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Craig Semetko Video: What is so unique about the Leica M?


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Hi, I enjoyed the video. For many years I have used the excellent M8, but in some ways I felt a certain restriction. I have purchased the new M 240. WOW I love it! My main interest is in car photography and the versatility the M gives me is wonderful. I am able for the first time with a Leica M series camera to use long focal length Leica R lenses. This is great. I also think the new cmos sensor gives excellent well balanced images. All in all thumbs up to the M 240.

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Question to you:

What is special about the Leica M for you?

 

1. Small size

2. The quality of the glass

3. The variety of glass

4. The folks at the Leica Store LA are doing a lot to build a local community with the store as the nexus. They're frequently hosting gallery events, workshops, etc. And they are making those events accessible to everyone who's interested, not just the regular clientele.

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Opinions are just opinions.

I understand your professional bias: lawyers are paid to turn client's opinions into "facts" :)

But hopefully, there is no trial here.

And freedom of speech.

 

Not the way I practiced law and I don't appreciate the insinuation which is not cured by a smiley.

I was very successful by playing things straight and I try to do that here too.

Yes to freedom of speech here and to freedom to disagree with someone else's opinion.

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Not the way I practiced law and I don't appreciate the insinuation which is not cured by a smiley.

I was very successful by playing things straight and I try to do that here too.

Yes to freedom of speech here and to freedom to disagree with someone else's opinion.

 

Nor I liked your sentence "free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it", which you used to imply my opinion was worth nothing.

 

You can disagree with me - then feel free to explain yourself; but calling my opinion "worth nothing" is not what I call "playing things straight", and "freedom of speech".

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Nor I liked your sentence "free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it", which you used to imply my opinion was worth nothing.

 

You can disagree with me - then feel free to explain yourself; but calling my opinion "worth nothing" is not what I call "playing things straight", and "freedom of speech".

 

 

But I didn't disagree with you! In fact I agreed that Semetko had better work. I just thought you might have been a little less negative, instead of a "glass half empty" approach. You were the one who said you offered your opinions for free. I'm sorry if you thought my joke about free advice was meant as an insult. It wasn't.

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For me one of the interesting points is that a Leica M camera, "demands more from the photographer". This is something that for some people is frustrating and may eventually give up, but for some others it helps them become better photographers.

 

Yes. If you look at many Leica photographers many of them tend to look like they're wrestling with their viewfinders and focusing tabs :D

Myself included probably.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I found the video so very informative, from my amateur point of view. I'm an owner of a Digilux 2 and the D-lux 109. My D2 gives me the feel of having ' hands on " control of the camera , which I love and I've been wondering about the rangefinders. The video seems to have just scratched the surface of the camera. Thank you for the input....keep it coming!! -g-

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

Question to you:

What is special about the Leica M for you?

 

The glass.

 

Plus, you feel more connected to the subject. On a DSLR you feel connected to the photo, to the final product and feel distanced from the subject and the moment. Which has advantages and disadvantages depending on what you're shooting i.e., this is actually good for a very manufactured product like say a wedding shoot. The Leica M has a huge advantage on the street, it is more natural. It encourages a human connection with the subject.

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I liked the video.

 

We hear a lot about the big difference between a dSLR and rangefinder being that you can see the area surrounding the framelines. This is undoubtedly true - I get tunnel vision looking through SLR cameras; but I'm not really sure this is the whole picture.

 

This is more of an issue if you're shooting 50mm, for 35mm, as the viewfinder is only 28mm you don't see a whole lot out of the frame.

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This is more of an issue if you're shooting 50mm, for 35mm, as the viewfinder is only 28mm you don't see a whole lot out of the frame.

 

True. It doesn't seem to be a problem with a 28mm lens (which I use a lot), even though there is nothing to be seen outside the frame lines. For some reason, I've never had that looking down a tunnel feeling I used to get with an SLR. Maybe it's something to do with the rendition - looking through the viewfinder window is quite different to looking through the lens at a focussing screen.

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looking through the viewfinder window is quite different to looking through the lens at a focussing screen.

 

In a DSLR viewfinder, the eye is focusing on a virtual image that is usually at a much shorter distance than the actual subject in focus. We may not realize it consciously, but this is enough for our brain to feel there is something unusual.

But what causes the awkward sensation is the fact that the DSLR image is a flat (2D) pre-focused image and your eye is not free to focus freely on any object in the frame, hence the strong feeling of looking at a 2D movie screen rather than a real 3D image.

 

The RF image is instead a full 3D image, just a bit minified. Only the framelines and the info LEDs are at set to appear at a short virtual distance.

And yes, this is a unique advantage of the RF over DSLR ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

In the movie "Finding Vivian Maier" Joel Meyerowitz comments that by using a TLR at waist level, she could maintain rapport with her subjects while shooting. Some probably never realized she was photographing them. I don't think very many street photographers worked this way and waist level TLR shooting has not been a very common method for a while. Perhaps flip LCDs have taken that place for a few.

 

In any case I really liked her approach and know she also shot at eye level with a Leica. It would be interesting to compare what she did with each method.

 

I think for most experienced photographers, the gear becomes transparent after a while, whatever they use.

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Question to you:

What is special about the Leica M for you?

 

It lets me see the subject and not the camera, it becomes "transparent" in use. Unlike the many mirror less of different makes I wrestled with.

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