The Leica M Gestalt

In the 90-ties, Leica M cameras came in these spiffy, red velvet-lined presentation boxes. Just had to do a bit of Skript-Fu on that.

A film-loading Leica has it’s own Gestalt.

All Wrong, But Fabulous*

Pensive at the Fast Food Restaurant

These are heady times for photo gear geeks like me. The day before yesterday, Leica announced

Step Right Up

Photographing photographers has become quite an obsession of mine

Yes, of course I take photographs on the street as well with the Leica M9. Here are some examples from yesterday’s visit to the Christmas Fair.

Seeing What You’re Doing, Or Not

Sometimes you've got to frame your art carefully

Here’s another practical experience with the Leica M9 and the Elmar f/3.4 24 mm. I’ve been photographing a friend’s exhibition opening here in Berlin the day before yesterday.

The Leica in the Landscape

Banks of fog under a clear sky

Ok, sort of a reprise on the previous post. In coming to know the Leica M9 better,

Really Right For The Wrong Purpose

Lauchagrund at dusk

Leicas are for street photography, right? Perhaps reportage and situational portraits, too.
But then, the newest incarnation of the Leica M Gestalt is one of the best digital cameras on the market. It’d be a shame to limit it’s potential to hand-held use. And as every photographer worth his salt knows, the simplest way to make your photos sharper is to use a tripod.
A Leica on a tripod is an abomination. But not with this:

Black & White Portraiture with the Leica M9 and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

My father at 79

In my opinion, the forté of the Leica M rangefinder camera is the instantaneous portrait, the situational snapshot, the view from the corner of the eye frozen in time.

Old Lenses, Good Enough?

Old scooters are certainly good enough, and stylish, too!

Ok, second post about my experiences with the Leica M9. As seems to be the case with all high-resolution digital cameras (and the Leica M9 can surely be counted among them, if not for it’s 18 MPix then of course for the lack of an anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor), it is very demanding of the lenses you use. For example,

From NAS To DRF

A celebratory drink, unsharpened (left) and sharpened, no shadow noise at 360 ISO

Updates have been few and far apart on this site, but this is going to change. The day before yesterday, I traded in all my Nikon gear for a Leica M9 body.

Vit, mon ami!

Let”s see if I can make myself understood. This is one of these Leica mysthique blogposts that is shure to cause incomprehension in modern photographers in these digital times. And it’s not even about a Leica camera or one of their fabulous lenses.

It's about a manual film transport called Leicavit M.