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I take the courage to ask a slightly OT question in hoping that some of the Leicafans here will have an answer:
What can be considered the largest safe aperture for the shutter if I carry the camera all day long in full sun sans lenscap?
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Embrace that, don't take them so damned seriously, and you can get out cheap, and have a million times more fun and get a million times better pictures than all the bozos paying big bucks for them so that they can think of themselves as serious photographers. Get an old thread mount camera or an early M and you've got everything that was ever good about using a Leica in the first place. You usually escape for well under a thousand bucks too.
HiLeitz made excellent cameras, and they were always somewhat of a "luxury" item. Not too outrageous, but maybe something like a BMW or Mercedes might be today. They were this ubiquitous force in cameras for a long time about 30 years and their name became legendary and synonymous with the high-end 35mm camera.
Then came Nikons, and they took over quickly because they were the first camera system in a long time that was significantly better than or equal to Leicas in almost every way that counted to working photographers. All that was left for Leica was the legendary status, and, less so, the fact that, although outmatched in almost every way, they were still well-made cameras. When your product is not even close to being able to take on the competition (i.e. Nikon in this case), you can no longer rely on the product itself to keep you in business.
The Leica mystique was always perpetuated to some degree by the company, and when the cameras gradually phased out in the wake of Nikons, I think Leitz came to rely on their legendary status to keep themselves in business. The sentimentality of those who had grown up with and made their livings on the legendary Leicas of yore was stoked by the company and passed down from generation to generation.
Now we have exorbitantly priced cameras that are no better than what the company made when Nikon first blew them out of the water. Think about it. How the heck else is a company supposed to stay in business with a product that was handily outmatched fifty years ago? You don't sell the product. You sell something more than the product. The product simply becomes a vehicle for the purchase of status. With the cameras appealing to a much smaller market, prices had to go up both to support the myth, and to simply make enough money for the company to stay afloat. Make no mistake. Leicas are primarily luxury/leisure items, and have been for decades.
The way I see it, the trick to getting around this overpriced idiocy, and to simply get your hands on an excellent rangefinder camera, is to realize that the company has made no significant upgrades for 90% of truly serious shooters since the M2. If you want a quality rangefinder that simply gets the job done in an old-fashioned manner, don't buy anything past the M2, and do not fall for any of the collector garbage. Realize that no matter how good everyone proclaims the optics and mechanics of the cameras to be, they are over all an outdated and inferior tool to SLRs. The slight advantages in optics are more than outweighed by disadvantages in other areas. Leicas are worth owning and shooting because they are a well made example of a convenient, fun, and loose, seat of the pants style of camera of the past. You shoot one for the same reason you drive a '61 Cadillac: because they're fuggin' cool, and fuggin' fun, not because they are the best in the world in a technical sense (though they may have been at the time they were made).
That attitude would keep anyone in their right mind from paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for one. But no. Everyone is so convinced that having a Leica makes them a serious photographer. Everyone is convinced that they are vastly superior in quality to any other camera. Balls to that. The proof in pictures says otherwise. People shoot the same crap with Leicas that they do with any camera, and often it is even crappier because rangefinders are such a pain in the ass to use compared to SLRs. Leicas are cool because they are fun and old fashioned. Embrace that, and don't take them so damned seriously. You'll get out cheap, and have a million times more fun and get a million times better pictures than all the bozos paying big bucks for them so that they can think of themselves as serious photographers. Get an old thread mount camera or an early M and you've got everything that was ever good about using a Leica in the first place. You usually escape for well under a thousand bucks too.
The Leica mystique is due to the fact that people do not know how to objectively judge something, take it for what it is, and just enjoy it for the hell of it. They've always got to attach some sort of twisted value to it beyond what it actually is: a fuggin' bitchin' old camera that used to rule the world.
My yardstick for current Leica's prices were examples being offered locally at a brick 'n mortar camera store with a reputation of having high prices to begin with on virtually everything in their store, cameras being offered on EvilBay, and cameras offered for sale on various forum sites. Using these prices as a guide, and for less than what I would have paid for a Canon 7D body only; I purchased both a camera body that is in mint condition, case, instruction manual and an excellent lens with hood at a price that everyone else was asking for just the M5 body alone!
Considering the condition some of the cameras that were being offered for sale were in, I could have easily paid twice as much for less.
You shoot one for the same reason you drive a '61 Cadillac: .
The Leica mystique is due to the fact that people do not know how to objectively judge something, take it for what it is, and just enjoy it for the hell of it.
All that was left for Leica was the legendary status, and, less so, the fact that, although outmatched in almost every way, they were still well-made cameras.
Nikon won the commercial battle and cornered the professional market, but certainly not because they were "better in almost every way".
Leica was expensive and entered the SLR market late (and, at the very first, poorly), by the time they had an SLR which could knock the socks off a contemporary Nikon (1968), it was too late.
For years I used and loved my Nikon F and F2, but in comparison to their Leica contemporaries (Leicaflex SL & SL2), they are clearly outmatched (the Nikons, that is).
In Leica's case, it isn't (only) just a matter of mystique, but of real technical and ergonomic advantages.
Unless the only advantages you consider important are the number of "features" and automatic functions a camera has.
Well the pros did not think anything of the Leica SLRs, they were buying the best camera for the job, they bought Nikon F, and then F2, and then F3,...
The Leica mystique is due to the fact that people do not know how to objectively judge something, take it for what it is, and just enjoy it for the hell of it. They've always got to attach some sort of twisted value to it beyond what it actually is: a fuggin' bitchin' old camera that used to rule the world.
Collecting Leicas and using them for photography are two different things.
It is rather disingenuous to say they are one of the same, or just plain wrong.
Not necessarily, and (consequently) not always.
Plenty collectors who actually find pleasure in using their 'collection items'. The fun of "which one shall i use today?" The fun of knowing that the thing you are using is not just an anonymous collection of metal and glass, but something that transcends that.
It will not show in the photographs. But it certainly changes, adds to the pleasure people have while creating those photographs.
But the collectors that buy items in unopened boxes and X-Ray them to verify the contents are the ones I refer to. It don't believe it's photography, it's another hobby altogether.
On a TV programme a couple of years ago, presenter James May went to an auction and won a model locomotive for a Hornby train set still in its original packaging. He shocked the collectors present by passing the box and internal packaging to the girl at the collection desk and asked her to throw it away as he bought it with the intention of using it.
On a TV programme a couple of years ago, presenter James May went to an auction and won a model locomotive for a Hornby train set still in its original packaging. He shocked the collectors present by passing the box and internal packaging to the girl at the collection desk and asked her to throw it away as he bought it with the intention of using it.
Steve.
:eek: But how will he stow it when not in use or in a house move?! I also "play" with model trains but try to always keep the packaging for when track isn't set up.
I have yet to get that Zeiss, instead using FSU glass. I must say the Jupiter 8 & 3 please me very much.
Leica, for many of their lenses, didn't catch up to Zeiss until at least the 1980's (or even, arguably, not yet, depending on what you consider important in lens performance).
Well the ZM lenses are cheaper, but the CV lenses are cheaper again.
If you are not going to notice the difference in optical performance...
Noel
Hi
I'm sure there is a difference, but I dont detect it hand held 1/125 with 400 ISO mono at /5.6 or smaller. My mates who borrow my lenses in coffee shops, and pixel peep wide open with M8 and M9 can detect differences, e.g. between my CV 25mm and ZM 25mm.
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