A hard break-up: Life without Leica

A few days ago, the last Leica product I owned found a new owner. My trusty Leica SL is mine no more. Eighteen months ago, I wrote a piece about the SL where I stated that it still was the best camera in the world, even in 2020. For me.

I also wrote a few posts about M-mount lenses. All of them were positive. So what has changed? A few things, none that I wasn’t aware of at the time, but all became more prominent recently. Ultimately, they led me to sell my last Leica. Before we get into it, I have to say that I still love Leicas. I have had a few over the years and I still have a soft spot for them. Probably always will.

Journey starts

My Leica journey started with a Leica M Typ 240. Apart from some point-and-shoot work when I was younger, I never really shot film and my interest in photography became real when digital cameras were already maturing. The M240 was the logical first step for me into the world of Leica. I did not take this decision lightly. The cost of a secondhand M240 was significant for me. So I really wanted to be sure.

It was around the time I got married and we had a photographer capture our wedding with a Leica M (Joeri van der Kloet). I was very impressed by how he managed to be there, and not be there at the same time. With the aesthetics of the Leica, he blended into the crowd and many people wondered and asked me if we actually hired a photographer for the day… Together with a friend of mine who would also succumb to the Leica virus, we did a workshop with that same wedding photographer. He allowed us to shoot with his Leicas and introduced us to the world of the rangefinder. We were sold.

It was quite a steep learning curve for me to master my Leica initially. I came from a Nikon DSLR background and anyone who has ever shot with a rangefinder knows that it can be quite a challenge to learn how not to miss shots. In the beginning, I was already happy when I got something I wanted to be in focus, to actually be in focus. Nine-tenths of all my shots had their subject in the middle, right where the patch was. I just had not really mastered the art of focusing on the scale on the lens or by recomposing like lightning and somehow maintaining stable hands to match the shutter speed.

Our wedding photographer was incredibly good at that. I am still impressed how he managed to capture everything without breaking a sweat. Weddings are kind of a big deal to people. Missing a shot is not an option. When asked, he would say that he shoots with muscle memory in his fingers, connected to the lens attached to the body. I guess when you get so close to an object, it almost becomes an extension of yourself. My own restless nature when it comes to keeping cameras and lenses long enough to reach that level clearly gets in the way here.

Getting better

I really enjoyed the M240. I always treated it as an object of use and often took it with me as I travelled for work. Slowly but surely, I was getting better at rangefinder focus and this allowed me more freedom to compose. In the beginning, I shot with a single lens, the 50mm Summicron f/2. No frills, but what a trusty companion that little lens was. Yet I slowly gravitated to wanting more focal length variation. I borrowed a 28mm but I found that swapping lenses took away some of the swift shooting I had come to appreciate with only the one lens.

Enter the Leica Q, which served as one part of a two-way setup with the M240. Initially, I held on to the 50mm Summicron but I would eventually swap that for the 75mm Summicron, a nice partner for the Q’s 28mm Summilux. To this day, I probably have not shot as many photos with a single camera as with the Q. Leica took a different position with the Q, favouring a very advanced electronic viewfinder, one that still holds its own today, over a rangefinder focusing solution. With its fixed 28mm lens, the Q was relatively compact and worked well alongside the M240. The Q is a beautiful camera and surprisingly rugged. As with the M, I treated it as a tool and it dealt with everything that was thrown at it.

Step change

For a while, this combination worked well for me. Occasionally, I would add my Nikon Df and 135mm lens to the bag, but mostly the Q and M240 worked as my go-to setup. I looked at an M10 for a while but did not see the benefit over the M240. The years where I shot with this two-camera setup were where I felt I made a step change as a photographer. In my eyes, composition started to improve and I felt I was better able to capture what I saw with my eyes in my photographs. This also made me feel as if I had stumbled on to the end of my learning curve.

I now realise that in photography, as with so many other things, there is not just one learning curve, but many. And when you feel you are on top of one of those learning curves (or S-curves), you feel you have outlearned your equipment. This is absolute nonsense but I am not afraid to admit I did feel that way at the time. So I looked to my gear to open new learning experiences for me. Classic mistake.

Leica SL

That false judgment led me towards the Leica SL. I believed I needed the quality of the modern lenses to take the next step as a photographer. I purchased the SL 75 Summicron and replaced the M240 with the SL. I kept the Q and this was my new combo. Nothing really changed for me though with the SL lens. I liked the lens but couldn’t justify the price tag. Soon I traded the Summicron SL back for my trusty M Summicron 75mm. I must say that shooting M lenses with the SL was a great combo. I know it sounds weird, but I would say the SL is an even slightly better camera for M lenses than a rangefinder. But sometimes better is not what you need. Sometimes you need what feels right.

Because of the kind of camera the SL is, it opened the door to re-assess my Leica gear in a different light. Shooting with the SL and the Q, as efficient as it was, made me question what was so special about these cameras compared to other brands that offered their cameras and lenses against a very different price point. After all, they are just mirrorless cameras. I wanted to hear none of that initially. So I overcompensated and invested in more special Leica-ness by buying the 50mm f/1 Noctilux. I have a separate post on that lens. It was absolutely gorgeous and I am grateful to have had the experience. But after the honeymoon period was over, I had more doubts about its usefulness in everyday situations and the price tag it came with.

Sony dalliance

This went on for a while and I kept looking for a combination with the SL that made it feel ‘justified’. At this point, there were not that many options on the market for the L-mount and I wanted to explore other forms of photography. More wide-angle, more tele. The steep prices of the M lenses in wide-angle made me take another look at the Sony ecosystem. I bought into it and for a while shot a Sony body next to my SL. I had sold my Q to make room for the Sony setup. Not sure that was the smart thing to do, but everything becomes clear with hindsight.

Sony makes great cameras and lenses. There is very little that you can rationally object to with any of the A7-series cameras. Nowadays, they also make some truly stunning lenses. I especially liked the 24mm and 50mm GM lenses. But I never liked how a Sony camera and lens felt in my hand. How to operate them annoyed me. Even though you can set up a Sony camera to your liking with custom buttons and everything, I just wasn’t drawn to them as I was to the Leicas I owned, or to the Nikon Df for that matter. The exception is the Sony RX1Rii, which I still have.

Nikon Df nostalgia

At this point, I need to bring another contender into the story. Where the Leica M240 made me mature as a photographer, the camera that made me fall in love with photography was the Nikon Df. I owned three of them over the years. Something about that camera just makes me want to pick it up and shoot with it. I went through cycles of falling in love with it and then telling myself I really needed a mirrorless camera, only to return to the Df. It is a polarising camera and I belong to the camp that absolutely loves it, especially paired with the Nikon 58mm F1.4G, which seemed to be made for the Df and its sensor. The other two magical lenses from the F-mount for me are the 28mm f/1.4 and the 105mm f/1.4.

Feeling unhappy with the lack of connection between me and my Sony system, I looked at Nikon again. I had not shot with the Z system since the very beginning when I just wasn’t super impressed with the functionality and the lens ecosystem. But so much has changed, and over the last months I have been swapping out my Sony gear for Nikon. It felt like coming home. The ergonomics of the Z6ii that I own feel incredibly natural. While the SL, Q and M will remain as the absolute champions of photographic experience for me, the Nikons are really not far off. For me that is. And that marginal difference made me decide finally also to sell my Leica SL and concentrate on shooting with my Nikon gear 100%. (I still own some other stuff like the Ricoh GR, and the aforementioned Sony RX1Rii).

Will I enjoy life without Leica? For now, I think I will. I have a nice combination of modern Z lenses and my absolute favourite F-mount lenses. With the new FTZii adapter, shooting these lenses feels native and brings out the best in them. The 58mm F1.4G I mentioned before was never an easy lens to shoot with on a DSLR, but with the AF system of the Z cameras, it has reached a whole new level of excellence.

Never say never

Will I never own another Leica? I probably will at some point again. I like the brand’s attitude and heritage too much. And going through the M, Q, and SL, I learned something. I understand there is a place for the SL and it truly is a great camera. I love it for what it is. But it lacks the differentiation and uniqueness of an M. And then it becomes really hard to justify that price tag. The M is a different story. The only Leica camera I can see myself owning today is the Typ 262 M with just one lens, to really go back to ‘das Wesentliche’ and use that for a very different mode of photography. But I am not there yet. As with any breakup, a bit of distance will be good.

Update: it’s not even been a couple of weeks since I sold my last Leica and I find myself already browsing around for a used M262. So, that break-up might not last as long as I anticipated. Writing this article and reflecting on what made the M unique has helped me figure out why the M has this lasting appeal. The SL, and Q to some extent, were so much more fleeting in comparison. No matter how great they are as cameras, they are ‘just cameras’. The M is so much more than that.

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