>>4008515>>4008479It's hard to find people that are honest about both the pros/cons of Leica. I shot film M's for years and enjoyed it. Decided I was done with film entirely, but couldn't afford a digital M at the time, and made the switch to an X-Pro2 which gave me a close enough experience. Kinda had a windfall, got a bunch of different gear to play around with, and I've dipped my toes back into the M world.
I think the only area Leica really excels at is offering great IQ options at a very compact size, but even then it's quite a premium for marginal gains. They're just so functionally limited, and I understand that's part of the appeal too, but still. The Monochrom's are a bit more unique, and getting usable shots at 25k ISO is pretty awesome.
It's really hard for me to see them as anything other than a luxury novelty item, and if I was in a worse financial position, I would have 0 interest. They're very well made (god forbid you have to send one for repair though), and very fun to use, but they don't actually offer me much that I couldn't just get at a quarter of the price.
The OVF with framelines is really what I enjoy most from them. Rangefinder focusing is fun and fast, and great for slow to moderate movement. The X-Pro's gives me that OVF experience, but I can AF for faster movement, or have much more precision with MF in static scenes.
The metering is pretty poor compared to most other cameras. I used my film M's meterless, so I'm very comfortable doing everything manually, but if a priority mode gets me the shot with less work, I'm all for it. Same goes for focusing, I can MF just fine, but if AF can work better, I'm all for it.
I've owned some Leica lenses, but could never justify them again (I'm still very "value" oriented despite my money), and I just stick with the new Voigtlander glass for now.
I'm heading to the mountains for a few days, I'll try to report back with actual photos (which will prob suck).
