For those who don’t know, Leica M rangefinders are breed apart, a throwback to a camera design abandoned years ago by every other maker and about as far as you can get from a modern mirrorless camera. And yet, at a stroke, the Leica M EV1 has closed that gap and brought the Leica M design right up to date. So that’s got to be good, right?
Well, not if you are Leica diehard. For fans of this legendary camera design, it’s going to look like a cheap, populist sell-out, the abandonment of everthing that made Leica M cameras unique in a world of mass consumerism and sameness.
This is how Leica M cameras work (or did, before the EV1). There’s no autofocus. You don’t even get through-the-lens viewing as you compose the photo. Instead, Leica M rangefinders use manual focus lenses and a separate optical viewfinder linked to a rangefinder mechanism. As you turn the focus ring on the lens, a secondary mirror rotates to superimpose a ‘ghost’ image of your subject on the main viewfinder image. When the two are exactly aligned, your subject is exactly in focus.
It’s surprisingly accurate, and even surprisingly fast – even instinctive – in skilled hands. But it takes some learning, and unless you’re prepared to stick at it and adapt, you’re always going to find a Leica rangefinder hard work compared to a modern camera.
There’s another problem with this design. The optical viewfinder has a fixed magnification, so when you swap lenses you have to use different ‘brightline’ frame markers in the viewfinder to gauge the angle of view. That’s OK, but if you want to use any lens wider than a 28mm you need an add-on wider-angle viewfinder.
For many, this is part of the challenge and the charm of Leica’s old-school camera design, but for a modern audience increasingly pampered by labor-saving electronics, it’s a barrier.
So what the Leica M EV1 does, apart from outraging traditional Leica M fans, is to open up this Leica M range to a newer audience. The EVF comes with various focus aids to make manual focus painless, and it also accomodates any focal length you like and as wide as you like.
Now there will be some who say that it’s about time Leica was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and that even adding an EVF is only half way to making these cameras ‘modern’. Well, they’re wrong.
The Leica M should never be just the same as other cameras. Its austere simplicity, mechanical excellence and luxury price tag are like an antidote to the bland, price-driven sameness of modern cameras. Leica’s M cameras are expensive but they are hand-crafted. Leica M lenses are legendary for their optical quality and rendering. They are also a fraction of the size of modern ‘digital’ primes. The whole experience of ownership and usage is different.
Long live the Leica M, I say, whether it’s with a rangefinder or an EVF. And if it takes an EVF to keep it alive in today’s market, then so be it.
- Leica M EVF 1 prices (body only): $8,995 at B&H (US) | £6,840 at Wex (UK)
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