Quick(ish) Review – KameraKaft LMGrip V2.0

[stray cat]

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Ahhh… lockdown. So much time, so little to do or think about. We were, here, where I live, asked to lockdown in quite  a restricted way for quite a long time – for some months, we had a curfew from 8pm at nights and weren’t allowed at any time to travel more than 5km from home. Initially, this presented an almost irresistible photographic challenge and leanings towards a kind of Spartan self-discipline – how to get great… well, at least OK, photographs given the constraints.

Well, that didn’t last long. So of course, as it does in such times, the mind turns from artistic challenge to matters of GAS. Money being short, cameras and lenses were out of the question. I’d seen our good friend Pritam (Suede) here using a grip on his M4 – it looked good, and it seemed practical - and thus a grip for the M cameras presented itself as a reasonable acquisition. Knockoffs on the auction site were going for $100 or so. Then of course the internet, being what it is, served up a more tempting (read, more expensive) option: a grip, beautifully designed and built in France, and finished with a lovely piece of walnut. Well, this was just too perfect for words – for a year, my family had lived in rural France – on a farm that produced walnuts. We’d come to love those gracious trees very much and so the chance to sport the beautifully grained wood harvested from a fallen tree on one of my Leicas – well, that of course meant that the budget had to head north.

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I contacted Vincent Bihler https://www.kamerakraft.com/ and received a reply straight away – in fact this has been the case each time I’ve contacted him, and he has always been helpful, polite and thoughtful. His next production run was due to happen soon, so I put in my order and the payment of 264 Euros, which included shipping to Australia. Well, as these things do, what with one thing or another it took some time longer than expected for the grips to be ready, but once it was Vincent sent it straight out and I received it a remarkably short time after – a lovely, light anodized aluminium grip with a gorgeous chunk of walnut. Now it turns out that Vincent is a very clever designer, having designed many other things, photographic and otherwise – from baby high chairs to bus stop shelters (he has a very space-age looking film scanning carrier in the works for instance). The design aesthetic here is full of attention to detail and meticulous thought. Being a very accomplished photographer himself, Vincent had designed-in a couple of touches that really made the grip stand out as a useful tool – space for spare batteries for one, and tripod slots on the base that marry with a standard Arca tripod mount. Cool. There’s even a wrist-strap lug built into it.

  

The LMGrip is compatible with every film Leica M except the M5. It fits onto my M6TTLs and M2 as if it were original equipment. In use, my own experience is that it has taken a bit of getting used to. This is mainly due to having to adopt a lightly different method of gripping the camera. For horizontal shots without the grip, I find I tuck a good deal of my pinky finger (there must be a technical term better than pinky) under the base of the camera for stability and because that finger finds it needs somewhere to go. The M body allows this quite naturally. With the grip, which adds 7 or 8mm to the height of the body, my pinky finds it is happier to sit with two other fingers gripping the walnut stock. It means I’ll have to be extra vigilant about keeping my fingernails cut as they tend then to seek out the vulcanite body covering, and I don’t want to scratch off the covering. Due to this altered hand placement it also means, overall, that my hand sits higher on the camera body than it does without the grip attached. For me, this is a bonus as it means more of my “pointer” or index finger (I hope everyone knows what I’m talking about) is able to reach the shutter button. With the Abrahamsson soft releases that I use, this makes it considerably easier to ensure that the first joint of my finger is able to press down on the softie to release the shutter – which, according to Tom Abrahamsson when I first bought them, is the optimal method to use the softie.

Paradoxically, the camera also seems a little lighter in the hand with the grip attached, even though the grip adds some mass (with four spare LR44 batteries loaded the grip tips the scales at 92 grams). Don’t ask me why or to quantify that observation - I guess this is because you have a nice protrusion at the front that alters the balance and therefore the perceived load. Also the camera body doesn’t feel as “slippery” with the grip attached, again my guess is because there’s more mass and your fingers are able to grip onto more. Not that the grip itself – or the wooden bit at least – is slip-free (it seems about as slippery as the body itself) but the shape allows your hand more touch with the camera + grip than with the camera alone, so you feel assured that it is more secure.

 

So, my recommendation? It is a well-designed, beautifully crafted piece of kit, well in keeping with the quality and aesthetic appeal of a Leica M film camera. If you are after a grip and 199 Euros for the all-black version or 229 Euros for the walnut stock version is within your comfort zone, I can’t see how you’d fail to be very happy with this grip. I have no doubt it will last as long as any of, and then some, and it will age gracefully (unlike some of us). It takes a little bit of getting used to, as you are enticed to use a slightly different method of holding the camera. The upside of that is that the camera feels more secure and, in my experience at least, your shutter (oops almost wrote shitter) finger aligns in a better position for the soft depression of the shutter button. At best this might even give you an extra stop or so of hand-hold-ability.

Now, armed with the LMGrip and free to travel further than 5km, you’d think that the great photos would be just stockpiling at a machine-gun rate. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all. The ambition’s great, but perhaps I seriously need to “get a grip”.

[benqui]

I am not such a fan of grips, but the all black version looks very appealing.

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[spydrxx]

It looks beautiful, and being a longtime user of Photo Equip's ML grip for M bodies and LM grip for Barnack bodies, looks like I could be persuaded to get one...just have to scrape up the funds.

[derleicaman]

I inherited one of these when I purchased my M10 Monochrom from another forum member here last summer. He included the grip with the sale. It is indeed a beautifully made piece of kit, and works well. My only criticism would be that the finger grip is a little "tight" spatially for my fingers. I think the Leica grip does a better job in this detail, but then you lose the ready access to the battery and card. YMMV