ben z

Robin you brought up a great point that I meant to ask about. What explanation is there for why new R lenses when are more expensive than the same speed/focal length M lenses but used the R lenses are (roughly, according to my quick calcs over at KEH website)around 40% less. If the bulk of Leica SLR buyers are, as you guys assert, very satisfied with them then why is there such an oversupply of them in the used departments that causes such disproportional depreciation compared to the M lenses. And I'm not talking about really old R and M lenses, such that the M lenses are of interest to collectors. Why do all the Leica dealers I speak with tell me M lenses sell much faster and R lenses sit on their shelves for a long time despite they are cheaper? Like the robot in Lost In Space my head keeps saying "Does Not Compute"?

Doug its apparent from your vicious rant against this Jay guy in your private e-mails to me that you have a real grudge against him for whatever reason. In his private e-mails to me he has been helpful and polite and in fact praised you highly as a photographer which as a disinterested party who has no history with either of you, you'll have to excuse me but between the two of your e-mails he appears to be the classy one. Anyway the original point was not to dispute whether Leica SLR lenses are better or worse than Nikon or Canon or whatever. The point was that a lot of people that I have spoken to (none of whom know this Jay personally, they're just locals who have owned Leica SLRs)have had much more trouble with the bodies than could be considered normal or coincidental, and that the lenses are not <that much> better so as to make it worthwhile. One of those individuals, a cardiologist, put it like this: "Cream tastes better in my coffee than skim milk but not so much better as to be worth clogging my arteries and having a heart attack".

 

I've made my decision, based on economic realities and personal bias, to forego the Leica SLR experience. Maybe I'm missing something great, maybe not. But I can't imagine that guys like Art Morris, Art Wolfe, Carl Sams III, Frans Lanting, Darrel Gulin, Tim Fitzharris, Len Rue and all the rest of the NANPA roster of famous nature photographers are all color blind either. For 99% of my photography which occurs at 135mm or less I've got Leica glass already, and they're on cameras with no mirror slop to blur my photos. If I ever get a modern SLR it will probably be a digital and it'll definitely have to be a $1500 Canon 10D or something, and not a $5500 digital back plus a $2000 R9. And if I get an older SLR, which is doubtful since my Spotmatics show no signs of quitting, it'll be the one I saw in pictures as a kid, hung around the necks of the journalists in Vietnam right along side their Leica M3 and M2: it was a Nikon F not a Leicaflex. This is the nice thing about being a hobby photographer. I can choose whatever I want and nobody gets hurt!

What I'd like to know is do google eyes which have lenses in front of both front windows do something different, in terms of rangefinder accuracy, than when the magnifier is just attached to the viewer like the 1.25. I should drop Erwin Puts a line if anybody knows he will.

Al do you think the vignetting would be masked by say a 1.5-1.6 crop factor? You probably can guess where I'm going here: it would be the only choice as of this moment for an 18-19mm on the digital Bessa (or whatever it will be called). The 15mm would I guess be 22-23mm. These are slow lenses yes but I'm imagining the price of 12mm and 15mm f/2 lenses and figuring they won't be in the cards for me.

Doug wrote: "If lower-priced equipment suits you fine then Leica-R would be a waste of your money." and "Your off-list correspondant thinks his Canon L equipment is sharper; you are welcome to browse my website to see what can be done with the old Telyt."

 

 

First if someone doesn't use Leica R they must be colorblind, now if they don't use Leica R they must be cheapskates with low standards. The images on your website are very nice including the shots you have labeled were done with Nikon which look no different from the Leica ones on a website so what does this prove? And the Nikon lenses you shot with are from more than twenty years ago so the comparison doesn't hold against the current crop of Nikon and Canon anyway. You are welcome to peruse www.birdsasart.com and see what can be done with Canon L glass. And Art Morris who is famous and one might expect to have an enlarged ego, never once has made the kind of condescending arrogant put-downs that you have. Someone like Mike Levitt OTOH makes a believable case for the Leica SLR since he uses it side by side with Canon L and has used modern Nikon as well, makes concise, reasoned points without resorting to making insulting implications. And it's not like I'm a Leica SLR hater or anything, I've never owned one and was just asking for sound advice. Thanks Mike.

Thanks guys for the clarification on the M2S/M2R thing. I always wanted an M2 myself but Sherry scared me away from it. Now that I have the MP its a little like having an M2R with a frame counter and a TTL meter. Until I win the lotto my Leica collection is forcibly complete.

Wow, what a great forum! I've never run across this many guys currently using Leica SLRs before in my life! Now I have a real conundrum on my hands to sort out. I have spoken to twelve guys who are former Leica SLR-ists who had extremely negative things to say about the bodies and none of whom thought the optics were remarkable by comparison to other brands. I don't know about the R lenses because I've never used them but since a few of the shorter lenses are pretty close to the M counterparts, I must say that whatever differences there are between my M lenses (admittedly not the latest and greatest versions)and my Pentax screw lenses (admittedly better coating and maybe even better sharpness than Nikon lenses from the same era)are beyond what my eyes can detect off commercially made prints. I haven't shot slides in years and I don't have time to do my own printing so as to color rendition I'm kind of at the mercy of whoever makes the prints. For lenses 135mm and under I can do the same shots with my M stuff as I can with an SLR, which is why I haven't used my Pentaxes in a while. For lenses over 135mm I couldn't afford the good ones from Leica or any other brand for that matter. When I want to shoot bird photos in the winter here I borrow or rent something and everyone has either Nikon or Canon. Maybe I shouldn't admit this publicly but for me the major draw to Leica is the history and the camaraderie with other users. If I ever get another film-using 35mm SLR I want a Nikon F, for its historical significance. Otherwise nobody including me can tell what camera I shot with unless I use a rollfilm camera and then there's a huge jump that everyone sees right away. I rented a Hasselblad a while ago and they practically had to pry it out of my hands when I saw the prints.

BUt hey, if I win the lotto maybe I'll get an R9 and a 180 Apo Summicron!

From Leica Camera and Lens Pocket Book 6th Edition Revised and Updated by Dennis Laney, M2, p.37,last paragraph, next-to-last sentence:

 

"1966 US Army issue designated M2S have M4 three prong rapid load system, later sold by E.Leitz Rockleigh USA designated M2R, from 1969-1970 numbers 1248201-1250200."

 

Hash it out with Laney, please don't shoot the messenger.

There was a model of the M2 that did have the M4 spool, it was called the M2S as part of a US military contract and when it was cancelled the remaining units were sold through Leitz NY as M2-R. The things you pick up being an LHSA member!

Without disputing the psychological effect of styling which just looking at the auto industry is indisputable, Roger then would you be saying that the Nikon F with the huge meter prisms sitting on top outsold the other contemporary brands because the Nikons were more beautiful and not because the system was more utilitarian?

My memory is a little foggy from those days but I don't recall too many people buying or not buying Leicas on the basis of ugly vs beautiful. That kind of came in later when the collecting started. I do remember that most people didn't like the M5 because it was as heavy and big as their SLR. I never thought about the strap thing Al but that might have been an issue too.

I took off the rewinder crank from my MP because I could see it bearing sideways on the knob tube when I was cranking and because if I didn't keep pressure upward on the tip it would be easy for it to get pushed down while cranking and scrape the top of the camera. Too bad I didn't know this before I bought it, and now it left a nice little brass-color indentation in the knob where the screw dug into it. It was my first and last Leica add-on.

Doug Herr wrote: "BTW the incidence of at least partial color blindness is about 1 in 12 among males, so that might explain why some people can't see a difference."

 

I don't want to seem confrontational as maybe I am simply misunderstanding but are you asserting that anyone who don't agree with you that Leica SLR lenses are better than their chosen brand must be colorblind?

Andrew I was very recently about to take the plunge into Leica SLRs but an e-mail from a former forum participant gave me about a dozen names and phone numbers of people right in my own backyard who had done likewise. I contacted all of them and they were very candid about all the problems they had with the bodies and also that the results from the lenses were not as good as they hoped or had been led to believe. One guy did say that the 100mm macro apo was really great but the rest were no better than his Nikons. None of these guys had the modular telephotos or the 180mm Summicron apo or the really exotic stuff, just 35, 50, 90 like that. Many of them said I should get the Nikon F3. I know from LHSA meetings that very few people are heavy into the modern Leica SLRs but some people like the Leicaflex models. Then again to be fair the LHSA is about history and there's more of that with the rangefinders. The guy who owns the corner camera store in my town used to work for Leica, and he has little to nothing positive to say about the R3 and onward. He sold some R8 bodies and told me everybody brought them back with problems. Again this is just a small sampling, I know guys like Sal DiMarco use them and swear by them. For me though on a limited budget I guess I didn't need much arm-twisting to stay away. I admit to being as much a collector as a shooter and also being a bit anal about mechanical problems irritating me. To me when I (and probably most people) think "Leica" they think of rangefinders. The Nikon F is probably the quintessential 35mm SLR of the "golden age" of 35mm photography 1960s-70s. Canons EOS is probably going to be the one of the 1990s and 2000s but who knows? Personally I've only held and played with the Leica SLRs for short time periods in a store. I've never known anybody personally in my lifetime who owned them.

Ok Trevor promise not to shoot the messenger but: Sherry also said that all the rangefinders on the M3 and M2 are ready to come unglued and would cost around $600 to get a new one put in and it would be from an M4-2. There's still the M4 and M5 which Sherry said are the best, and that the M4-P was ok because they finally got straight all that was wrong with the M4-2, and that not the earliest M6 which had bad meters but somewhere in the 1,78million to 1,98million serial numbers were pretty good before they started to cheapen them. Remember I'm not vouching for this just passing on what I was told by someone respected. You might check with a couple other respected Leica repairmen and see if they agree but why wouldn't they?

Going up north next weekend for a wedding and will be taking a borrowed 50 Elmar screw mount (one from '49 or '50)and a III-f so it'll fit in my tux pocket without making too bad a bulge. Glad to see the little lens has some big performance! If I like it I might even buy it the guy wants to sell it to me.

I never had an F3 but when I spoke to all those people who had got rid of their Leica SLR stuff because it broke so often a big majority of them told me I should get an F3. Seems like I missed one of the great ones. I might have to look into it.

This is really interesting because I had a conversation with Sherry Krauter (well, not exactly a conversation, she talked and I listened)where she said with no vagueness at all that M6 are crap (ok she used a stronger word that means the same thing)and went into some detail about how from the beginning of the M6 Leica kept on cheapening them until by the time the TTL came along the Classic was really terrible, and then the TTL is even worse, the worst Leica since the early M4-2. I admit I know a lot of people who have an M6 and I was really surprised to hear this but we're talking someone who was trained at Leica and fixes them every day. I personally never owned an M6 though I did borrow a TTL for a week and used it at the last LHSA spring shoot but decided to stick with my M4 and an M4-P that Sherry overhauled. Not because I didn't like the M6TTL but my M4 doesn't flare at all and the M4-P only flares a little and the TTL flared more (but that was before you could get them redone by Leica). I didn't ask Sherry about the MP. I think I was afraid to hear! Well so far I think its a great camera and its got warranty so I'm not too worried. I do like the middle meter dot on the MP and TTL better than just the two triangles on the M6 but probably just because I never got used to the other.

I don't know if everyone's aware of it but there are lots of guys just in my own area who buy every new thing Leica makes and don't care the least what it costs...I'm talking guys who currently have a Hermes and a Hammertone and mint un-used black M2 and M3 from the fifties, stuff that you'd see at a Christie's or Sotheby's auction going for five figures a pop. I've talked to a couple and they wouldn't bat an eyelash to pay $5000 or $6000 for a digital M. Me I'm happy for the Leica digital M and also the Cosina digital M because it means continued interest in Leica. I don't forsee me buying one but who knows? Right now I don't see the point for me, and besides my new MP just about cleaned out my camera money! All my friends and family have bought digital cameras and don't use film any more and think I'm some kind of a nutcase for still using film let alone Leicas, but I've always been a little wierd in my taste so they're used to it! And what other camera can you use where you can get together once or twice a year with a bunch of great guys all because we all use the same kind of camera?

I promised to scan some of my photos to the forum now that I have my scanner running but most of my shots are of family and friends and all of them have asked me not to put them on the internet especially shots of their children. I suppose since I'm not getting anything financial out of it I don't technically need a model release to avoid getting sued but I don't want to lose good friends so I have to respect their wishes. So I'm looking through stuff to find shots I like that don't have people I know in them.

Max it was a concidence you bring this up. I had been right on the verge of buying a Leica reflex one reason because I was thinking it would give me the best optics in 35mm. But after speaking with almost a dozen other guys only in my local area who had mostly negative things to say about them (including the only Leica dealer in town)I decided not to. One of the guys I spoke to said that for lenses 135mm and less I've already got the best Leica glass--the M--so unless I was thinking about really long telephotos (and my "mentor" Art Morris already has me convinced if I ever decide to take up serious nature photography to buy a Canon stabilizer) I should think about getting a Hasselblad for the same money. This guy has had a lot of gallery exhibits and won a bunch of juried shows so I'm thinking hard about what he said.

When I checked for Herbert I compared all the framesets (by looking at a place where I could set the left edge on something and note where the right edge fell) on my M4 to M4-P to my MP. The 28 lines are the same M4-P and MP. The 35 lines are the same M4, M4-P and a little smaller on MP of course the farther away the subject the more territory in that small additional area. The 50 lines (and 75 lines in M4-P)are much smaller in the MP. The 90 and 135 lines are identical in all three bodies.

 

I need to remember the lines include less of the shot the farther away I focus. Just like I need to remember what part of the shot the MP meter is reading, and how little depth of field there will be with the particular lens and f-stop I'm using, and what shutter speed is set while I'm looking thru the finder, and even to take off the lenscap on my M4 and M4-P, all things I don't need to remember if I'm using my reflex camera. I wouldn't say the lines are useless after 10 feet, just that the Leica is definitely what I once heard someone refer to as a thinking-mans camera.

I bought a couple small items a couple months ago from B&H for one day they lowered all Leica prices even the MP on their website by 10% and Henry Posner put a notice on the LUG a couple weeks before which is how I found out about it from a friend. I don't know if it was an official Leica Day or B&H subsidized it themselves though. It is true that many dealers will give a better price than the one advertised. Mostly the bigger volume dealers an mail order. The corner camera store in my town won't discount any new Leica stuff in fact they don't normally even stock any just take special orders from customers.

The Sekonic 308B has a mode where it reads in EV values also.

I was at the Spring Shoot in Annapolis last year it was a great time but a lot more expensive that I thought it would be: I got hooked on buying an MP after handling the ones Nils Thorsen brought to show everybody! Anyway it'd be a full hard day of flying to get there and another one to get back so as much as I'd like to show Victoria to my wife as she's never been there, regrettably we won't make it. We are planning to attend Williamsburg in the fall though.