The Leica M6 Proved Me Wrong

Loved taking the time to expand on my experience with rangefinders so far! It's now been about 4 months since I got my M6 and shared these initial thoughts on Instagram, and I still hold to each of them. Chapters below if you want to skip around!

0:00 — it's okay to change your mind
0:34 — rangefinders + glasses
3:24 — deep depth of field is boring
5:15 — zone focusing is confusing
6:41 — rangefinders are not portrait cameras
8:38 — it's good to be wrong
9:18 — more images

________________________________________

GEAR / What I Use To Shoot My Videos (Affiliate Links):

________________________________________

[alanmacmillan]

zone focusing is underrated by some photographers; but appreciated by some. you can do a hell of a lot going out with a 28mm lens doing street photography and just setting your aperture to about f11, then bumping down to f8 for less light or up to f16 for more. you can just then set the lens to around 8-16ft focus and then only moving the aperture when necessary - without even re-focusing can give you the best of all worlds in terms of depth of field providing the certainty of focus - without waiting for any autofocus nonsense on a digital to catch up. whack in some TMAX and you can shoot all day at about 1/500th or maybe 1/1000th if you have the light, point and shoot anything and everything and you'll be a wee Garry Winogrand in the making before you know it.

[Ben-cxde]

Great video. Zone focussing with a focus tab and wide lens (28 or 35) is really quick. Aperture at f8 and then pull left for close shots, set to middle for middle distance and the right for further away.

[jasongold]

Leica-M are good for 5' to 15' 1.5m~5m! You see better and clearer. Slowly you learn what it does, it does great! I love the original SMALL lenses!

[Narsuitus]

Thanks for the video.

When I shoot head & shoulder portraits and tight face portraits, my Leica M6 with 90mm f/2 lens is not on the top of my list because it does not close-focus well.

[rf]

After picking one up I have a hard time getting past the frame lines. I also wear glasses and have a hard time with the fact that I can't see them with a .72 magnification. I always hear other Leica owners state that one of the added benefits of shooting with a rangefinder is being able to see outside the FL and see what's coming into the frame; unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case for me as I love the switching between ultra wide, wide and long focal lengths. I know of the screw on magnifier but that seems like another add-on that I just don't want to bother with.

I own a Canon A-1 and it doesn't work against me when using different vocals lengths, I can see what the lens sees from the center to the edge of the frame without any attachments and I can still "zone" focus. Also I would argue that SLR's don't really cover your face as much as people say they do. At the end of the day you're still placing a little black box up to your face and squinting, squinting even harder if you're trying to take a close up portrait of someone (I'll stick to medium format for that). But with Leica prices currently dropping I would say if you can buy one to try it out, probably wouldn't hurt.

[maxwellwellmax]

I have an M7 and a Mamiya 7II both rangefinders, I also wear glasses and am Left Eye dominant lol. The Mamiya is easier to see the patches align but I gotta practice more because it's still a chore.

[nickeanderssonphoto]

Love this setup! But after getting a x0.58 vf (on a M7) with this exact lens I never looked back. Solved everything so I really recommend doing that.

[ckhicks]

Love the transparency and humility, thank you for sharing!

[husshardan]

Get an M camera w .58;vf magnification. Really easy to see the 28, 35 and 50mm frame lines. The old M6 and M6TTL had it as an option, as did the MP and M7.

[wvideoyahoodk]

I´m a M6 photographer since 1995. Really enjoyed your video. Told me what I love about my M6 and great to hear what you found great about it and the differences from what you normally work with.A camera is a tool. One tool for every job. SLR´s and rangefinders go hand in hand. Nice video and very thoughtful.
Kind regards from Denmark

[anthonymiller]

As an older person with less than perfect eyesight and glasses I can more easily tell if the images are lined up easier than I can tell if an image is truly sharp, especially on 35mm or wider lenses. With conventional ground glass/focus screen use I am racking back and forth trying to determine focus. With a rangefinder I just go till I see the initial alignment and stop.

[UnconventionalReasoning]

I think the SLR focusing just before AF took over tended to be either split ring or microprism. The rangefinder focusing is quite similar to the split ring device.

[carlosgrajeda]

I wear glasses and think it’s easier to focus rangefinders vs SLRs. It’s so much easier for me to see the rangefinder patch is lined up vs telling my focus is sharp when focusing the SLR with such shallow depth. I’m near sighted, so I’m pretty sure that’s why it works for me, maybe your experience is different if you’re farsighted. I also don’t have a problem focusing rangefinders without my glasses, but using an SLR without glasses is out of the question for me.

[devroombagchus]

Thanks! I never understood the fascination with bokeh. Usually, I don’t want much of it, because for me, even portraits are placed in a specific environment. And lenses perform best between f4 and f11. I have an MP, because I developed a life-long distrust of electronics made by Leica. The problem with frame-lines is mainly that already at 75mm, the field of view becomes very small. In practice, 24mm to 35mm is what I use most of the time, in spite of my glasses. The hot shoe finder for 24mm is very wide and the lines are clearly visible. For travel or just take along, a range finder is the best camera for me. Simple, lighter and smaller. A slight problem is that I, like many people have a left dominant eye, so the camera blocks the right eye. For general purposes, I have used zone focussing for over 50 years.

[Keith]

I love shoot wide open for people images and stopped down to F8 or F11 for landscapes with Leicas. I used zone focus all the time when using the Blad 503 for weddings and my manual Nikons before buying auto focus.

[garysong]

My first serious camera was a Nikon F I had my uncle pick up in Korea when he was stationed there. When the Nikon F2 came out got one the same way. These were my main cameras for yesrs….still have my F2. I bought a used M2 and later a used M3 and started using them in the 70’s and haven’t used my F2 since. Using Leica’s just suits my style of photography. Maybe if I was in wildlife photography I would use a SLR. But for what I do just like Leica’s and appreciate their compactness.

[jerodkillick]

So helpful. Thank you. I am on a waitlist for the M6 re-issue here in Canada. Very excited.

[_cyclofob]

I still have an old M6 that I bought 25 years ago. After a long journey via Minolta AF cameras and Minolta, I bought the Leica second-hand. I was horrified the first time I tried the camera. But I got into it and in the end I felt faster than with the Minolta AF (which was a nightmare, of course) and finally took photos that I liked myself. I had it with me everywhere and at every opportunity.

Then came the digital side, the dark side, and I parted company with Leica because the prices were simply absurd. My old M6 sits in my office and is regularly touched, stroked and triggered. Every now and then I treat it to a "portrait".

[silvestersze]

I'm in transition from shooting with SLR to a rangefinder film camera now. Since I'm into street photography, do you think it's worth the time and effort to practice a bit of the usage of the rangefinder cameras and eventually get used to it?
I've started using SLR since the beginning of my photography journey from my father. I've never really used the rangefinder cameras except some cheap point and shoot back in the 70s or 80s. LOL

[richardsimms]

Excellent video. I have a Leica M. Thank you