Im new to Leica and am a proud owner of a M6TTL and 50mm Summicron.

I have a couple of questions that you guys should be able to help me with.

(1) Im used to compact auto focus jobs (Im sorry to say). I guess its just practice but how does one manage to focus, set aperture and shoot all within a microsecond? Im interested in candid photography and by its very nature many situations require a split second response. Any answer top this any other tips on speedy usage of the Leica camera would be very helpful indeed! For example is that a ‘default’ configuration that I should set the camera to which should be able to deal with most candid situations or at least be a ‘best’ starting point? (2) Why is the 50mm Summicron considered ‘normal’? I purchased one as it was recommended as good all rounder and a good lens to learn to use with Leica equipment. (3) Straps. Its interesting ive read a few discussions about wrist vs neck straps, how to connect them to the camera etc etc. There’s a whole chapter on my Leica handbook (Eastman) on how to connect the strap. What do you guys prefer? I like the sound of a neck strap as it reduces the chances of dropping the camera but I also think a wrist strap sounds useful as the camera is already in the hand and ready for action.

Sorry if these are really dumb questions but hey, we all have to start somewhere! Well that’s about it, hope you can help me out

Cheers

Jason London, England

-- Jason Vicinanza (jcvicinanza@btinternet.com), January 15, 2001

Answers

Welcome to the wonderful world of surrendipity!!!!

Just a few tips from my limited experience doing candids:

(1) Choose a medium aperture and reasonably fast shutter speed to exploit hyperfocal distance (I like 5.6 at 1/125) and know that you don't necessarily have to be dead-on focused on the subject to get reasonable results. (2) Stake out an area (turf) and scan with your rangefinder while making it look random (like you aren't really interested in your subject but everything in general). (3) Learn to raise the camera to face level, compose, then shoot with 1 hand (need fast shutter speed) (4) Put black tape over the red decal and the white logos to make your Leica look like a toy or a piece of junk camera.... less intimidating. (5) Don't dress like a photographer and if you carry a bag then might I suggest a Domke with the decals removed so you blend in better with the locals. (6) Set and forget your aperture and shutter speed. Normally for ISO 100 film 5.6/125 combination is good from 10 am to 3 pm on a clear day and you can always intensify if underexposed (at least with B&W) (7) Up to you but I always wear my M6 under my arm with the standard strap where it just dangles above waist level and on my right side. It is usually concealed under a coat or jacket. (8) The 50 mm is a good starting point but I usually use my 35 mm as it is more compact and the hyperfocal distance is greater per given f stop. Always use the hood... for protection and to eliminate the inconvenience of a cap. (9) Don't be afraid to shoot lots of film. Don't expect to get alot of great shots if you only shoot 1 roll of 36 exp on an outing. Practice makes perfect so be patient. (10) Hang out with a group if you can... it is my experience that people will be reluctant to confront you AFTER they have noticed you snapping their pics IF you are with a group. Just the social psychology factor. (11) You don't need consent from individuals if they are snapped in a public place BUT you may wish to solicit consent from VERY interesting subjects.... ie an old lady sitting on a bench.... a prostitute standing at a street corner... (12) Practice getting comfortable snapping people by documenting street performers... they really don't mind if they are true showmen and a little patronage on your part removes any feeling that you are taking advantage of them.

These are just a few hints:

Good luck in your pursuit to be the next HCB!!!!

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), January 15, 2001.

The main key key to speed with a Leica M is practice. Lots and lots of it. Then more of it. And a bit more. That said, there are a few tips.

1. Try to keep the aperture and shutter speed up to date between shots - i.e. meter when you're not shooting, rather than when you are. Then don't bother metering when you bring the camera up to your eye for a shot - just tweak the exposure for back or side-light without using the meter, and shoot.

2. Use lenses with focussing tabs if possible. If you don't have one on your current 50, keep this in mind for future purchases. They're on all the wide angle lenses, and on the second-last version of the 50. They make focussing much faster.

3. Between shots, reset your focus to infinity. That way you always know which way to turn the ring when starting to focus.

4. Learn to preset your focus by feel. This only works if you have a lens with a focus tab, and works as follows. Learn to feel where the tab falls on the bottom of the lens at a given distance (try 6 feet and 10 feet to start with). Learn to estimate the distance to the subject by eye, preset the focus by feel, then just tweak the focus a bit if you have to. Practice around the house without taking pictures, just focussing on different objects.

5. With wide angles use hyperfocal settings if you can. You will need to consciously stop yourself from refocussing, but once you do it will really speed up your shooting.

I use the standard Leica neck strap. If I want a wrist strap I just wrap the neckstrap around my right hand. Some people dispense with straps altogether, and just hold the camera all the time. This would be a little easier if you use a handgrip. I'm a stone crazy devotee of the Leica-M Grip (I even like it way better than Tom Abrahamsson's custom-designed metal RapidGrip). I have one on each camera, and I much prefer the ergonomics with the grip. Others disagree :-)

50mm lenses have been considered "normal" for a long time now. They produce photos with "natural-looking" perspective at normal enlargement sizes. The 50mm Summicron is the standard recommendation for a first Leica M lens, not least because it's the lightest, cheapest and one of the sharpest lenses made for the M. Because the perspective is just so gosh-darned normal, you can forget about gimmicky photographic effects, and get on with looking at and recording the world around you, which is one of the things Leicas are best at (IMNSHO).

Have fun - you're in for a wonderful photographic experience.

-- Paul Chefurka (paul_chefurka@pmc-sierra.com), January 15, 2001.

Whoever advised you to get the Summicron 50 gave you some outstanding advice. I once read the "too standard - too boring" advice and believed it, but after using the 50 summicron on my M2 for the last 4 years, I would never change it. I really started to appreciate just what a jem the summicron is when I bought my EOS wide and Portait tele. The are good, but the Summicron is special.

A Leica takes constant practice. You just paid a ton of money for the camera, if you don't put a ton of film through it, take it everwhere, and shoot everything with it, you will never truly appreciate what you have.

You have had good advice on how to use it quickly. My addition would be for shooting closer portraits (1-2m) focus once, and then just rock back and forward to keep the split image of the eyes whole. This is , for me, far more intuitive than trying to keep the EOS AF stuff focused during a portrait.

-- Mark Wrathall (Wrathall@aon.at), January 15, 2001.

Hello Jason. I spend much time in your city and have thousands of slides from London shot with Leicas. As to your quest for knowledge:

First, I like the full neck strap. It can be wrapped around the wrist, but the wrist strap can't be put around the neck. I usually handhold the camera, (strap around the wrist), while actually shooting... But when I change film on the run, I put the strap around my neck. There are too many things to juggle, old film, new film, bottom plate and camera. Of those thing, the one thing you don't want to drop is the camera.

Don't be intimidated by a manual camera. Exposure can remain fairly constant in good light. If I set my camera to f/8.0 and 1/500th of a second for ISO 100 slide film, as long as I stay in constant lighting, that exposure will work for hours. I might choose to go to a wider or more closed down aperture for the subject, but the shutterspeed can be set to compensate... all without even raising the camera to the eye. If you are interested in learning... try to shoot a couple of rolls of film with no meter using the "Sunny 16" rule. You can find this information in any good technique book, or inside the film box. In certain tricky lighting, I will ignore the meter in the M6 and use the Sunny 16 exposure. Be aware, f/16 at 1/125th, f/8 at 1/500th and f/5.6 at 1/1000th are all the same exposure... you are not locked into f/16 just because the "rule" has that in the title. Having this knowledge will save the day when your battery dies unexpectantly during an important shoot. This is one of the key benefits over the electronic cameras which are rendered totally inoperative without power... you can still get an image on film.

The type of film you use will enable you to pretty much assure results. Print film, (assuming a good lab), will allow you to get back usable pictures even if you were way off in your exposure. Conversely, good technique can be ruined by a cheap lab. If the results are not to your liking, check the negatives first... the actual print is an additional step out of your control other than not returning to the substandard lab. Slide film is the ultimate proof that your technique is sound... there is little room for error. When you can get a high percentage of slide film exposures correct, you can feel pretty good about your technique.

Learn to use those depth of field marks on your lens. This important feature has been all but eliminated on Auto focus zoom lenses, but if you can use these marks (it isn't that hard!), you can be FASTER than autofocus. In a short time of living with your 50mm lens, you will be able to see frames around subjects all of the time. Soon you will walk right up to the spot you need to be in for that lens. When it comes to the famous "Leica speed"... it comes from being totally immersed in the process and working with a minimum of gear. The exposure and focus are set pretty close before you see the subject... your eye sees a frame around a potential image... you walk up a shoot. Of course this only comes from shooting a lot of film and making mistakes. Soon the mistakes will happen less often, and you will have a confidence level, (from the knowledge), that just lets you get on with the process.

Good luck and welcome to the club.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), January 15, 2001.

Jason,

One other thing. When doing candid shooting, it helps when you don't stand out in a crowd. In your situation, you have a great opportunity to practice without feeling too self conscious, since you live in a major tourist destination. You could go down to Trafalgar Square and practice for hours, never having to fear the wrath of paranoid people wondering why you are hanging around with a camera. There are some locations that you are automatically suspect in when shooting, but you have a great training ground there in London. Some of my best candid shots in London are from that Square... thousands of ever changing faces all in there own world there for the picking. If you can't get good shots there, you are not ready to move on. Call it your "graduate course" in candid shooting.

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), January 15, 2001.

Cartier-Bresson, a very fast street shooter, used zone focusing. when someone noticed that he had marked 4 meters on his lens with red nail polish he said "Yes, that's my life: keeping a certain distance from things." He also marked 125th on his shutter speed dial, [he shot mostly Ilford ISO 100 film] adjusting only the aperture as the light changed. When he had an M3 he taped over the rangefinder window, presumably to get rid of that annoying little rectangle in the middle of the image! All of this made it possible to keep his camera, hanging from its strap, down on his chest, with his hands folded over it, until he saw the shot. Then up it would come, but only for a second, and it would be down and concealed again before his subject notice being photographed -and this was crucial to him, because he needed to go on shooting unnoticed as a situation developed towards, you guessed it, that decisive moment. No autofocuing camera is nearly fast enough for that kind of work. He also frequently used, even on his M-cameras, an obsolete 1930s accessory finder called a VIDOM that renders the image backwards and upside down, so as to see the composition in abstract terms. Not many of us would care for that, but the point is that he subordinated everything to seeing -sharpness and correct exposure were n

-- david m. kelly (kellyco@teleport.com), January 15, 2001.

i was going to say, before the Phillip the MIT Genius Greenspun bug ate the end of my sentence "were not his priorities"..........

-- david m. kelly (kellyco@teleport.com), January 15, 2001.

Jason; let me give you a wellcome to M photography, I suposs you´re already a photographer, so the only thing you´re changing is your camera; they say a Leica M is for all tasks specialy for dificult ones, for me a M is the perfect camera to walk and photograph people while you´re among them, is a fast camera if you master it; the secret is to anticipate, with an auto SLR you just rise the camera and spect it does everything, when you know what you´re doing that becomes very unpersonal; with a M you set the exposure by your own considerations; pre-focus and rise,frame and shoot.

In the act of rise,frame and shooting is hiden all the beauty and delait of using a LeicaM; to get to that you just have to practice; what I do once in a wile is to pick up my ligth meter and measure diferent ligths specialy those in wich I work most, measure the sun at diferent times and shadows at diferent deeps, also the interior ligthing like supermarkets or offices or home, so I don´t use my meter wile shooting, although I always carry it (well most of the time), just to feel safe.

Well after you can handel with ligth; that probably you already do; then you have to master the focusing act, you can prefocus by looking at you lens setings, or use hiperfocus (specialy with wideangles and small apertures),or focus direct to your subject,this last one can be the most precise but also the most delayed when fast shooting is required.So as you can see the secret is playing with the toy.

50 summicron is a gret lens specialy wide open you´ll see.

The leica M is specialy useful with wide angles; I personaly recomend the last 35/2 (summicron too), the one before the aspheric, is a tiny little lens that does marvels in <64°.

Well Jason wish you the best,

I bougth my first M3 in 1986, I don´t use any SLR anymore and I hate changing lenses, and I like working with three lenses (28/35/50), now I own four bodies and several lenses and I´m very happy with results.And I had to sell my Renault.

-- R. Watson (mawago@prodigy.net.mx), January 15, 2001.

Good point there,

I also have a combo incident/ spot meter from Sekonic that I use on my quests too. I find it handy to at least have an incident light meter on me at all times so that I may have a relative guide for balanced exposure. Jason, you should really read up on Ansel Adam's zone system for determination of exposure values and how different gray tones translate to his zone system. If you are shooting black and white then when you have a basic grasp of the system this will save you beaucoups time when you have to set exposure. Get an old Gossen Luna- Pro meter too if you can afford it. Metering from a handheld is much more inconspicuous than metering from your camera.

All IMHO.

-- John Chan (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), January 15, 2001.

Jason, you have received a ton of great advice. The only thing I can think to add is don't worry about scuffing or scratching your camera. I know that it cost a small fortune and it really does hurt when you get that first scratch or nick on a new camera, but just try to forget about it and use it. I'm not advocating abusing your camera for that would be stupid. I mean just use it without freaking out about damaging it and then you will be really able to become one with your Leica.

Al is right Trafalgar Square in London is a great place for people photography.

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), January 15, 2001.

Jason, I might further emphasize the point that was made about prefocusing. You see someone interesting approaching. You focus on a lamp-post or something they are going to walk by. As they get even with the prefocused point, you shoot.

Regards,

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), January 15, 2001.

Careful, Leica is addicting. I now have 2 bodies 0.85 and 0.58 with 35/ 50/90. Wonderful equipment and a joy to use. Anyone wish to buy Nikon F100? Congratulations!

-- Don M (maldos@home.com), January 16, 2001.

Jason, I think you should learn to do your own developing and printing. I'd be surprised if all the people above just send their film to the drug store for processing. You won't know what your equipment can do until you can see your prints on something like A4, or 8x10. Jim

-- Jim Shields (jim.shields@tasis.ch), January 16, 2001.

All the above is good advice. To which I would add only the following.

You can practice manipulating speed dial, aperture ring, focus ring, and film advance with four separate fingers (easier with a tab on the lens); just try it!

Secondly, it is a very small distance from infinity on your lens, to 10 feet, 6 feet and 3 feet -- FAR less, than the distance the other way. So set your lens to infinity, and choose a number of objects these distances away from you; now turn the focus a quick clockwise dab, and see, you're pretty close to 10 feet; a slightly longer dab of the fingers, and you're close to 6.

Keep practising this, and with time, you'll be hitting those focal distances just by fingers alone!

-- Martin Davidson (martin@foxcombe1.demon.co.uk), January 16, 2001.

Guys,

Just wanted to thank you lot for the excellent advice and responses to my newbie questions. Honestly I am REALLY impressed with the professionalism and willingness of you LEICA users to respond helpfully and respectfully to us new to the LEICA equipment and methods. I mean you could have just blasted me for asking such basic questions. Im so impressed that you spent the time and effort to respond to me and I have learnt some really good advice from each and every response. I can’t wait to start using my M6 in anger real soon, in fact im off to San Francisco on Wednesday (for work) so hopefully ill get some time to wonder the streets and get some interesting shots. When I get back next week ill start on a London based project. Furthermore one of the TV stations in the UK (www.Channel4.com) is running a nationwide photography competition so im going use that as inspiration for additional practice and projects. Once again thanks a lot, good luck with your Leica endeavors and I promise not to ask too many questions in the future.

Cheerio!

Jason London, England

-- Jason Vicinanza (jcvicinanza@btinterent.com), January 16, 2001.

Just adding best wishes with the new camera.

And enormous personal pleasure, to be a part of community so gracious, helpful, and generous.

There are not many places on the web, perhaps even on the planet, where friendly, open communication occurs-- and so frequently!

(Good luck with the camera! And remember, the more you shoot, the more you learn!!)

-- Howard Blumenthal (howardb@voicenet.com), January 16, 2001.

Jason:

Good luck with your new camera ! All of the above is very good advice.

Just my observation about your question 3): I use the regular Leica strap, and after a few months of experimentation, settled down to wearing the camera and strap like a bandolier or cartridge belt-over one shoulder/side of neck, diagonally down the chest and around the other waist/side. The camera stays snugly over my lower torso to the side, tilted downward.

This prevents it from banging around when I walk but is instantly lifted to the eye. Also, this way, the strap is snug and provides support to the camera if needed.

In winter, the camera is inconspicuous because it is under my (unzipped) coat/parka front.

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), January 16, 2001.

Some excellent advice here. Just a couple of points which may be helpful.

All Leica rangefinders have a kind of built-in focus guide. If the ghost image appears on the left of what you have focussed on, turn the focussing ring right. If it appears on the right, turn the focussing ring left. Try it and see. After a while, rangefinder focussing is extremely quick.

I agree the 50mm lens, which gives normal perspective, makes for very natural looking pictures, especially of people. An advantage of a wider lens such asthe 35mm however is its greater depth of field. You won't need to focus as much.

Have fun on your t

-- David Killick (Dalex@inet.net.nz), January 17, 2001.