It’s been just over a year, when I received my brand new M9. This was my first Leica and I had great expectations for this camera and lenses. It’s now been a year, and having the M9 at my side traveling to Vegas, Death Valley, Zion, China, Hawaii, and Japan, I have now formed some opinions about this camera. In addition to travel photography, I’ve done a lot of shots of my 2 year old grandson and did an informal wedding shots for my nephew in Hawaii. During this past year, I’ve pretty much left my Nikon D700 idle in my drawer and occasionally brought it out for shots that the M9 would not do well. i.e. macro shots.
Overview:
Let me just state that I absolutely love this camera. It has exceeded many of my expectations but it is not a perfect camera (is there one?) Would I buy this camera again given what I now know? Yes. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely.
Image Quality:
There is no doubt that the M9 combined with legendary lenses of Leica, just creates images that is second to none. I go back and look at my old images created by my Canon’s and Nikon’s and they simply don’t compare. The resolving power of the lenses and the ability of the M9 to capture the light is just not repeatable on my Nikon. This is not always evident on the digital screen, but very much clear on a 17×22 print. The contrast and tack sharp images with beautiful bokeh is just not possible on my Nikon equipment. This statement is true up to (my opinion) 1600 iso. After that, the M9 starts to fall apart. I don’t think it is reasonable to be shooting at anything higher than 1600 iso on the M9. Lightroom 3.0 has made some big advances with luminance and color noise reduction and this has benefitted the M9 but I still think going beyond 1600 iso, the sensor is not capable of capturing a clean image.
Rangefinder Form factor:
I got this camera for its quality and size. Having to drag around 1+ pound lenses plus a camera body, just got me tired. The M9 with three lenses weight less than my 70-200 f/2.8 Nikkor alone. My travels during the past year was such a joy. I didn’t mind taking my camera everywhere we went and I had all my lenses with me.
Focusing:
No doubt, this was a big adjustment for me. Just learning to focus on the patch, then moving to compose took a lot of practice. I soon started to think more about depth of field relative to aperture/shutter speed and how this would aid in getting a sharp image. (This is particularly important when trying to shoot a moving 2 yr. old.) I’m still work-in-progress to perfect this but I do get a larger number of focused images than out of focus these days.
Electronics:
Leica has designed this camera to be as close as it can to its heritage rangefinder history but still step out into the new digital camera age. To some extent they have been successful but also failed in others. I’ve already talked about the limited ISO capabilities. Other areas include the poor auto white balance in artificial lighting, particularly fluorescent lights. I always need to manually balance the lighting before shooting or I will have a difficult time correcting the lighting later. The display on the back is also limited in quality and could be of higher resolution. The camera does not have a lot of buttons, so true to its culture, it is as close to a film rangefinder as you’ll get but still taking a digital image. With no built in flash, I’ve use the M9 with a elinchrom wireless sync trigger on a Nikon SB800 for my informal wedding shots and portraits of my grandson. This worked surprisingly well for me. I shot using everything in manual mode, that seem to be the easiest to control the outcome of balancing the light.
Summary:
This camera works for me. I predominately shoot travel, landscape, and people pictures. I don’t do sports or macro photography, and when I do, I’ll reach for my D700 (not very often). For me, this camera is not just about the M9 but also about the lenses. Together, they make beautiful images that I have not been able to create with my other cameras. I’m sure there are other camera/lens combinations that will do the same, but for me, this is what I believe to be best for my photography. It will be interesting to see what the next Leica M and also the newly announced Fuji FinePix X100 will be like. I’ll need to save my pennies for that eventual upgrade.