If your are a Leica addict, I can save you a small fortune by letting you into a secret. I’ve just been reading When Leica announced the M60 By Kristian Dowling on Steve Huff Photo.com, an article spun on his “about an hour with the camera” on loan from one of his friends.
The big difference between the M60 and the M640, apart from the $18,500 price tag (the M240 on which it is based is a mere $6,380) is that it has no LCD on the back. It’s also made with stainless steel outer metal parts, and includes a newly designed stainless steel bodied Summulux-M 35mm f1.4 lens and a special carrying case – they designed it without strap lugs too.
The camera is a curious mixture of the practical, stripped to the basics, and the cosmetic, and as the edition of only 600 (and a few prototypes including the one that Dowling was loaned) and price indicates is clearly meant for collectors rather actual photographers.
The price difference isn’t quite as large as the figures above (based on Leica store Miami prices) would suggest, as the M240 comes without a lens, and a 35mm f1.4 will set you back $4,532 – and I suspect the lens-hood is an expensive extra. The 35mm f1.4 has never been a cheap lens – when I bought mine second-hand back around 1980 it cost the best part of a month’s wages, and the new lens-hood I finally bought last year for it (not a genuine Leica part, as they gave up making the correct fitting many years ago) cost me I think £70.
But even allowing for these, the price differential between the M60 and the M240 seems to work out at around $7,700 – or around £5000. It seems to me a lot to pay for not having a LCD screen on the back of the camera.
As a photographer who seldom looks at the LCD screen when working, I’ve never experienced the insecurity that Dowling claims to have developed, “derived from digital technology, allowing me to view images immediately after pressing the shutter button. This insecurity has led to many missed opportunities, missed moments, and ultimately – missed shots, and this results in a form of failure.”
If anything I suffer from the opposite, kicking myself at times for not having looked, for example when I find I’ve mistakenly left the exposure on manual and taken a whole hour of pictures around 6 stops under (fortunately I was rescued by having used two cameras and one of them was on P.) And there are certain situations – like the blinking problem I wrote about a few days ago – where the LCD review is so useful that I’d find my work suffered without it.
But Dowling is right to suggest that excessive viewing of images – ‘chimping’ – while working is a mistake. It breaks the vital involvement with the subject. But just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you have to and it’s a habit you can learn to avoid. I suppose when I first got a digital camera (a fat cigarette-pack sized Fuji that took not very sharp 2.2Mp images) back in 1999, I did do a lot of looking at them on the screen, but I wasn’t working with that camera, though I did take it out with me as well as the Leica on New Year’s Eve for the year-early Millennium celebrations. When I did buy a digital camera to do serious work with (a Nikon D100 in 2002) I used it more or less the same as the film cameras I was using alongside it. Mostly the first I saw the images on the camera back was when sitting on the train going home. It’s still the same now.
Fuji MX-2700 7.60mm ISO120, 1/30 f3.2 London 31/12/1999
The MX-2700 had a viewfinder, but with many digital cameras the only view is on the camera back. Optical viewfinders and the EVFs that are replacing them in many cameras leave you viewing your subject through the camera – even with a good EVF, like that on the Fuji X-T1 it still gives you the same feeling of connection with the subject. You look through a viewfinder, whereas with cameras without a viewfinder – and phones and tablets – you are always looking at something in your hand. It seems to me a very different experience, and one that – like chimping – breaks the link between you and what you are photographing.
I sometimes think of taking pictures – particularly of events – as like dancing along the street with the subject. If you keep breaking step you lose connection, lose the rhythm, lose concentration, and it will show in your images. So I’m sympathetic to an extent to the idea behind the M60, though I think it unnecessary to physically remove the LCD, and a camera without a LCD should surely cost less rather than more than twice as much.
So the short way to save that $7,700 is simply to stop yourself looking at the camera back. But if you want to ensure that you get that M60 experience (or know you are weak-willed), you can cut a rectangle of black card to the size of the LCD on your camera back, and fix it firmly in place with four strips of black masking tape. The same tape we used to use on Leicas before Leica finally realised that most photographers don’t want shiny cameras (even if this one is stainless.) It will look almost as good as the M60 and will save you enough to buy at least one more lens, even at Leica prices.