01.04.10
Lecia M9 Review
I must declare an interest here, having been a Leica user since first covering the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 with a brand new M3 and M2, today both still in good working condition, but battered. As a result, my feelings about the M9 are very personal. Having been a reluctant convert from film to digital (the change forced on me by the market), I have to admit to being an evangelical digital addict.
On first handling the M9, I was reassured that it is still a Leica with all that that implies – light, quiet and built like the proverbial… and, of course, the superb lenses are unbeatable from wide to normal focal length. As a user of two M8.2s, I had looked forward to the full-frame M9 with anticipation. Belonging to the sect that considers it an insult to have to consult an instruction manual, the simple straightforward menu is much appreciated. The only unusual item for me is the auto ISO function. This enables one to set both aperture and shutter speed and let the camera choose the ISO. As a control freak myself, this is probably not for me. On the other hand, the great option is the four-stage shutter release: standard, soft, discreet, and discreet and soft. I couldn’t hear much variation between standard and soft, but discreet mode enables the shutter to be released and held down, the wind-on as it were only happening on taking my finger off the button. Of course, this precludes getting a quick second shot of the action. A complaint here is that shooting best RAW, the camera writes very slowly to the buffer.
Leica was kind enough to lend to me 18mm, 14mm, 35mm and 75mm lenses with the camera. However, my normal lenses on the M8s are 28mm and 50mm equivalents (21mm and 35mm) and my prime interest was to test my 28mm F2. Because a feature of the M9 menu is the ability to enter non-coded lenses that the software will recognise, I duly entered the 28mm F2. I had assumed that a coded lens would override any non-coded lenses. Not so. On downloading my test images, all lenses used from 18mm to 75mm were recorded in the data as 28mm.
On setting out to shoot a few tests on the streets of London with the 28mm mounted, it quickly became apparent that, even as a non-spectacle wearer, I couldn’t see the edges of the frame without eye gymnastics, so back to a 28mm finder in the hot shoe. Second surprise: the camera was recording at least 10% more than could be seen in the viewfinder, although the finder on top is reasonably accurate. However, as a Magnum photographer who grew up in the Henri Cartier-Bresson school of no cropping, to have to crop back to one’s original vision somewhat defeats the purpose of the increased sensor size.
The only obvious physical difference to the M8 is the removal of the frame counter and battery condition display from the top plate to an info button on the back. The reason for this is that with the M9 accepting SDHC cards of 4GB up and shooting jpegs, the existing M8 counter would exceed the 999 limit. Of course, someone coming from a film Leica will miss the lever wind, but this has not concerned me greatly. The accessory levers I’ve seen that plug into the hot shoe and preclude the use of external finder or flash without a handy screwdriver would seem self-defeating.
Setting out to shoot with two 2GB cards and a spare battery, and being a photographer who never consults the rear menu while working, I was surprised when the camera stopped shooting at less than 50 frames in RAW setting (you get 180 on the M8). I had, of course, forgotten the increased file size. The second stoppage occurred after less than three hours with a flat – from fully charged – battery. The first problem is easily solved by a larger capacity card or shooting jpegs, although why anyone would buy a Leica to shoot jpegs, I can’t understand, as it’s hardly a camera for sports photographers. The battery problem is more serious for a photojournalist or someone who has to react quickly. With the M8s, I switch the camera on when leaving the hotel in the morning and, as with an M7, it stays on to the end of the shoot, meaning three batteries a day per camera to be safe. The M9 seems to have the same battery hunger. The reason for keeping it switched on is the relatively slow start-up time, which means by the time the camera is powered up, the moment is lost.
With regard to the viewfinder, I hope Leica introduces, as with the M6 and M7, a .58 and maybe even a .85 version to take advantage of Leica’s real strengths of lenses between 28mm and 50mm where they beat a reflex camera hands down for both speed of use and focusing accuracy. Ultimately, the most impressive thing about the M9 is the quality of the image, aided now by the ability to push the ISO to 800 without appreciable noise intrusion and its 18MB sensor easily equalling or bettering the 24MB of other cameras. Contributing to this, of course, are the lenses. The two I had never previously used – the 18mm and 75mm – are truly impressive. Indeed, I was tempted to quietly pocket the small light 75mm F2 and leave the country! The only downer is the four-corner viewfinder, which can be hard to see in bright light, although using the recently introduced 1.4 screw-in viewfinder adapter helps and even makes the 90mm lens more usable.
The 24mm lens is not one I would use and didn’t try, though the 21mm 1.4 brought a definite glint to my eye to give me a fast 28mm on the M8. The 35mm Summicron is, of course, a classic and needs no plaudits from me. One short-term problem I had was that, on opening images in Photoshop (I didn’t have the Lightroom version 2 normally supplied with the camera), the highlights displayed horrendous digital speckling. On consulting Leica, it seems the camera doesn’t like my G5 PC processor Mac. The solution is either to uninstall Camera Raw 5.5 and reinstall version 5.4 or wait for version 5.6, which will have a cure for the speckling. With the M9, Leica has truly moved into the digital age, giving quality that film never could and, for those die-hard M3 and M6 users, you can always use software to give you that Tri X or Velvia look. The M9 will always appeal to those amateurs who want a lightweight camera that offers the best quality. However, I would suggest photojournalists or documentary photographers brought up on digital SLRs try an M9 and discover the pleasure of shooting those fast discreet, unobserved moments that made Cartier-Bresson famous.
Leica M9 spec
- Megapixels 18
- Sensor typeCCD chip
- Viewfinder principle
- Large with auto parallax compensation
- Colour spaces
- Adobe, RGB, sRGB
- Lens mount
- Leica M lenses from 16 to 135mm
- Metering system
- TTL
- FRAMES PER SECOND two
- iso min
- Min 80, max 2,500
- Screen size 2.5in
- Card format SD/SDHC
- Battery model
- Lithium ion
- Weight (g) 585g with battery
- Size 139 x 37 x 80mm
- Resolution5, 212 x 3,472
- Aspect ratio 4:3
- Sensor size
- Full frame 24 x 36mm
- Exposure modes
- Aperture priority A, manual
- Screen resolution
- 230,000 pixels
- File formatsRAW, jpeg
- Flash type
- Hot shoe with centre and control contacts connection
- Flash sync speed 1/180 sec
Ian Berry
Ian Berry was born in Lancashire, England, and made his reputation in South Africa, where he worked for the Daily Mail and later for Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960, and his photographs were used in the trial to prove the victims’ innocence. Henri Cartier-Bresson invited Berry to join Magnum in 1962, when he was based in Paris. He moved to London in 1964 to become the first contract photographer for the Observer Magazine. Since then, assignments have taken him around the world: he has documented Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflicts in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and Congo; famine in Ethiopia; and apartheid in South Africa. The major body of work produced in South Africa is represented in two of his books: Black and Whites: L’Afrique du Sud (with a foreword by the then French president François Mitterrand), and Living Apart (1996). Important editorial assignments have included work for National Geographic, Fortune, Stern, Geo, national Sunday magazines, Esquire, Paris-Match and Life. Berry has also reported on the political and social transformations in China and the former USSR. Recent projects have involved tracing the route of the Silk Road through Turkey, Iran and southern Central Asia to northern China for Conde Nast Traveler, photographing Berlin for a Stern supplement, the Three Gorges Dam project in China for the Telegraph Magazine, Greenland for a book on climate control, and child slavery in Africa.
History of Leica
1849 Carl Kellner founds the Wetzlar Optical Institute.
1865 Ernst Leitz joins the company as a partner.
1914 Leica engineer Oskar Barnack constructs the first Leica.
1924 The 35mm camera begins production. Leica is registered.
1925 The Leica I with a non-interchangeable lens is exhibited.
1930 The first Leica with interchangeable lenses appears.
1934 The 250 camera takes 10m of film for 250 exposures.
1954 The M3 ushers in a new era of SLR photography.
1965 The Leicaflex is the first Leica SLR to go into production
1966 The Noctilux — M 50mm f/1.2 lens is revealed.
1967 The M4 packs simplified film loading and new rewind knob.
1971 The M5 offers selective through-the-lens metering.
1975 The extremely fast Noctilux 1/50mm f/1.0 lens arrives.
1984 The M6 offers selective metering and viewfinder LED display.
1998 Announcement of the M6 TTL with TTL flash metering.
2002 The M7 debuts.
2006 The first digital rangefinder camera arrives: the M8.
2008 The Leica M8.2 is launched.
2008 The Noctilux — M 50mm f/0.95 ASPH superfast lens arrives.
2009 The M9 is launched.
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