On the topic of hacks

So here it is, my new Leica M8. It was outrageously expensive (a gulker.com reader left a comment pointing out that a Canon EOS 5D is much cheaper), and this camera is a hack. True it’s a Leica hack, with German engineering and sensibilities, but, oh man, what a piece of work.

Basically this is an M4 – a camera still true to its basic 1930s design – sawed off and glued onto what most people would call, in 2007, a digital camera with rudimentary features – subframe CCD, simple mechanical/electronic shutter with only one mode (aperture priority) and simple center weighting. In a feature comparison, the Canon EOS 5D blows it away: heck a $500 mass-market Lumix blows it away. And, it’s a Leica, so over-pricing is built-in at the factory.

I grant you all that. In the mid 1980s I had become prosperous enough as a photographer to buy a used Leica M4-2. I haunted a Pasadena Leica collector’s shop where owner Gus would sometimes help me buy trade-ins his wealthy clients offered, sometimes at very good prices. Eventually I wound up with a M4-P with 21mm f2.8, 35mm f/2 and 90mm f/2 lenses in addition to the M4-2.

The Leicas were a good complement to my Nikon gear: I was fairly senior at my paper, and was photographing Presidents, famous actors and even the Pope… I thought it was important to have good equipment – especially good lenses. And, were those M lenses ever wonderful… my colleague Michael Haering, another Leica user, pointed out you could tell the difference between Nikon and Leica neg strips on the light table from across the room. The contrast, and tone ramp were just different. I loved the look of the Leica’s long gray scale in my black and white photos.

Then we moved to San Francisco, and I went first into photo editing, then working on the make-up desk, and then jumped to high tech.Tthe Leicas have sat in my closet since the early 90s anyway, only rarely coming out for a picture session. A Leica Digilux II appeared, and reminded us of those silvery Leica gray scales. But suddenly, as of a couple days ago, my old, beloved M lenses are out of the closet and on a camera body on my neck every morning and afternoon on my way to and from work, and I’m loving life – and the silky images that the combination of the Leica glass and the M8′s release 1.0 sensor produces. So, I guess it comes down to what look do you want in the photos you make… I am loving having the M lenses and the Leica tone ramps in my bag again…overpricing, hack and all…