leica as a ‘toy’, In spite of the constant ribbing Sam Shere persisted in carrying the Leica everywhere, along with the Speed Graphic, and is now credited with pioneering the use of the discreet 35 mm camera in American news photography… After waiting for over three hours in drizzling rain, the airship came into view through the evening murk. Suddenly the dirigible exploded. Shere said “I had two shots in my big Speed Graphic, but I didn’t even have time to get it up to my eye. I literally ‘shot’ from the hip — it was over so fast there was nothing else to do.” Out of 4 x 5 film, Shere switched to his Leica and began taking shots of the passengers and crew members fleeing the wreckage. “Only one of these pictures, they were so ghastly, so graphic, was ever used…’” Explosion of the Hindenburg, Bill Jay.
The Leica created the 35mm (and ergo full frame) market segment. I detail the history of the 35mm format, and Leitz engineer Oskar Barnack’s pioneering role therein in my article on 50mm lenses for Australian Photography Magazine. However where that article leaves off is after 1945, at this point Germany was made to forfeit its patents: Any manufacturer could make a carbon copy of the Barnack Leica.
Uncharacteristic of the contemporary company, Leica looked to the future, creating a new camera that would dramatically improve upon the Barnack design. The M3 introduced A combined rangefinder/viewfinder with automatically adjusting brightlines for 50/90/135mm (Early Leicas had two windows, one for focus and one for composition), a bayonet lens mount, film winding by lever, a door flap allowed easier film loading (this one is only a big deal for those who have loaded a Barnack), and the shutter speed dial no longer rotated on shutter actuation, also combining both slow and fast shutter speeds
The M3 is the Leica that I own. It is such a step up from Barnack designs, and so well built that no serious photographer has been able to conclusively call any subsequent model an improvement, just an alternative. This being said, Leica did continue to iterate upon the M3 with subsequent models. The M2 introduced a wider viewfinder which proved so popular that no Leica since has used the M3’s .91x magnification, the M4 introduced their contemporary loading system.
The design which set Leica’s current trajectory in motion was the 1971 M5, their last truly innovative design featured a redesigned body, inbuilt metering, a hotshoe, and the shutter speed dial was moved to a more convenient spot. Unfortunately, the M5 was big and ugly, and didn’t sell well. The lack of success for the M5 forced Leica back to glacial iterations of the M3, the M4–2 dropped the brass gearing which made the early Leicas so lovely to handle, but kept the hot shoe from the M5. The M4-P followed with still wider viewfinder, and the M6 is an M6 with a light meter, the M7 an M6 with and electronic brain allowing for aperture priority.
Veblen Leica
We could keep going into the current iteration of M6TTL, M-A and M-P, but this is already pretty boring when you consider the innovations made elsewhere. Reflex, then digital, then mirrorless innovations have defined the years between Leica models. While they have trailed behind each of these technologies (with the Leicaflex, M8, and SL respectively), Leica no longer stand for innovation. Trading instead on the legacy of their brand and the luxury appeal of products handmade in Wetzlar, Germany (read Ontario, Canada, and now Vila Nova de Famalicão, Portugal)
Surrounding the M models are the Q and SL series — Overpriced regular mirrorless cameras with last year’s specs. The Q3 is enormous and still outclassed in speed by Sony’s RX-1RII, and the SL series are rebadged Panasonic mirrorless cameras which would propose an understandable (but significant) premium for beautiful industrial design were they not impractically heavy and uncomfortable in hand.
But while they are lagging on specs and charge a premium for beautiful design, Leica’s new models do at least seem to realise that the rangefinder has been bested in terms of shooting experience. Where SLR designs offered a less abstracted preview at the significant disadvantage of blackout, shutter lag, and lenses which needed to clear a mirror, none of these issues are present in high quality mirrorless cameras where stacked sensor’s allow for blackout-free shooting, the eponymous lack of mirror means glass all the way to the shutter, and shutters can be made so quiet as to be totally silent. The advantage of the rangefinder design in the age of mirrorless technology is entirely dependent on the charms of archaic technology. Modern Leica models admit as much, offering rangefinders with the capacity to operate as mirrorless cameras using the LCD or an external EVF.
Contemporary Leica products, which trail behind Japanese manufacturers (when they are not simply rebadged Japanese cameras), follow the inverse demand properties of a Veblen good:
“‘luxury’ brands, though not intrinsically superior, are sold at higher prices to consumers seeking to advertise wealth. Luxury brands earn strictly positive profits under conditions that would, with standard formulations of preferences, yield marginal-cost pricing.”—Laurie Simon Bagwell and B. Douglas Bernheim, Veblen Effects in a Theory of Conspicuous Consumption
Photographers who find themselves lusting over the intangibilities offered within Leica’s marketing would do well to look at Audiophiles. It may not be Audiophiles who invented this specific mode of nebulous faux expertise (wine tasters may also be a culprit), but it is there that the examples are so hilarious, specific, and convey so well to photography.
“An audiophile is someone dedicated to producing the highest possible fidelity in the playback of music. While this is a reasonable goal, much of the industry that caters to them sells extremely high-priced equipment that claims to improve sound through highly dubious mechanisms and/or badly misunderstood real science. Most double-blind studies have shown that there is no difference in detectable sound quality for most of the equipment sold, and some of it is actually inferior in quality to less expensive products. Many of the products use appeals to magical thinking and pseudoscience to explain their mechanisms. While some of them do indeed provide a small, subtle improvement in sound quality, the unscientific claims by the manufacturers as to why they might sound better lead to a subculture of people who are utterly deluded about how to get the best sound from an audio system.
These particular audiophiles are widely known in the electronics trade as people who put subjective sound experience above objective measurement as the primary way to judge sound reproduction. Double-blind testing is shunned, as in many other pseudoscientific pursuits, since it removes the power of suggestion (by brand name, equipment appearance, or price) from the testing room and has a frustrating inability to confirm their prior prejudices. At the extreme end of this particular brand of audiophiles are the “tweakers” whose obsession leads to belief in some of the more bizarre claims (read: scams) of the subjective audiophile industry.” — Audio woo on Rational Wiki
It is here that we start to see that the appeal of both Leica cameras and McIntosh amplifiers is as much in their intentional exclusivity as it is in their being hand-build to exacting standards. But does this mean that there’s anything wrong with wanting a nice camera? I don’t think so. And talking this much smack about the brand while happily owning one would feel illogical if not hypocritical if I were to suggest that every Leica camera is a pointlessly expensive status symbol. Some of them are still nice cameras.
The long walk of this article is so that I might be able to definitively say this: No, you are not missing out for not owning a Leica. One won’t improve your images. It will likely make them worse. They make nice, very expensive cameras for people to whom money is no object, and for photographers who want to spoil themselves with a beautiful camera. Unfortunately, the the mythology and marketing surrounding the brand has deemed that this is not enough to sustain it, and so appeals to ineffable quality seep in from photographers who might otherwise regret dropping $10k on a camera which only serves to definitively prove that their camera wasn’t the thing holding them back. Leica’s marketing department is only too happy to parrot these appeals.
Photographs, like music, affect us on a human level. It is no surprise that we become invested in our equipment and develop a sometimes fraught relationship with our cameras. Top athletes are often said to have similar relationships with their bats, tennis rackets, or shoes. As photographers it can be frustrating that so much of what we do is handled by a black box. Our skill set is in at least some small way moderated by the quality of our optics, of our sensor or film emulsion, and so it’s no shock that there are people looking for any available advantage. Even in the nebulous promises of pseudoscience. Even in the pay-to-play exclusivity of the Leica.
TA Hall, if you’re still reading. I hope you’re still enjoying your X-E3. It’s a great camera.
