My Leica Journey: More than just testing Leica cameras

Sometime in the Spring of 2009, my telephone rang. It was Stefan Daniel offering to let me try out the Leica M9 – my first foray into testing Leica cameras. A few weeks later, I was on a business trip to Baku. On my way from Cornwall to Heathrow Airport, I dropped into the Bodmin UPS depot to grab the parcel with the prototype M9. So, my first shots with the camera were taken in Azerbaijan.

Two days later, I was in Holland shooting a wedding (with the M9, of course). When I got back to the hotel after an intensive five hours, I switched on the camera and pressed play — and up came the response ‘no images on card’. It was my first bug: if you pressed play before the camera had read the SD card, that’s what you got (the images were fine…). Testing Leica cameras can be an adventure.

Inspired to write

The Leica M9 was announced on the 9/9/2009 (of course). It was the camera which really established Leica’s renaissance, and I thought it would be fun to write a little piece about it. I decided to make a website and post my thoughts: that article is still there.

And so, it began. In the past decade and a half, I have written around seventy articles about testing Leica cameras, covering nearly all the new cameras and many of the lenses which Leica has produced since then.

Travelling with Henri

After the M9 and its ‘P’ iteration, Leica made a really adventurous step by developing the black-and-white Monochrom. Shortly after receiving the test camera, we were due to make our first visit to China; our middle son had moved to Hangzhou to teach and was already pretty good at Chinese.

He had organised a series of trips for us. I took Henri (the prototype name for the Leica Monochrom) for the trip. Emma was not terribly amused: “You are seriously intending to take the pictures of our first trip to China in black and white”?

We are all used to Monochrom cameras now; the shock has worn off. But that was an incredibly adventurous decision by Leica back in 2012, when the company was barely established as a successful provider of digital cameras. 

In fact, whilst I have tested all the Monochrom cameras since then, the only one I still own is the camera that I used to take those pictures in China in 2011 and 2012. Emma has forgiven me!            

A new M

The M (Type 240) was announced at Photokina in September 2012, but it didn’t ship until the end of April 2013. In early October 2012, I drove to Solms – the site of the Leica factory. I left a couple of days later with an early prototype of the new M and the magical 50mm APO Summicron-M.

Since then, subsequent M cameras have been introduced early in the new year, which means I am usually testing Leica cameras in the autumn. And this often coincides with our September trip to Crete to catch a little sunshine before the English winter. 

A casual delivery

This was the case with the M10 prototype, but it wasn’t ready by the time we left for Crete, so I sent Leica the address of our hotel in Loutro. It turned out that UPS would not deliver by boat, and there isn’t a road to Loutro. After a series of (very laid back) phone calls to UPS in Chania, they said that they would despatch the camera on the 5 pm leoforeio, the public service bus, to Sfakia, and I should pick it up from the bus station.

We had planned a walk with some friends, so we had lunch in Anopoli and walked on to Sfakia down the Ilingas Gorge to meet the bus (a long and mountainous walk). 

I was expecting the package to be safely stashed in the cab with the driver. When I approached him, he just said, “it’s somewhere in the luggage compartment, just help yourself”.

Leica M10

The launch of the M10 was an exciting affair in Wetzlar, on 19 January 2017. Unlike the M (240) which was announced more than six months before the actual shipping date, Leica had already built up a stock of M10s by the introduction date. 

The launch event was part of the “Celebration of Photography”. There was a grand party, Joel Meyerowitz was there and was inducted into the Leica Hall of Fame and presented with a signed M10 camera. 

There was a great meal and plenty of free drinks. At 10pm they opened the Wetzlar store where you could buy a brand new M10. Many people did, indeed quite a lot of people bought both the black and the silver chrome cameras!

Leica M11

What a contrast when the first prototype of the M11 arrived in the summer of 2021, towards the end of the pandemic. Although most of the lockdowns were over, there wasn’t much social interaction going on.

We made it to Crete in the September, but it was a real mission getting Covid-19 certificates to get there and then having to go to the pharmacy to secure a test certificate to get home (as if the Greeks would have wanted to keep you if you tested positive).

And then there are more…

I’ve been following the development of the M cameras, but of course there are stories connected to the wonderful range of APS-C compact X cameras, the TL, and CL cameras as well.

And I remember clearly the day the first SL arrived on my doorstep. I opened the box and looked at the camera (as was usual in those days, there was no manual). The On/Off switch said ‘On/Off’, but the rest of the buttons and dials were unlabelled; learning how it worked was quite a mission.

A deceptively complicated question

But the question was, “What Does Leica Mean to Me”. It’s actually a very complicated question to answer!

It’s actually work

Firstly, it has meant a lot of work; work testing the cameras, clearly identifying problems, then carefully describing them so that they are properly understood (and hopefully so that they can be repeated). Very often it’s so much more complicated than that.

The joy of photography

For me, the technical side of the cameras is entirely distinct from my photography. One of the wonderful spin-offs from doing the testing is the absolute necessity of taking countless photographs, and the real joy when the occasional shot proves to be a success. 

The eventual pleasure of writing

Then there is writing the articles, which doesn’t come easy, but I have gradually established a style which people seem to enjoy (at least many people are nice about them). Having them syndicated in numerous publications, some online and sometimes in print, has been rather humbling and a great pleasure.

It all comes down to people

It’s wonderful to have made lasting friendships with so many of the project management staff at Leica, and they are real friendships, not just working relationships.

Then, first becoming a member, and now a director of LSI (the Leica Society International) has meant a lot of travelling and trips to different cities. 

So, perhaps surprisingly, in the final analysis, what Leica means to me is “people” — the people I have photographed, the people I have met in person, and the people I have met online: so many fun, interesting, kind and intelligent people! Then there are the lovely people I have photographed, some of whom are shown here.

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