Leica M Edition 60 - Your opinion

[Dez]

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The M Edition 60 is a silly product as an actual camera, but as a toy for wealthy hipsters, I suspect it will do very well.

 

Dez

[Jalmerot]

I do like the design, excellent. However, I'd never buy a digital camera without display..

Wish they released a 'better' camera instead. With cool design from Audi! This one is just less advanced.

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[steamboat]

Interesting concept but not for me.

Oh.

How do you reformat the sd card? Or set time and date?

[Bill W]

Others might like it but it is not for me. I think the M240 is a basic design digital camera as it is when compared to a lot of others.

[Roberto Watson]

Leica M60, is pointing digital M photography back to "less is more" philosophy.

I love the idea, I´m waiting for a M-E version of it.

[carstenw]

Interesting concept but not for me.

Oh.

How do you reformat the sd card? Or set time and date?

 

Great points.

 

Although I love the concept and would love to own one (MP look-alike for me please), I would not buy it for one reason: the rangefinder. I love rangefinders in general, but when you cannot check your focus, and you cannot know if the rangefinder is badly adjusted, then you may go on a trip or excursion and come back with only out-of-focus shots. I would buy a camera like this if it had an EVF with the ability to zoom in to focus.

[carstenw]

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Leica as a company is quickly moving from a venerable, pioneering and respected maker of precision hand-wrought cameras and lenses to a company pandering to rich, affected, persons who wish to possess an objet rather than a fine tool.

 

Your legendary lenses are sought after and will always be so, but now that Sony is making full-frame mirrorless cameras with focus-peaking, your lenses will be used on these fine cameras with M-Mount adapters, which allow one to do so much more with your lenses than with a Leica camera.

 

Clearly you have not tried to actually do this with any degree of seriousness

 

The Sony A7 family is great, and I own an A7. However, the vast majority of the M lenses made work very poorly with the thick sensor glass. You would more or less be limited to using the WATE and lenses of 75mm or longer, as well as an occasional other lens. I do use a Voigtländer 12mm f/5.6 Ultra Wide Heliar with mine, but it requires colour and vignetting correction.

 

This means that many of the most interesting lenses are garbage on the A7 cameras.

[efvincent]

Obviously Leica is not a brand that can be measured by the same metrics as Canon and Nikon. An EOS 7D Mark II with no screen would truly be absurd.

 

But the M system is as much (more even?) about experience and joy to use than practicality or sensibility. The same way certain cars are not practical, certain restaurants are not practical, computers, homes, jewels, airlines, hotel rooms, and on and on. There's always the market for the impractical, yet beautiful, inspiring, and joyous.

 

That is the M60 in my opinion. An example of high industrial design that, for some, would bring great joy to use. It holds in the tradition of design that inspired many, including Steve Jobs, the king of industrial design.

 

It's not for me, but should I find myself suddenly Oprah rich, it would be on my shopping list for sure.

[mckay3d]

As I own over 20 Leica lenses, I would like to the the digital M without the display at a reasonable price. I would enjoy using it just as I use my film Leicas.

Maurice

[hlritter]

"It's the digital M3."

 

Well—the M3 had no display because it couldn't! It didn't NEED an excuse for having none, because there was no alternative. With a digital camera, there's no downside to having a display except for the impact on battery charge and a trivial impact on initial expense, and a display has many upsides. Therefore a digital camera with no LED display NEEDS an excuse not to have one, because what's not to like (embrace!) about being able to see the result of your exposure immediately? Who in the era of 35mm film cameras would have rejected the opportunity to have a real-time display on the back of the camera had such been possible? Not the pros who had to take a Polaroid to the job site in order to best visualize/display the proposed final exposure. Not the legion of amateurs who would have just wanted to see what they got. And certainly not the PJs for whom it could have been CRITICAL to see what they just got!

 

Leica claims that not being able to assess results immediately forces a more deliberate and contemplative style of photography. Fine. All you need to do to achieve this is to turn off your camera's display or refrain from examining the results until the opportunity has passed. I have no idea WHY one would willingly forego the opportunity to improve on a photo, except perhaps as a tribute to the roots of photography—but really, how many users of digital cameras elect to render this salute? So what is the real-world utility of being denied the ability to review in real time? I still shoot with my M3 and MP3, but that's so I can enjoy the uniquely pleasing aspects of film photography, not so I can remain unsure of what my efforts will avail until I get my images on a computer screen.

 

This is an affectation, pure snobbery. These cameras will for the most part become hangar queens.

 

Sorely disappointed that Leica did not take the opportunity of Photokina to introduce the successor to the Monochrom M. The MM is a phenomenal camera, but there are several really obvious ways in which it could be improved. Trivially, it should have an LCD screen commensurate in size and resolution with the screen on the current M. Less trivially, but by no means an engineering challenge, it should have a sensor that comes closer to being the equal of the Apo-Summmicron 50. There is a striking improvement in rendering of fine details in large images in going from full-frame sensors of 18 MPx to 24 MPx to 36 Mpx and even to the neighborhood of 80-100 MPx, as I have demonstrated myself with comparison of images, using lenses of the same actual FL, from my M9, M240, D800, and cameras with high-quality smaller sensors. It makes no sense to hobble an $8K lens optimized for resolution with a sensor that has lesser resolution by a linear factor of at least 2. For less than the price of the neck candy at this year's Photokina, I'd sooner have a 36 MPx MM + Apo 'cron.

Edited September 23, 2014 by hlritter
Correction of some concepts and terms.

[mweaverpics]

As someone who actually uses various digital imaging platforms for profit on a full time basis, I will say that this camera offers nothing at all to a working pro other than some sort of mental thing that could actually kill them on a job if they intend to use this camera.

 

Who really wants to go back to cameras with no meters or waterhouse stops? I'm selling an M4 that works quite well because it's been replaced by an M6 TTL. Not that I will ever use the TTL function but it's there if I needed it and it has a meter that works well incorporated into the camera. Even the best and most highly paid studio shooters used Polaroid to test exposures.

 

Paying more for less is not a good business model.

 

I walked into a photo store here a while back and asked if they had any Leica equipment in stock, used or new, and I received an earful about how pro's don't use Leica. I smiled as I know I've had lots of images published from M cameras but this kind of camera is what makes people see them as being a boutique product for non-pros.

 

Who really cares about anything but the final image? Is a digital camera with no display going to make you a better photographer out on a job? God help you if there is some sort of miscalculation or wrong setting and you don't have the ability to reshoot.

 

I love that the M's have somewhat basic controls when compared to the layer of menus that other cameras have, but there are certain things I really do not want to give up as it's not in my best interest to do so. A display to review images is too fundamental of a tool to give up.

[tomasis7]

"It's the digital M3."

 

Well—the M3 had no display because it couldn't! It didn't NEED an excuse for having none, because there was no alternative. With a digital camera, there's no downside to having a display except for the impact on battery charge and a trivial impact on initial expense, and a display has many upsides. Therefore a digital camera with no digital display NEEDS an excuse not to have one, because what's not to like (embrace!) about being able to see the result of your exposure immediately? Who in the era of 35mm film cameras would have rejected the opportunity to have a digital display had such been possible?

 

Leica claims that not being able to assess results immediately forces a more deliberate and contemplative style of photography. Fine. All you need to do to achieve this is to turn off your camera's display or refrain from examining the results until the opportunity has passed. I have no idea WHY one would willingly forego the opportunity to improve on a photo, except perhaps as a tribute to the roots of photography—but really, how many users of digital cameras elect to render this salute? So what is the real-world utility of being denied the ability to review in real time?

 

This is an affectation, pure snobbery. These cameras will for the most part become hangar queens.

 

Sorely disappointed that Leica did not take the opportunity of Photokina to introduce the successor to the Monochrom M. The MM is a phenomenal camera, but there are several really obvious ways in which it could be improved. Trivially, it should have an LCD screen commensurate in size and resolution with the screen on the current M. Less trivially, but by no means an engineering challenge, it should have a sensor that comes closer to being the equal of the Apo-Summmicron 50. There is a striking improvement in rendering of fine details in large images in going from full-frame sensors of 18 MPx to 24 MPx to 36 Mpx and even to the neighborhood of 80-100 MPx, as I have demonstrated myself with comparison of images, using lenses of the same actual FL, from my M9, M240, D800, and cameras with high-quality smaller sensors. It makes no sense to hobble an $8K lens optimized for resolution with a sensor that has lesser resolution by a linear factor of at least 2. For less than the price of the neck candy at this year's Photokina, I'd sooner have a 36 MPx MM + Apo 'cron.

 

sounds like you're hasselblad/canikon guy. You use Leica because megapixels or lightweight.

 

Improve photo by looking at screen? Then it is other kind of photography, not street photo which Leica M is more useful for. An extension of body as Bresson would put it.

 

Holding the camera full of leather/vulcanite is much nicer compared to uneven rear layout mixed with buttons and glass piece, a messy place to hold onto.

 

Less of fragile parts makes the body more durable and less susceptible in surrounding. Again perfect for street photo.

 

Rangefinder is never gonna die!

[edwardkaraa]

It's amazing how many ill intentioned people have just signed up to this forum just to bash Leica. Chances are they don't even own any Leica products. Something they will never be able to comprehend is that Leica shooters are mostly traditionalists with high ego and self confidence in their technique. They know they can get the shot without having to look back at the LCD. I really congratulate Leica for this bold move and would definitely buy one if it was reasonably priced.

[neli]

I would definitely buy one at normal prices. Body should be slimmer and cheaper than an M240. Many would probably buy as a back up body.

[Rolo]

I love the design and styling, but for me, feedback from an LCD is a fundamental requirement. I still shoot film, but that's different.

 

Gary

[ShawnK]

Does it come with an Abacus or is it extra?

[tadeyev]

I have never found an LCD useful for anything on any digital camera, Leica, Sinar or otherwise, and I never use it for taking any pictures. For me, my automatic instinct for bracketing has almost always saved me in such situations. I have been shooting film for too long, and find the fuss about the screen kind of amusing.

 

Time after time after time they are utterly useless even in normal daylight, and it is impossible to really, truly get a good view of the exact focusing of compilex subjects, even with the help of 'software'.

 

For a pro who needs to get the shot in one lucky moment, this might be different of course. But I suspect the pro's are using S anyway if they are Leica fans.

 

The only use it has is for menu setup and such. But I assume Leica have found a workaround for that.

 

Tadeyev

[otto.f]

And a reasonable price is..... €3000 max. Maayayaybe 3500 when waterproof and more silent than M240

[carstenw]

And a reasonable price is..... €3000 max. Maayayaybe 3500 when waterproof and more silent than M240

 

Now you are being silly (about the price)

 

The old adage "less is more" as translated by Leica becomes "less costs more".

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Pobble]

It's a silly camera - an attempt at a "clean" look by designers who have dramatically reduced the digital capabilities of the M 240. sensor cleaning, profiles and the ability to quickly check images have been eliiminated.

 

I incidentally bought and used the original M3 and M2 for years. They were an advance on the IIIC that I had used. The M 60 is a step backwards.