What did it bring to me?

Last year I got a pretty good deal on a 1985 black Leica M6 with a Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 Biogon. In the excitement of owning such an iconic camera I shared my impressions after shooting a first roll of film: First roll with a Leica M6. I got some good feedbacks and one of them was to wait and use the camera more and more before sharing my feelings about it. Well, we are one year later and after shooting around twenty rolls I think I have spent enough time with it to share a bit more.

My use of the camera has been mostly street photography where I live (Canada), during some travels (US, France, Germany) and a bit of landscape photography. For a reason that I am not sure, I mostly used black and white films (JCH 400 Street Pan), I kept the color films for my Nikon F3 with a Voigtlander 40mm f2.

Like I said I had the camera for a year, so, I was able to use it under different conditions: warm summer and fresh Canadian winter, sunny and rainy days. No issue with that the camera worked perfectly fine all the time.

I went to places like busy downtown cities (Chicago, Ottawa, Montreal, Munich…), villages and country sides. The M6 is not a small and light camera, but it is not a big one or a heavy one neither. I found the size and weight quite fine to carry around. It is very easy to keep it with you all day, we are far from the land of the heavy DSLR camera with an heavy zooming lens.

At the end of the day I realize that most of what I did red on the internet about this camera is quite true. It is solid and very well build. You can feel precision and accuracy when you hold it. Obviously it is super simple to use: ISO, shutter speed wheel and aperture on the lens, that’s it, click.

Some people wonder about how easy it is to load the film. The way to do it is pretty unique to Leica but if you follow the right process carefully, it is super easy and fast. I never had any issue with it. I was always able to get 37-38 frames out of my 36 frames roll. Unloading the film is also super easy like on most cameras.

If the light was good and while doing street photography I tried to pre-focus the camera using small aperture settings: around 2m at f11 with the 35mm lens. This is definitely a plus with a manual lens if you need to be quick to catch the unexpected action happening suddenly in front of you. The light meter of the Leica M6 is also a thing that I really value. It always gave me good results and I know I can rely on it to get the correct exposure.

The shape and size of the Leica are quite iconic and at the end of the day it really fits my hands. It feels comfortable to hold, solid, I feel I can trust that body. During that past year it did not fall or bang into anything, so I can’t say how it is resistant to shock, but I guess even if it seems very solid, like any camera it has its limits. The best way is to be careful.

One thing I did appreciate and it is not really related to the Leica M6 in particular, but to most cameras, is the fact to have only one lens to go with the body : the Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 Biogon. This way, no time spent choosing which lens to bring with you, the lens is always on the body, load a roll film and let’s go. Plus, you get familiar with it and get better at estimating the distances. If you know what focal suits you the most, pick this one and go for it.

An important aspect of the Leica M6 is that it is a rangefinder camera. « M » stands for « Messsucher, » the German word for « measuring viewfinder, » the key feature of the M3 at the time. It is a completely different approach compared to a reflex camera. It did not bother me and got used to it very quickly. I go from the Leica M6 to the Nikon F3 without thinking about it. The fact that the quality of the M6 rangefinder is superb really helps. I also use a Canon Canonet QL GRIII and compared to the Leica M6, the Leica is another world: clear, bright and defined.

With the Carl Zeiss 35mm f2 Biogon I found that it was quite fast to focus and the result has been always very good, it gave me sharp results. The framing lines in the rangefinder are also very clear and easy to use. The framing is not as accurate as the reflex camera like my Nikon F3 due to the fact that the lens is not aligned with the viewfinder, but I was never disappointed with the results, it usually works fine with the 35mm lens for me.

While using the 35mm framing lines in the viewfinder I liked the fact that you can see a bit outside of the frame. This way you can evaluate what you are removing or can add by re-framing before to take the picture, something that it is not that easy with an SLR camera.

My two only negative points about this camera, because nothing if perfect, are related to the viewfinder. The first one is that due to the misalignment of the lens and the viewfinder, you usually have the lens hiding part of your image which sometime can be annoying. Obviously this is not something specific to the Leica M6 but to all rangefinder cameras. You can not beat the SLR camera on that aspect.

The other down point is that I wear glasses and the Leica M6 does not make it easy to see clearly the framing lines in the viewfinder. Because the glasses prevent me for bringing my eye close enough to the viewfinder, part of it blocks the sides of the frame. I like to be in the image when I frame it and this became my most annoying point related to this camera. Because I have a low correction I found myself removing my glasses when I use the M6 but I would prefer to keep them. If someone has an advice/solution about that, please let me know.

On the side of the technical aspect of the camera I have to admit that it did bring lots of joy to me while using it. Its simplicity, its size and its tiny shutter sounds made me happy when I was carrying it around. I am sensible to design and like lots of people I find the M aesthetically beautiful. Its relation with the photography history also brings a little plus. Knowing that lots of photographers that I admire are or were using such a camera has an impact on me. And this brings me to one of the most important conclusion of that one year Leica M6 anniversary.

My main point is that even if the camera if confortable, solid, accurate, easy to use… it is not the one that take pictures but the photographer behind it. I spent lots of time walking around trying to make images I would be proud of. Up to now I have made some good keepers and a few that I am proud of but I also made lots of very boring pictures. They are technically correct, but just boring, I did not evaluate the situation as I should have. Being happy with a camera is one thing, producing work we are happy with is completely different.

One year with the M6, I have to say that it is a beautiful camera that you can definitely trust. It made me happy, but not more that when I was using my Nikon F3, Nikon Df or my little Canonet QL17 GRIII. But if I get rid of some of these cameras one day, I think the M6 will be one of the last ones to go. I plan to use it more and more, it is fun and this is what is important to me, having fun and producing images I am proud of.

At the end of the day, nothing really new, there are tons of people on the internet, sharing there feelings about this camera, I did my part and I hope it can help some people to get a better idea about it and also open some interesting discussions. Feel free to share or to comment here or on Facebook, don’t take things too seriously and don’t forget to have fun.

Here are more of the pictures that I collected this past year:

Thank you for reading.

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