A Passion For Photography
Me and Leica
It began quite recently really - maybe 3 years ago?
I decided I was finally "good enough" to have a Leica!
I'd then been a wedding photographer for 8 years, photographed about 200 weddings, won awards, scores of 5star reviews.
So hey, let's get one - not for weddings but for my personal use. A camera I could "wear"
As a professional I've always seen gear as an expense so keeping costs down was kinda inbuilt which lead me to an M9 that'd had no issues with the dreaded sensor corrosion issues. So he said! When it arrived and I looked at the sensor it certainly didn't look great - a single test shot imported to Lightroom confirmed it; the sensor was toast. Covered in small spots. The camera was returned!
Weeks later I found another that had the sensor issue fixed with a certified replacement. It arrived. I tried it out. Where's the rear screen? It's black? Hours later it's in the post being returned.
At this point I gave up on the Leica M9 - when the Universe tells you something these days I listen.
A few weeks later my Leica M10 arrived. Yay - it's perfect! Well almost. Some idiot had tried to make it look like a Leica M10P by removing the Red Dot and replacing with a crappy piece of aluminium. Ugh!
Eventually during a trip to London the Leica Mayfair store kindly replaced it for free :-)
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS...
Beautiful, solid, perfect engineering, a work of art and so on.
Then the work began - firstly how to focus with the infamous range finder patch. Hmm problem. There's no diopter adjustment and as I wear reading glasses things are very unclear through the viewfinder. eBay had a few for sale but what strength? Taking a chance that my reading glasses magnification would be in the right ball park I buy a crazy expensive (think it was £180!) little piece of glass that screws onto the viewfinder - thankfully it's the right strength and the world is nice and clear.​
I soon discover the tricks to finding the right thing to focus on - the Leica likes straight edges with high contrast and spotting these at or around what you actually want to focus on makes it a lot easier. I'll leave focusing on flowers blowing in the wind till another day. (it's knowing which flower you're aligning as they keep moving that's the problem!)
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People were quite quickly accomplished - simply align the closest eye. It does pay not to "focus and recompose" as even quite slight movements of the camara at F1.4 introduce some focus shift and as the focus patch is in the centre I found it's best to just go with that and later crop if a different look is required.​​
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As my journey with the Leica M10 continued I explored it's limits (or are they mine?)
People moving in a street photography situation; easy - I'd shoot street photos at F11 ish so have a decent depth of field and focus at a set distance and wait till the people are there then "click"
Zone Focusing!
Once I really "got" this it transformed my photography; not just my personal work but also my weddings - I stopped shooting everything wide open and stopped down to maybe F5.6 and gave my Nikons a much easier focusing task with photos having a different "look" and 100% in focus.
Next came the exposure game.
Unlike the M11 which can utilise matrix metering or average over the whole frame the Leica M10 only has centre point exposure metering if using the range finder (Live View DOES afford whole frame). Again I found any attempts to "recompose" after focusing meant a good opportunity for the camera to get the exposure very wrong.
All of which lead me to use Live-view more; there's the possibility to move the focus point, use focus peaking and the Zoom function to check critical focus AND use whole frame exposure metering which did lead to many photos being slightly more in focus than using the rangefinder (although I rarely had any images too far off) and more correctly exposed.
But I very much dislike using my Leica M10 as a smartphone! With any camera I much prefer the experience of a viewfinder which meant I now had to get a Visoflex EVF. Hello eBay again - an almost new one for half price.
Hmm... Ok, how many years ago was this thing made? It's pretty low resolution at 2.4M dots and not very fast refresh and compared to my super amazing EVF on my Nikon Z6iii feels antiquated.
But it does the job and in many situations I prefer to the range finder; but low light makes aligning the patch even more difficult as does super bright scenes. With the EVF you get to see the real exposure so creating images where you have very high contrast becomes easier. So whilst it's only attached when needed I do always take it with me.
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Finally...
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Getting here has been a long journey.
It started when I was 12 and for my birthday was given a camera by my parents. I'd often asked to borrow my Dad's camera so seemed a good choice of present.
Like most kids I loved this thing today and something else next week. However over the years I always came back to photography and always had a camera even if it sat in a drawer for months sometimes.
I recall that my first "real" efforts were when I had children - I wanted to be able to document their growing up with good photos and got myself a Pentax ME Super; my Dad now had a Nikormatt but I couldn't afford that!
I was into running and every Sunday would go to Richmond park early, often I'd be there before it was really light. One morning whilst running through the autumn dawn mist I suddenly was face to face with a huge stag. I froze. Slowly we both backed away. Instantly I thought "I wish I had my camera!"
For weeks after that I'd arrive with my camera and walk for 30 minutes before my run hoping to recreate that moment - eventually I tired of this and just ran.
But it fuelled my desire for creating photographs that's been part of me ever since.
In 2014 I booked my first paid for wedding - I've done over 300 and learnt some
