>>3209015>Why did legendary photographers use Leica?Leica was the first company to really make 35mm cameras. So photographers who wanted something smaller and more convenient than a TLR or a press camera got a Leica. For a long time, Canon and Nikon were basically in the business of making shitty Leica ripoffs, so the good photographers would just buy the real thing.
By the time Nikon started making cameras that were actually good in their own right, Leica just had a lot of momentum as the high-end camera of choice, so a lot of legendary photographers continued using them into the SLR/Nikon F era.
They're still kind of coasting on that at this point. So a lot of good photographers today use them because Henri Cartier Bresson used them, for instance. And to be fair, using a rangefinder does give you a different way of seeing the world, which can make your photographs somewhat unique, which is a good way to become a legendary photographer.
