At the beginning of 2012, after using film and digital Leica Ms for years (M2, M3, M6, MP, M8, M9), I had enough of the temperamental Leica M9, its reliability issues, its quirkiness with colours, colour casts, colour corrections, 6-bits and so on; since this happened right after I closed my darkroom and stopped developing and scanning my black & white films, it meant no more rangefinder for me. I sold all my M bodies and lenses except for my Noctilux, the only lens I'd never let go, and moved on. Or so I thought. After about a year and a half, I capitulated: it appears that my love affair with the rangefinder style of shooting wasn't over just yet.
Of course, as a good rangefinder aficionado, beside my Ms (and after letting them go) I had a Fujifilm X100, a Fujifilm X-Pro 1 and even tried to make do with a Sony NEX-7; but they all got sold in the end. They weren't bad, in fact in many ways they were technically better than any digital Leica M to date: they just weren't the real thing, for a reason or another.
So what did the trick for me and made me come back to a rangefinder camera? Not the new Leica M (Typ 240), which for various reasons didn't convince me just yet (too long to talk about it here). What I couldn't resist was the Leica M Monochrom. Anachronistic, expensive, dated, stupidly crippled with its B&W only sensor, as people say? Perhaps, but not for me; I guess in the end it all depends on what you shoot. I used to shoot B&W film only in my film Ms, mostly Tri-X and Neopan 1600; I used to convert most of my digital M files to B&W; I never did colour-critical work with a Leica M, I always found it too much of a pain (wrong tool for the job, IMHO); I loved to use a M in the streets and for reportage-like work, 90-95% of which I do in B&W. Plus, with the M Monochrom you can use wide-angle lenses to your heart's content without having to deal with strange colour casts, sometimes impossible to correct; you can safely count on high ISO for low-light, nighttime work; finally, you can use non-coded lenses without too much worries. So, when I decided to get back into rangefinder shooting, the choice was easy: for me, the M Monochrom it was (for brevity sake, I'll call it the MM from now on).
Before going on, a small disclaimer: I know I am late to the party and I know there are already many MM reviews out there: consider this just a token of my love for Black & White photography, for street photography, for rangefinder cameras. Finally, consider it an homage to Leica and its role in the history of our art and trade.
After briefly sharing where I come from and what my motivations have been to get the MM, let's see now what my impressions of it are after working with it for a few months. Is it rangefinder love all over again?
After briefly sharing where I come from and what my motivations have been to get the MM, let's see now what my impressions of it are after working with it for a few months. Is it rangefinder love all over again?
In a word, yes.
Being able to shoot in Black & White only forces you to "see" the world in a very different way. Take the colours out of the picture (pun intended, of course) and you are left with the graphics of spaces, shapes, lines, volumes, shades of grey; in short, you can only use the interaction of light and shadow to create your images. Pure graphic composition replaces graphics + colour composition. To do so, you need to be able to foresee how different colours will translate into greyscale and how they will interact with each other as greys (quite different colours may end up being nearly the same shade of grey), and what will happen then to contrast between them, to light & shadow and to their spatial relationships in your images. It is not easy at first, but it is very rewarding once you manage it. Most importantly, learning to see in Black & White will teach you a lot about composition that you can put to a good use with your colour photography as well.
Handling & menus. Of course, the MM doesn't handle exactly like a film M; is not as nimble, as silent or as light, but if you are used to the M8 or M9, you'll feel right at home with it. Built on the M9's body, the camera looks and feels like any previous digital M, only better; I love the stealth black-paint body without logos, red dots or any visible Leica writings. Being a B&W only camera, its menus are even simpler than the already spartan M menus, so setting the MM up is a quick and easy job. If I had to point out a feature I love, I'd mention its Auto ISO implementation, which works very well indeed; one feature I miss, the ability to rename files & folders in camera. To improve handling, as I did on all my digital Ms to date, I added a Thumbs Up thumb rest: old film M shooters will be very familiar with the "holding the camera by the film lever" technique, which is pretty much the only way to securely hold any of the soap-bar shaped Ms. In the digital world, the Thumbs Up is the equivalent of the old film lever: IMHO it's simply a necessity, and coupled with a wrist-strap is the best way to carry around your M. By the way, the need for a thumb aid is something that even Leica itself finally noticed and sort of added in their new Leica M (Typ 240).
Battery & memory card. Battery life is OK with the MM; I got about 300-350 shots out of the first battery charges, which - while not amazing by any means - is not bad considering that the batteries are still new and that I had to use more LCD screen time to set the camera up than I would normally use. Since I alternate two batteries, I haven't got enough mileage on them to have a definitive word on battery life yet; I assume it's at least on par with the M9 if not better. After 3 iterations of digital Ms, lots of people still complain about Leica's decision of keeping the film-era removable bottom as the M's way to change battery and card; to me, this is really a non-issue. Today's SD cards are big enough to allow you to shoot forever before having to replace them, and battery life is enough to keep most people going for a full day shooting - if not, you'll probably be able to find a minute to change your battery even with Leica's not-so-practical solution, won't you? The only real issue is if you plan to use your camera on a tripod; however, once replacing the original bottom cover with a Really Right Stuff one with built-in Arca-Swiss style tripod mount this ceased to be a problem for me as well, keeping my original bottom cover perfect in the process (good for resale).
Rangefinder & LCD screen. The MM's rangefinder is the same as the M9's; some likes its frame line distance, some doesn't. Personally I liked the M8.2's frame lines the best; however, since by its very nature no RF is perfect at all distances, in the end is just a matter of getting used to it and know how much more or less of what you see in the approximate frame lines you will actually get in your final image at a given distance. Since the last M camera I used was the M9, framing shots with the MM feels pretty natural to me. The LCD screen is the same you'd find on a M9, and it looks like something from last century, a relic from the very beginning of the digital era. However, while this used to bother me to no end on the M9, it actually feels OK with the MM; in fact, while making a camera without an LCD screen would have been going a bit too far in terms of usability, I'd have been just fine with an even smaller LCD. Imagine to be able to live with no preview and no image review: having a screen big enough to show you a menu with as few items as possible and an accurate histogram - accurate, as in based on RAW data, not on the preview's JPG - would have made the MM as close as possible to the classic M way of shooting, while keeping it usable in the digital world.
Lenses. This time over, helped by not having to deal with colour casts, 6-bit codings, IR problems and whatnot, I decided to give Voigtlander lenses a try. To keep my Noctilux company, I got the Voigtlander Ultron 21mm f/1.8, Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f/1.2 II Asph and the Voigtlander Heliar 75mm f/1.8, all in M-mount; I am looking forward to trying the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5 Asph as well, once it is available to me. My thoughts? In short: these are simply great lenses, all three of them. I am not going into the usual "you get xx % of Leica's quality at xx % the cost" or whatever; the Voigtlander lenses I tried are great lenses on their own right. They are superbly built, exuding solid metal quality; they are very precise and pleasant to use; they are amazingly fast, especially the wide-angles; and what's most important they draw beautifully. All this, at a most reasonable price. Definitely highly recommended.
Sensor and image quality. With the MM, you get the same M9 sensor with its 18 Mp and no AA filter, minus the Bayer filter (no need for it - it's a B&W only camera!). In short, there is nothing to rob the sensor from showing its full capabilities. Ultra-high resolution; insanely high ISO, and insanely clean as well (for a Leica M); no colour-related problems using wide angles; no colour casts. Images are amazingly detailed for a 18 Mp camera, easily better than the Nikon D3X's B&W files and rivalling the Nikon D800E's as far as sheer resolution and micro-contrast go (the brute force of the Nikon D800E's 36 Mp still wins, though). Besides that, what is really appealing to me about the MM's images is the smoothness of its tones, the plasticity and the flexibility of its files. It's like having film stock ranging from the super-smooth and super-sharp high-res 25 ISO films to high-contrast, grainy Tri-X to gritty and dark Neopan 1600 all in one camera and - what's even better - all in one file. Simply wonderful.
In the end, I can only say that the Leica M Monochrom is one of the most satisfying cameras I have used in a long time. Whether you are a M film shooter who had enough of dealing with B&W film, or you wanted to get as close as possible to the romantic ways of shooting of yore, or you just love B&W and don't need or care about colours, then this is the camera to get. No video, no autofocus, no colours, no programs, no stupid scene modes, no bells and whistles. All manual. Simply B&W, simply photography. Just perfect.
Some more Leica M Monochrom photographs for you:
OK, this is about it for now. Thank you for reading so far and see you soon!
All images in this article have been shot with the Leica M Monochrom equipped with the Voigtlander Ultron 21mm f/1.8, Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f/1.2 II Asph and the Voigtlander Heliar 75mm f/1.8; the photographs above have been taken in Milan, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey.
Sensor and image quality. With the MM, you get the same M9 sensor with its 18 Mp and no AA filter, minus the Bayer filter (no need for it - it's a B&W only camera!). In short, there is nothing to rob the sensor from showing its full capabilities. Ultra-high resolution; insanely high ISO, and insanely clean as well (for a Leica M); no colour-related problems using wide angles; no colour casts. Images are amazingly detailed for a 18 Mp camera, easily better than the Nikon D3X's B&W files and rivalling the Nikon D800E's as far as sheer resolution and micro-contrast go (the brute force of the Nikon D800E's 36 Mp still wins, though). Besides that, what is really appealing to me about the MM's images is the smoothness of its tones, the plasticity and the flexibility of its files. It's like having film stock ranging from the super-smooth and super-sharp high-res 25 ISO films to high-contrast, grainy Tri-X to gritty and dark Neopan 1600 all in one camera and - what's even better - all in one file. Simply wonderful.
In the end, I can only say that the Leica M Monochrom is one of the most satisfying cameras I have used in a long time. Whether you are a M film shooter who had enough of dealing with B&W film, or you wanted to get as close as possible to the romantic ways of shooting of yore, or you just love B&W and don't need or care about colours, then this is the camera to get. No video, no autofocus, no colours, no programs, no stupid scene modes, no bells and whistles. All manual. Simply B&W, simply photography. Just perfect.
Some more Leica M Monochrom photographs for you:
OK, this is about it for now. Thank you for reading so far and see you soon!
All images in this article have been shot with the Leica M Monochrom equipped with the Voigtlander Ultron 21mm f/1.8, Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f/1.2 II Asph and the Voigtlander Heliar 75mm f/1.8; the photographs above have been taken in Milan, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey.
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