ADVICE NEEDED: Leica Film or Fuji Digital and Time Senstive

[finnegan]

<p>Couple of Leica Cameras + Lens on Ebay: M6 with Summicron 35mm, not a lot of info by seller except everything fine with lens + camera; he has 58 sales, no percentage yet but they all seem positive. Price 12 hrs out from end of Auction: $1500.<br /> Other great looking M3 with Summicron 50mm, may have dust in lens seller said, but sounded like he didn't know so can't have been noticeable. Day and half out: $680. Seller has over 2000 sales and feedback of 100%.<br /> The other is Fuji x100T, supposedly great digital, $1200 new anyplace.<br /> I never had a Leica and always wanted one, but here's the deal: I don't darkroom with any of my film cameras and I have a number, 35mm and medium format. So, why buy a Leica when I get a digitalization of film not the full film quality?<br /> I have one old digital, so I'm not a digital guy natively. But I do need another, that one is useless, and I thought since I end up with digital images anyway, why not buy one very good digital camera?</p>

<p>Any advice? Because one of those Leica auctions is but 12 hrs away if you have any quick thoughts I'd be grateful. Thanks!</p>

[Jochen_S]

<p>M8 (beater) + inexpensive 35mm = 1200 or a bit less. Outdated, in a worst case (later) just a discount voucher for a contemporary Leica but still,... It gives the feeling, shoots responsively, takes pictures but demands more postprocessing than Fujis. - The X100 series is surely great, beautiful, and more compact, even more low light capable, but I consider the sluggish Fuji AF and due to it less responsive shutter a drawback.<br>

I never liked the Leica built in meters as much as my Gossen, so depending on VF frame preferences I'd suggest M3 or 4-P, But would prefer to buy M3 hands on with other Leicas around, to compare RF patch brightness.</p>

 

[jose_angel]

<p><em>"here's the deal: I don't darkroom with any of my film cameras and I have a number, 35mm and medium format. So, why buy a Leica when I get a digitalization of film not the full film quality?"</em><br>

I don`t see any reason here to buy a Leica or any film camera. Film scanning is a pain. If you have the money, just buy something really useful to you.<br>

Maybe you need to own a Leica to calm anxiety; but it is very likely that after one roll it will became another proud member into the film camera cupboard. Leicas, even being Leicas, at the end are simply film cameras.</p>

<p><em>"I thought since I end up with digital images anyway, why not buy one very good digital camera?"</em><br>

Agree. Absolutely.</p>

<p> </p>

[c_watson1]

<p>Depending on your location, the deal maker/breaker now is the health of the film infrastructure in your area: film, labs, chemistry, paper, repair shops. Without those, you're looking at mail-order film+processing and perhaps a bit more survivalist scrambling than you knew before.<br>

If you're partial to the Leica-like form factor of the Fuji, you'll love the X100T. Fuji b&w files are quite nice.</p>

[paul_wheatland]

<p>I prefer the Leica M-3 or M-2 over any other Leica. They are timeless and can be repaired and don't use batteries. Digital cameras will be around for the future, they are all battery dependent and after a period of time are surpassed by newer models and eventually are economically not worth fixing, labor cost and no parts available. Just my opinion, others may disagree!</p>

[Brad_]

X100T for sure. Why constrain yourself with the above listed adverse issues when your goal is (or at least mine is) to

make photographs?

 

I have two Fujis, an X-A1 and X-T1. If I didn't need interchangeable lenses I would be using an X100T -

35mm is my ideal focal length for street and street portrait shooting.

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>You should consider a Sony A7 full-frame mirrorless camera, which sells new for about $1000 and accepts practically any Leica, Zeiss, Nikon or Canon lens, in addition to a growing list of native Sony and Zeiss lenses. This is the future, surpassing even digital SLRs. There are other mirrorless cameras with similar flexibility, but Sony is the only one with a 36x24 sensor at this time. If you can afford it, a Sony A7ii has all of the above, plus better ergonomics and construction, and in-camera image stabilization which works with any lens, including Leica lenses.</p>

<p>I have three Leicas, an M2 and M3 purchased 50 years ago for work on a daily newspaper, and an M9 purchased last summer when film proved impractical, expensive and of lesser quality than digital. I resurrected the film Leicas after years of lugging around 35 pounds of Nikon gear, looking for something smaller and lighter. While the quality of Leica cameras is unsurpassed, the new wave of mirrorless cameras leaves rangefinder technology wanting, particularly for lenses shorter than 28mm and longer than 50mm. With a Sony A7 (A7ii), I can count on sharp, in-focus shots with a 90 or 135 lens, used wide open - something hit and miss with a rangefinder.</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>I wouldn't buy a 35mm film Leica just to scan the negs into a digital workflow. If you want to shoot film, put together a darkroom! My grandfather had a Leica IIIf and a Kodak Precision enlarger with Condenser Head A and Wollensak 100mm lens, which I inherited and still have. I don't have my grandfather's IIIf, but I have my mom's. The Leica and the Kodak enlarger are a wonderful pair, and the enlarger will also handle 620 and 120 negs with no problem. You can pick up one of these enlargers for a song (maybe $100) on ebay.</p>

<p>If you want to work with small-format digital, buy a digital camera. If you are wanting a Leica rig for the Leica lenses (which are certainly excellent, although there is nothing magical about them), then consider adapting a Leica lens to a full frame Canon dSLR body. Canon is generally the manufacturer of choice for adapting miscellaneous manual focus lenses and shooting them with stop-down metering. For the money you are talking about spending, you could afford a very nice camera/lens pair. Edward's Sony recommendation also sounds quite good.</p>

[andylynn]

Can you adapt Leica rangefinder lenses to a Canon SLR? I've seen a lot of examples of rangefinder lenses on Sony A7

series mirrorless but never on any SLR. I would think flange distance would be prohibitive.

[GerrySiegel]

I admire Leica and understand the yen to own one. If you are going to wind up converting to digital, it seems a wasted step. Buy a camera that is up to date and don't sweat this nonsense about all mechanical blah blah and no batteries and timelessness.... You are rationalizing your emotional impulse. (Knock it off.) Get something that feels good, does a lot more, and has the heft and solid build of any of those German wunderkinds of rangerfinder film lore.

I happen to like the Olympus Em-1 with its battery grip. I suppose I could enjoy the Sony too...And use any lens I can find if I want manual focus. Panasonic has allied with Leica on top tier lenses and there is where the bucks go anyway. There is your answer,, get a Panaleica Variolux or Summilux etc or Panaleica lens and plop it on an EM-1. Or A7.. Or Fuji X something. See, problem solved. You are out of the hole. Want to have that feel like an Eisenstadt with his trusty Leica, So get fitted for a beret...cheaper, feels professional.

Good luck and I do wish you well despite the lighthearted comments. I understand these urges. I sleep on them and they fade.

[Lou_Meluso]

<p>Go for the Fuji or one of the Sony's.<br>

I was using DSLR's and using a hybrid scanning workflow with my film rangefinders. When I picked up the Sony NEX 6, it knocked my socks out of their sockets for image quality, compactness and speed of process. I have since left all my film cameras and DSLR's behind and now have a Sony A7 and RX100II to go with the NEX 6. I understand and appreciate a fine mechanical camera, but for picture making, you will find it hard to beat the latest crop of compact digital cameras.</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>I would go with the M3. I have one myself and it's a camera that last a lifetime. By contrast, virtually any digital camera by definition will be obsolete within a year or two. More importantly, at some point the file formats, raw processing, etc., of any given digital camera will no longer be supported. An M3 from 1950 something you can still put film in and make pictures with today almost 60 years after it was made. I can guarantee you won't be able to use the Fuji -- or most other digital cameras from today -- 60 years from now. Also, when it comes to buying used, with a mechanical camera like a Leica, as soon as you get it you can put it through its paces and it either works or it does. With anything electronic, there are many more things to go wrong and many more that are hidden and not necessarily apparent. Unless you get a big bargain off the new price, it's not worth buying used.<br /><br />And -- set up a darkroom! It's much, much easier to get good results from film in a wet darkroom than it is on a computer. I learned when I was 12, so anybody can do it.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Gerry, sage comments. Have you a recommendation for a source of quality berets? Too much sun causes overexposure in my case (no built in UV filter).</p>

[GerrySiegel]

Arthur, in the blazing sun I wear'un chapeu "Tilley' brand with vents, and it is un produit de Canada..c'est vrai.... If you want a genuyeen Basque beret, give Montreal a shot eh. For shooting hats, and travel whatever is handy cap...but now that i think of it, a beret would be classier...got to get one I but not so much good for the UV. (My black real Basque one, a gift that, is way too too small. I see ads in back pages of New Yorker magazine regularly.

[hjoseph7]

<p>Since you don't have a decent digital camera, then go for the Fuji X100t which is a great camera. Unless you want to get a digital point and shoot for a few hundred bucks and then get the M6. Both are beautiful cameras but the M6 is one of the most beautiful Leica cameras ever made in my opinion.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>The Fuji X100T is an highly regarded camera. It resembles a classic rangefinder camera in profile, but has both an optical and electronic viewfinder in the eyepiece. It has a fixed 23mm lens and an APS-C sensor, which gives the effect of a 35mm lens.</p>

<p>That's a very useful combination, but for the same price you can buy a Fuji X-TPro body, which accepts interchangeable lenses. Fuji makes extremely good lenses for this camera, but you can also attach most other lenses using a suitable adapter, including Leica, Nikon and Canon. The X-TPro looks like an SLR but is much smaller than a Nikon or Canon. The control layout is arguably the best in the field of competitors, and highly regarded by by users. It has a full-time EVF as well as an articulating viewing screen on the back.</p>

<p>On the whole, EFV seems to be the way to go. The field of view is very accurate, there are focusing aids available (e.g., magnification and peaking), and you can view pertinent camera data at a glance (or turn data off). The advantage of an optical finder is twofold - you can see outside the actual image frame to anticipate action (including toddlers), and it is useful in all light levels. An EVF can be hard to see in bright sunlight (but is appropriately bright indoors or in near darkness.</p>

<p>Unless you process your own film, it will cost nearly $20 a roll for film and processing, even without prints. Lab scans of film are practically useless - cheap postcard quality. Professional scans range upwards of $5/image, and high quality home scanners have gone extinct. Even a good film scan from 35mm film looks pretty grim compared to a modern digital image. In a nutshell, that's why my pretty Leica bodies are on the shelf (but their lenses live on).</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<blockquote>

<p>I never had a Leica and always wanted one</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I scratched that itch with a R6 - the R system is quite a bit cheaper than M, and personally, I'm not convinced I really like a real rangefinder. Manual focussing SLRs I do like. So, got that red dot, great lenses, all for quite a bit less money (still a lot, though, compared to other brands).<br>

As for shooting film to make it digital afterwards - I do that and I fail to see what is so painful about scanning. While you can fiddle to make digital look like film, film just looks like film already. I like that look; and while I can understand the 'full' darkroom experience is probably nicer (and yields nicer prints), there is already some fun to be had just developing and having physical results of your work. Well, I like it anyway. The negatives won't run away, if a darkroom ever becomes possible; with scans I can also go down the road of contact prints, alternative printing methods and straight digital prints. It leaves a lot of choices open.</p>

[DB_Gallery]

<p>Among other film bodies, I have a Leica M3 with a 50 F2 Zeiss Planar and an M6TTL with a 35mm 1.4 Aspheric, I also own and use a full darkroom, film use makes up over 80% of my work.</p>

<p>But, among a couple of other digital cameras I own a Fuji X100T. For quite some time, Fuji has really been doing great with the X100 platform, so much so that I feel they have been eating Leica’s lunch in terms of digital bodies due to how small and utterly silent it is…until the X100T.</p>

<p>After using mine since November of last year, and waiting for a firmware update to fix a particular issue, I am crying uncle and selling it. Here is the deal, like most digital cameras, bringing up and changing many settings usually requires access to the menu or menu like displays. When I go to change menu-centric things on my Nikon D750 or D810, I take my eye away from the viewfinder, hit the menu button and the items pop up on the rear LCD with oft used settings in "My Menu" adding to the speed and intuitive use. I then quickly get back to shooting and keep making images, boom, done, easy.</p>

<p>That was the way the X100 and X100S worked too…but not the X100T. For some unbelievably odd reason, in order to change things like white balance, frame rate and any menu item, you have to either keep your eye glued to the viewfinder ignoring the world around you as you menu dive or put the camera in live view to see it come up on the rear LCD. The latter is not a one button toggle either as you have to go through 4 pushes of the view mode button *every single time* you want to view these items on the rear LCD and return to regular viewfinder driven shooting.</p>

<p>Some seem to be ok with this song and dance but I find it to be incredibly workflow jarring and in the top 5 of all time digital camera flub-ups in my 21 year history of using them….it’s totally baffling to me how this was given the OK in beta testing.</p>

<p>So there you go, be forewarned that as big of a pain as taking that film to get developed and scanned from that incredibly beautiful and simple Leica is, dealing with all the camera specific stupidity of what should otherwise and used to be a very intuitive and easy camera to use in the X100 might very well be worse.</p>

<p>It sure is for me so I am selling mine and not looking back.</p>

[dirk_dom1]

<p>I'd give another vote for the Sony A7.</p>

<p>Dirk. </p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>The A7 has two monitors, the eyepiece and articulating screen, each with essentially the same information (condensed in the eyepiece). By default, both the screen and eyepiece are active. Raising the camera to your eye turns the screen off and the eyepiece on. You can assign either as the only display, using the menu. Most of the things you use most often, such as ISO, Single/Continous/bracketed shooting, and flash sync, are in a one button (Fn) quick menu. You can also assign nearly any function to any of 7 or 8 buttons on the camera. IBIS depends on the focal length, so I programmed one button to set that, using the thumb wheel to scroll values. I set another button (C2) to magnify the screen for focusing with a "dumb" lens like a Summicron.</p>

<p>The Fuji XTPro has a dedicated shutter speed dial, in keeping with tradition. In the Sony, that is a mode dial (SAMP...) and shutter speed is set using the rear thumb dial, with numbers appearing in the finder. Number settings are displayed like an Apple "ribbon".</p>

<p>The biggest objection I've read concerning the Fuji is the automatic EVF image review that pops up in the eyepiece after each shot. This effectively blinds you against a quick followup shot. The Sony "freezes" the frame for a fraction of a second, then returns to live view. That's surprisingly effective for judging an action shot without chimping.</p>

[finnegan]

<p>Thank you all for so much great advice. The M6 went for $2600 and the M3 was too pricey too by the end. So right now I am doing nothing, sometimes the best choice if confused. I've been having my film scanned at a place with an industrial size scanner right where I live and they do a classy job. So, I can continue to do that, but I still tend to think one good digital might be the way. I have plenty of film cameras, and have not been shooting much the last couple of years. Perhaps a Nex-6 or Fuji x-100 (the 100T I think I can wait until prices drop, would strain the budget too much at $1200 or more.<br>

Very good point was made about speed of digital development making a very large expenditure on one now being worth little soon. So I'm aiming more in the $700 category.<br>

Any digital in that range you'd feel highly about?<br>

Thanks again, great responses!</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Gerry, merci, eh? I was serious about the beret. An artist friend convinced me it would add sex appeal to my photos, although probably not to me. Monsieur Tilley makes nice hats (athough they don't make me look any younger) and they are guaranteed for life I believe (I forgot to send in my card). I wonder if light colored berets are in or not? I think I would sweat a bit too much under a light absorbing black one.</p>

<p>Sorry, William for not helping much in the camera choices. I tend to think of film these days mainly for medium format (Some good choices there). You can get a so-called Texas Leica, aka Fujifilm GW 670 or 690 (90 mm lens) or semi wide angle GSW 690 (65mm lens) RF camera for about 700$. Not pocketable, but good bang for the buck for film cameras, with large easily scanned (good flatbed) or printed negative.</p>

<p>But back to the choice of hats, Gerry et al. There is great conceptual opportunity there, given the meek presence only of berets, baseball peaked caps and grandpa Tilleys (yup I have one too) in the masculine stable. The field is wide open. New models must be possible.</p>

<p>The photographers and bird watchers market is wide open. We can even name them f 1 to f 64, depending upon their fabric and UV blocking power.</p>

[finnegan]

<p>What is a reasonable price for an M3 in good shape (as opposed to As New) plus a 50mm Sumicron also in good shape. $1500? Too high. How about $57 for both. Seriously be good to know a reasonable price for the M3 + sumicron.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>The US prices on eBay tend to be a bit lower than Europe (where I am), but a M3 and a Leica lens for $57 each - it's going to be a fraud ;-)<br>

From the times I researched getting an M, the M2 and M3 are reasonably expensive, the M4-P seemed to be available more often for a reasonable price (€750-900). M6 usually about the same level as the M2/M3 (~€1100). 50mm Summicron in a reasonable stare, as much as a M4 more or less. Just in comparison, for a R6 with Summicron-R 50mm, you'd pay around as much as for the M4-P alone.</p>

<p>In the $700 range, for digital - it very much depends on what you want, and which handling you like. As much praise as the A7 series deserves, personally I do not find them handling nicely - and this is a pure personal matter. In that price range, you will find very good mirrorless and DSLR options - trying them a bit for yourself in a shop would be a first good step to cut down the list to a number of cameras you'd actually like using.</p>

[finnegan]

<p>Well I bought the Sony A6000, I guess the son or grandson of the NEX-6, and with it its 16-50mm lens.<br /> Price on Sony's site was $11.45 for both. No, that is an horrendous lie, it was $599 and on back-order, which is nice, I can read the whole manual before getting the camera. But I usually just shoot with auto-focus and manual or Aperture Priority. <br /> I did a lot of photography on a '50 Zeiss Ercona II with nothing, nada, in the line of refinements.<br /> Not even a coupled rangefinder, you looked out a piece of glass and estimated distance or shot depth of field for distance and focus. And of course no light meter. But you learn light that way.<br /> Took really nice photos, forget the lens, a Tessar. It worked so well that I though I'd improve it with some oil. So I liberally splashed some "3 IN 1" in in its innards one day. And wrecked it. (True story)<br /> So all the gadgets these cameras have now I'll read about but likely will just use the basics.<br /> I don't like the 16 to 50mm lens as far as its breadth of focus so if I like the camera I'll get a zoom from 50mm up.<br /> So, $599 is not a killer price, (though with taxes and a 3yr Warranty I got for $55 - Sony must give 1 yr) cost to me was just over $700. But I still can take a look at M3s. <br /> I'll let you know how the a6000 shoots, I like the example photos online I saw. Only reason I didn't get a new Nex-6 on Amazon was confusion about any warranty. It's a discontinued item and I don't think SONY would warranty it. So... I went with a current camera, the a6000, hopefully close to the NEX-6.</p>

<p>Thanks all again!</p>