retrofocus wrote: airfrogusmc wrote:
In my opinion if you are shooting a lot with anything longer than 90mm then Leica M is clearly not you. The one lens I thought I would really miss when I switched over to Leica M was the Canon 200 2L. I haven't missed it at all.
+1. I have taken very good shots with my M cameras and the Leica 135/4.5 Hektor lens. I rarely use tele lenses on my Leica cameras though because the majority of my photos were and are always taken at 50 mm and wider. 90 mm is excellent for portraits with the Leica M but I am not doing portrait shots often either.
This brings me to a IMO rarely discussed point regarding Leica cameras. Looking online and even here on FM in the Leica photo threads, it seems the big majority uses Leica M cameras for people and street photography. It also makes sense that this is the case for reasons already stated here earlier. Even Leica-sponsored exhibits favor to the most part people photography of any kind. There are a few exemptions though when Leica spotlights famous photographers sponsored by Leica which favor a different style - Ralph Gibson is one to mention. Leica has always been and still is very strong with the rangefinder system for people and street photography, but the system can be applied to lots more than this. This gets especially important since there are many very good alternatives out there allowing this kind of shooting in similar (not only rangefinder based) ways like the Leica Q and Fuji MLCs.
Biggest limitation of Leica M is the MFD with lenses between 0.7 to 1 meter. There are macro lenses/tools available to make this work with Leica M, but they are very pricey and more specialized. It is easy to do with any kind of (D)SLR or MLC - with extension tubes, close-up lenses, or reversed lenses. I know a few portrait shooters using Leica M cameras who are bugged by this limitation since they have a hard time to get closer to the subject than 0.7 meters.
Yeah I agree about the MFD. One thing I like about the 50 Voigt 1.2 is it can focus down to 2 ft. For any macro or close up work I have one of these.
I photographed one of my clients extensive car collection over a couple of winters and early springs in 2018 and 2019. Average of 2 cars a day. And I shot them all with Leica M and it was an amazing experience. For those who haven't seen the work here is a link and this is such a small sample of the project. https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1643295/0?keyword=collection#15203355
Jun 30, 2020 at 10:17 AM
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