I have some questions, mainly concerning the issues and difficulties surrounding 'transitioning' from an a/f SLR system. Here they are:-

a) exposure - I've got used to not having to think about exposure; just compose + shoot. (I know, I shouldn't be like that, but that's one of the reasons I'm thinking of changing). Most of the magazines I read suggest that exposure, particularly for slide film (which is what I use) needs to be very, very precise - best leave it to the in-camera computers! I do understand the theory behind exposure, it's just that I haven't had to do it for quite a while. Is an M6 meter really good enough? Or do M6 users use hand-held meters? And (if I were to get, say, an M4) how good is the clip-on meter?

b) I've been using a/f SLRs since 1988. Has any other reader of this forum switched back to manual focus after such a period? And how did they find it? - I'm worried that I simply may not be able to see well enough; I do wear glasses for reading, though not generally and not when I'm taking pictures.

My background is that I'm in my 50s, am a hobbyist photographer, have owned SLRs for about 20 years, and have been an EOS user since 1988 when I got a 650. Last January I treated myself to a new EOS 3 + big lens. Big mistake! It's a great camera, I'm sure, but so big, heavy, and clumsy. I spent all summer schlepping a heavy bag around with various zoom lenses in it. I suddenly realised that I was deciding in advance whether I wanted to take photos or enjoy myself; and sometimes feeling sorry when I decided that I was going to take photos. This can't be right, so I'm having a rethink. The big lens has already gone, the 3 will be next. But what to replace it with? One possibility is an M-something, another is a Voigtlander, and a third is maybe a Contax G.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

-- Tom Burke (tom@thbtotley.co.uk), December 27, 2000

Answers

>>>>>Most of the magazines I read suggest that exposure, particularly for slide film (which is what I use) needs to be very, very precise - best leave it to the in-camera computers!

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Most of the magazines you read are in the business of selling advertising space to manufacturers of computerized cameras. Exposure is pretty critical with slide film, but people have been getting by with it since 1935. The meter in the M6 is probably as good as you'll find anywhere, and your brain, taking advantage of the selective-area meter reading of the M6, is a far better computer than the one in your EOS3. It does take getting used to, but it isn't a handicap.

rick :)=

-- Rick Oleson (rick_oleson@yahoo.com), December 27, 2000.

Tom,

I'll offer some thoughts on your questions. I use Leica M's and Nikons (F3 and FM2 with AIS glass). I gave up on autofocus due to the fact that I broke three Nikon AF lenses during normal use... yet I have thirty year old manual Nikkors that just keep working under the hardest use.

Question A: I have a handheld meter, but I rarely use it. If you learn what the M6 meter is "looking at" and how the tones convert towards the mid 18% gray, it is very reliable. In most situations, I just get my two triangles an shoot... my slides look fine. One of the things about NOT using auto exposure all of the time is that you will be able to "see" the light and have your camera set pretty close before you even check the meter. You should be choosing the f-stop / shutterspeed combination for a reason... not just because they are the "correct" exposure. Pick the f-stop for the depth of field, or chose the shutterspeed for the action, and then set the other half for the exposure. Again, just having to do this will make you learn. On the other hand, if you don't have the aptitude, it could lead to frustration and ultimately abandonment of the hobby.

Question B: My problem with the way a lot of people use auto focus is that while yes, the subject is in focus... Is it the best placement for the focus? Many of the autofocus users (especially zoom users) have forgot how to use the depth of field marks on there lenses, (If they even have them... many zooms don't). The rangefinder is fast and accurate, but you don't have to focus every shot. In good light with the lens stopped down a bit, you can set a zone of focus. You can use your Leica as easily as any point and shoot. Also, a pre-set lens is faster than autofocus. In poor light, with a wide aperture, you will have to focus, but practice will allow this to be a fast process. It goes back to not having the crutch to fall back on. Many of my auto-everything camera using friends always quote the rhetoric..."I can always turn all of the auto functions off and go manual". In real life, they rarely do. Consequently, they fail to learn any of the basics of photography. Go to any photographic website for the big auto camera companies... Canon or Nikon. There are people with 2000 Dollar cameras that are asking questions that twenty years ago would have been learned by a beginner on his third roll of film with a Pentax K1000.

I would suggest not getting rid of your SLR. Rangefinders and SLRs compliment each other well... they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

To offer an analogy, I drive a car with a 5 speed manual transmission. When my friends ride with me, some ask why I put up with the hassle of it when I could just get an automatic. It is then I realize... I can't recall any of the shifting and clutching... I just arrive at my destination. I have many pictures that I think are very good. Even though I set the f-stop and shutterspeed and focused manually... it just happened.

Good Luck.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), December 27, 2000.

The above words of wisdom from Al Smith should be read and reread by everybody. Good job!

-- Steve Hoffman (shoffman2@socal.rr.com), December 27, 2000.

Tom,

I am 57. 'nuff said. I too have been using SLR's for ever. I obtained my EOS 650 in 1987. Loved auto everything until I acquired a Hasselblad last year and began to really learn about photography. My last SLR was an EOS A2 with various lenses. I loved it at first but soon became frustrated that the camera was just about doing my thinking for me. In addition, I had to carry the manual to remember all those custom functions. I have been so happy with what I have achieved with my Hasselblad which is an all manual camera (501CM) that I decided to chick my SLR and try a LEICA. I sold it all on e-bay and took quite a licking price-wise although I did better than what was offered in trade. I got a new M6 TTL .72, bought a 90mm Leitz lens used and new Voigtlaenders 35mm 1:1.7 and 50mm 1:1.5 because the Leica equivalent are beyond my means. I can tell you that after one month, I am happy to have made the switch. I love the size, the compactness of the LEICA, its exquisite precision, think of driving a 5 speed BMW, it does what YOU want, when YOU want it. The meter in the M6 compares very well with my hand held Gossen Luna pro and the results so far have been spectacular. I am very conscious of what I am doing, taking all aspects of photography into consideration rather than simply compose and let the camera do all the work. It is more difficult but so satisfying. I missed the autofocus feature of the EOS at first (I wear bifocals) but do not any longer. My biggest problem has been with film loading but with the help of the good people on this board, I have resolved the issue. The images I get with the Leitz and Voigt lenses are beyond my expectations in contrast, detail and composition. I have even used my Leica in my mini-studio with mono lights and infra-red trigger with great results. I disgree with most LEICA owners that the camera is really for photo journalism as I have made some great portraits with the 90mm. I have even used the SF20 flash that most people despise, with good results. What a camera! It involves you thoroughly in the process and most of all, YOU make the picture. B&W's are incredible and color prints or transparencies give you colors that you've not seen before in your work.

Give it a try. If you are as serious about your hobby as you seem to be, you'll not regret it.

Jean-David

-- Jean-David Borges (jdborges@home.com), December 27, 2000.

My own very subjective opinion is that the transition will go ok if you realize the differences in the philosphy of the two design prototypes. As to metering the chromes (transparency film), I come from the incident reading (hand held metering) school but more importantly training your eyes to meter based on experience (and bracketing). Silver masks and duping have saved more poorly exposed chromes than you can imagine in the biz. It is hard to salvage an out of focus image. The direction that Canon (manual)lenses focus is actually the same as the Leica lenses unlike Nikon so that shouldn't be too tough. I wear glasses all the time and to see the framelines for the 35mm or shorter can be a challenge. An optical finder for the 28mm etc. can help a lot. Leica Diopter Eyepieces for your vision correction might be a solution. In general the Rangefinder system is easier and more precise for focusing in less than ideal light. It is a less versatile (fewer lens choices & limited working range) system since there is no ground glass image. There is an aesthetic from Architectural Design (Mies van der Rohe) that states "Less is More" I think Oscar Barnack sensed this when he gave birth to the Leica.

-- Michael Johnson (mdjohnsonphoto@hotmail.com), December 27, 2000.

Tom, you have received some excellent answers.

I have an M2 with Summicron 50/2 and Gossen Vario-six F. Mainly use incident metering, occasionally spot metering, and sometimes guess work. My M2's shutter is slow and needs a CLA so I no longer shoot chromes, just B&W.

With the birth of my Daughter, my wife wanted a P&S so I got an EOS 50 with the 28-80L and 550EX. Quickly sold the big zoom and got the 28/1.8 and 85/1.8. In the Canon I mostly shoot color slide. I now use both cameras about equal. The strengths of the two systems are totally different.

The M2 needs to be adapted to even connect a flash, and even then will never approach Canons wireless E-TTL EX convenience, but the Leica is small, quiet, and light.

The Summicron is a wonderful lens. Tiny, fast enough, sharp with lovely bokeh, but canon offers great lenses from 14-1200mm for a fraction of the M equivelents price. Cosina's Voigtlanders are a godsend.

The M2 is slow loading and slow rewind. This is a non issue for me, problem for others. No close focussing is a another limitation.

Keep the EOS 3. It can do things the Leica can't well. Have you used a RF for any time? If not, get either a beater M2 or some Canonet etc to see if you even like it.

I find I mostly print the B&W Leica shots full frame, whereas I crop many of the color canon shots. I use the EOS 50 on manual a lot (something not done with the T90), and use the incident meter for all portraits, canon or leica.

The time I only had the Leica helped me. It is amazing how little a single lens limits you.

-- Mark Wrathall (Wrathall@aon.at), December 27, 2000.

There are issues about the Leica which are much more potentially frustrating than the ones you have listed, which leads me to believe that you'd be best of if you can arrange to demo a Leica for a few days to find out if it is your cup of tea. But first let me address your specifics:

A) Despite all the fuss in how-to books about needing to apply compensation with non-evaluative meters, I've found that in typical outdoor travel and scenic photography the M6's meter is reliable 85% of the time as-is, and most of the rest of the time it's a simple matter of filling the "imaginary metering circle" in the middle of the frame with a middle-tone subject like green foliage or gray rocks. My biggest source of throw-outs on slide film is due to the scene contrast being greater than the film's latitude, not exposure errors.

B) As a user of AF you will have much less of a learning curve focusing the Leica than a manual-focus SLR user who is accustomed to focusing by sharp/unsharp anywhere on the screen. You are used to positioning an AF sensor on your subject, locking focus, and recomposing. This is basically what you'll be doing with the M6's rangefinder patch.

I think you will have much more of an adjustment to make getting used to the non-SLR viewing. Everything always looks sharp in the finder, but at wider apertures and with longer lenses you will need to use the depth-of-field scales on the lenses until you develop an intuition for it. I've been using the DOF scales for 35 years and I'm still waiting for that intuition to arrive. You will also discover that the finder frames the view of the various focal lengths but does not show you the wideangle or telephoto "look" vs an SLR where those characteristics are visually evident because you see through the lens. A lesser but not insiginificant issue is the quirky film loading. Most people get the knack of it but it's never going to be as fast as an auto-loading camera.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), December 27, 2000.

An M6 meter really is good enough. If you are buying new, the M6TTL meter is in fact slightly better and more positive. Thinking back over the last 10 rolls or so of slide film I've shot, much in challenging backlit or side-lit indoor/outdoor shots I can't think of a single exposure that was off. My M6s metering results are significantly more on the dot than my Nikon FMs.

But, you'll have to learn to think like the meter for it to become second nature,and you'll have to learn when to "re-meter" a scene. One of the things about manual metering is that you quickly learn that as long as the lighting in a scene does not change, you don't need to adjust exposure as you move around in it.

Automatic meters always adjust depending on what they are seeing in the viewfinder, and so sometimes do not have that frame-to-frame consistency of exposure that manual metering creates.

Relative to shooting with an EOS, you'll occasionally lose 2-3 seconds (once your technique is fluid) in unexpected grabshot situations due to the burden of metering, and another 1-2 seconds on focusing.

My eyesight deteriorated in middle-age a few years ago, and I got an M6 .85 body for that reason. I shoot little with the 35mm and hardly at all at wider focal lengths. Focusing with the M upto 75mm is easier and more accurate than with an SLR screen. But seeing the wide (35 mm) frameline with glasses on, is impossible in the M6 0.85 and difficult in the regular M6. If you are a wide angle shooter you need to think a bit.

A Voigtlander is an inexpensive try and see. But then so are used Leicas. You will suffer little loss, if you decide its not for you and you sell.

The Contax G is a totally different beast from an M series camera. The ergonomics and viewfinder, focus, etc. etc are so different its difficult to compare the two, but for size.

Net, net a manual rangefinder camera is a wee bit more busy work during shooting, though it fades into the background soon. But its really not the camera for telephoto, macro or highly depth-of-field dependent shooting.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), December 27, 2000.

Get a Rebel 2000 and go take pictures.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), December 27, 2000.

Shush, Bill-don't you be telling the truth now :-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), December 28, 2000.

Thanks to everyone for their answers; I'm encouraged.

Bill Mitchell said that I should 'get a Rebel 2000 and go take pictures'. That's more or less what I've done, although not a Rebel (EOS 300 here, I think). I bought a simple Canon fixed lens, direct- viewfinder (ie, non-Rangefinder) camera from the 70's (I think), a Canonet 28. I've been out a few times with it and I've enjoyed using it, though I've pretty much left it on auto for exposure as I don't have an instruction book and don't know how to drive it. But it's a refreshing change after the weight and bulk of the EOS stuff.

Someone else suggested keeping the SLR. In fact I'll do that because I do still have my original EOS 650, which I still love. I'll keep that one and a couple of non-Canon lenses (a Sigma 70-210 zoom, for instance) and use them for long-distance work. The 3, and the better Canon lenses I've got, are headed for the dealer....

Once again, many thanks to everyone.

-- Tom Burke (tom@thbtotley.co.uk), December 28, 2000.

Tom

a) It depends a lot on what film you take. The M6 will work fine for print films - but you can make mistakes with slide films. Despite their claims though matrix meters make plenty of mistakes too for slides and owners are often shifting their compensation buttons/ levers. So in general I think the M6 will be fine for you.

b) Manual focussing. If you are used to autofocussing you might find manual focussing a pain - you need a hand to do it and it is something else to worry about when taking a picture. In a rangefinder in particular the r/f spot is in the center of the image and the fact that the viewfinder is not a real image means that you cannot do the useful m/f SLR trick of focusing on another part of the image without moving the camera. This is very useful in candids. Fast moving subjects you have the same problem with a r/f -- to follow focus you have to have the r/f spot on the subject in question which can also be a pain if the framing is not what you want. It is also often very difficult to focus on a fast moving subject using a r/f spot anyway. The focus/out of focus image on an SLR is often much easier in my opinion.

It is also true of course that rangefinders are better than SLRs at focussing wide-angles (ironically where their large depth of focus makes this less vital) compared to teles (where it is very important). So I am not really convinced that in the manual focussing world M cameras really have such a great advantage (in fact they are at a disadvantage depending on how you look at it) compared to SLRs. However, it is certainly true that in low light conditions the M is easier to focus that an SLR. Although autofocus SLRs are very good at this in general I think.

Then there is the parallax issues involved with r/f viewing (you cannot really see converging verticals precise near and distance relationships etc) and the small size of the telephoto frames – and the fact that extreme wides need clip on viewfinders (you never have to worry about all this with a reflex).

M lenses can be small but are sometimes less so than you might expect. The wideangles tend to be smaller but the teles are much less so. The 75/1.4, 90/2, 90/2.8 and 135/3.4 are much larger than you might imagine. My R lenses are certainly wider but are the same length or shorter in fact. Small is not always good anyway changing lenses can be fiddly on an M if you have big/clumsy fingers.

Then there is the slow film loading…

M cameras are beautiful and very quiet and the bodies are smaller than most SLRs, but they are not light – they are solidly constructed and weigh a good deal. In short, the Leica aficionados here will tend to tell you that all is so much better when you have a Leica M than anything else. I do not think this is true for many photographers – the modern SLR has formidable advantages which is why they outsell rangefinders many times over. If you want Leica quality lenses then you can get a Leica reflex.

Despite these comments Leicas are justifiably famous and legendary cameras – but you really must try one out before you buy – they are an acquired taste and many people never acquire this taste. I suggest you find a good dealer who will let you use one and shoot some film through it and if possible take it out with a set of lenses and do what you normally do. You will quickly find out whether you like the feeling or not. Remember also that Leicaphiles of the M variety preach a lot about the virtues of simplicity and fewer, prime lenses – you could certainly go that route with your Canon – try taking out just a fast standard lens and a 35mm or 85/100mm prime and you have already reduced the weight you have carried considerably! It is partly a matter of attitude to taking photos not so much the camera. As you will have guessed I am not primarily an M-user, but I do like them and may buy another one one day (I own a CL which hardly seems to “count”), but personally I find that the reason I am with the Leica system (R) is for the superb optics and rugged manual “thinking” style of photography that typifies (or perhaps “should” typify) a Leica user.

The Rs offer the same Leica quality and feel but might be less of a wrench. The R6.2 is a very small SLR by today's standards much smaller than your EOS.

It seems to me that you are worried about enjoying your photography - I suggest you become a Leica M-style photographer by simply buying a smaller Canon body and using only 2-3 small prime Canon lenses. That would be much cheaper! You don't need a Leica M to lighten up!

-- Robin Smith (rsmith@springer-ny.com), January 04, 2001.

I believe Robin is absolutely right, a Leica M won't lighten up your relationship to photography.

In fact, in the short term (depending on how much film you shoot and time you reflect on the results) your photography "burden" will increase. This is good. You'll learn to look at light and it's relationship to subject, and your photography will be the better for it.

If money isn't an issue, spend it. If money is, buy a single lens, a body and a meter (or an M6). Consider a working Lieca CL, a Bessa R, any old M with the correct framelines for the focal length you buy. Learn to zoom with your feet. Only take the camera out when you want to "work" on photography and learn.

I have a helluva lot of fun with a $20 Polaroid I-Zone, when I've got $15,000 of Leica bodies and lenses taking a break from my own photography issues. But when I go to "work," there is nothing better then a Leica M anythin

-- Warren Spicer (wspicer@metronews.com), January 05, 2001.

"But its really not the camera for telephoto, macro or highly depth-of-field dependent shooting."

Really, Mani? I put down my Nikon 8008 and picked my Leicas back up when I realized that all that auto-point-and-shoot was making me neglect depth of field. Now I'm back to my previous style: Focus on the nearest and farthest point of interest, note the distance, and use the depth-of-field scales on the lens. The ones on Leica lenses are the most useful I've found.

Regards,

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), January 06, 2001.