So this is my lovely 1958 Leica M2 and the equally lovely 2008 Carl Zeiss T* Planar 50mm f/2.0 ZM. On top you will notice the later model MR-4 Leica-Meter.
A few years ago, I had this massive camera collection with one conspicuous omission: I had no serious rangefinders. Sure I had a couple of Canonets and some Soviet-built LTM copies, and some other consumer grade rangefinders, but nothing...dare I say...professional. So I decided, gosh darn it, that I was just going to do it and go right for the top and get a Leica. I certainly spent a good deal of time considering alternatives: Konica Hexar RF, Contax G2, Voigtlander Bessa, Canon Model 7. But nothing other than a Leica was going to be a Leica.
So after checking around and spending a lot of time going through the used market, I determined that the M2 was the best buy at the time, and the lower magnification viewfinder allowed the use of a 35mm lens better than an M3 did and was considerably cheaper than an M4. Of course the M2 has no built in light meter, but the MR-4 Leica-Meter was actually fairly inexpensive and worked far better than I ever expected it to. Sure you have to manually reset the frame counter and it's not as quick to load and rewind as some of the later models, but I don't think there's a prettier M-body except maybe for the MP.
The body is really like no other film camera that I've ever used. Compact, light, quiet, extremely well built, but still elegant. I used to own a few Canon F-1s and they were massively heavy and felt like solid bricks of metal, but if the Leica was a fine blade, the Canons were cudgels; both deadly weapons for sure, but obviously of different character.
Using the M2 is really effortless in a way that I didn't expect considering it's age and relative awkwardness, but compared to say the M8 that I use most of the time now, the M2 just gets out of the way. I'm not really sure if it's the character of film versus digital capture, but once I've shot a photo with the M2 I'm looking for the next one, not thinking about whether I should check the histogram or not.
Lens selection is a whole different ball-game in Leica land. The Leica lenses are perfection, no two ways about it. And there's a lot of people out there that would say that it's a waste to buy a Leica body and not use Leica lenses on it. I call baloney on that. There's no one else that makes a body like a Leica, maybe a Zeiss-Ikon or a Voigtlander, and I have picked up a Bessa R2a, but when I go out shooting film it's usually the M2 that goes along. If you enjoy rangefinder shooting, but you're not wealthy enough to buy top-tier lenses, does that mean you should stick to your SLRs and hope that someday you're flushed with cash? No, of course not, get the body that enables you to shoot the way you want, and then get the lenses you can afford.
So once I had the body I set about looking for lenses. I temporarily used the old Jupiter-8 50mm f/2.0 that I had on the M2 with an adapter, buy I found that I couldn't quite get infinity focus with that combo. It was a pretty nice lens for what it was though, and it helped me settle on getting a 50/2.0 of some sort as my first lens. I narrowed the search down to a used Leitz 50mm f/2.0 Summicron-M, and I suspected that I'd go with the Dual-Range Summicron as it was the most affordable. But after looking long and hard at the Zeiss ZM line of lenses, I realized I could get a brand new 50mm f/2.0 Planar for the same price that the Dual-Range Summicrons were going for used, and it had been acknowledged to be nearly as good a performer as the current Summicron. I figured it'd be good enough for me, and I wouldn't have to mess around looking for just the right used lens. So I sprung for the Zeiss, and my word, it's a beautiful lens.
Examples (not all with the Zeiss):
Hello, I recently bought a Leica myself.
ReplyDeleteI bought it in an antique market but the salesman wasn´t too interested on th item and so I got a cheap deal but little information.
For what I have researched on the internet it's an M3 and the salesman said it might be a late 30´s...
Is there any text or book you would recommend to help me understand it a bit more?
And another thing i would love some advice on is; for analog film I experiment with double exposure a lot. Do you know if there is a way to release the shutter without forwarding the film?
alejandra
Well if it's an M3 it should have "M3" stamped on the top cover in front of the serial number, and it should look very similar to the photo of mine at the top of the page but with a ridge around the viewfinder and a little frame counter window by the shutter release (and without the attached light meter on top). The M3 came out in 1954; if it's not an M3 it could be a screwmount Leica like a IIIc or something, and those can be a little more difficult to identify without looking the serial number up on the internet.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of books out there on Leicas, including some published by Leica themselves, but unfortunately I couldn't really tell you what ones are better than others. However, the internet is a fine resource for Leica info as well.
As for double exposures, you can probably just hold in the rewind button, or lever as the case may be, while you advance the film, but I've never tried this with a Leica M camera so I'm not certain how successful this would be. Also, if you do happen to have an M3 many of them are double-stroke models, meaning you have to wind the lever twice every time you want to advance the frame once (originally, Leica was afraid a single stroke design would put too much stress on the film sprocket holes).
Hope that helps.