Inspired by Nathan Wright from Ohm Image, I’m having a look at what I think should improve on Leica cameras.
Change 1: Bin the frameline assembly.
For a while, I used Fujifilm’s Leica-knockoff as a backup for my film cameras. The X-Pro1 introduced a great feature that is sorely missing from the M. The framelines in the hybrid VF were digital projections. They were better. In every possible way than those of a Leica M. The M’s framelines are created with a punched metal mask. They therefore cannot be complete, as gaps have to exist where the inner part of mask is connected to the outer. It also means their sizes are fixed – they cannot change size as you focus, only move – and their compatible lenses are fixed. Framelines always appear in pairs, and have to be preselected when the camera is manufactured.
With an X-Pro style projection – no such restrictions. The framelines can be complete, single frames that shrink and grow as well as move – and can be any size – not only 28 and 35, but 32 and 40. (for the Lomo Minitar, and the legendary Summicron-C). The 65mm Visoflex, 85mm Canon, 105mm “Mountain Elmar” can all suddenly be supported in a single finder – and with more accuracy than any rangefinder camera before. As well, the color of the framelines can change on the fly – allowing higher contrast, like red framelines for a landscape scene or green for portraiture. There are essentially no downsides to this.
Change 2: Get with the times, LCD!
Even Fujifilm has seen the light, introducing a full-flip screen on the X-Pro4, as seen on most other prosumer cameras for the last decade. The Pen F has shown how this could be done on a small camera for years now. But for Leica, it’s even worse – the first camera to put this kind of screen on a rangefinder was also the first digital rangefinder – Cosina and Epson’s R-D1.
There is a disadvantage to Leica here: as well as Rolleiflex-like shooting from the hip and the magical power of selfies, a full-flip LCD can also be closed. Leica has used their fixed screen to support the creation of an entire product line – the purist, display-less M-D. With a screen that can be flipped out of sight on a whim, Leica will undercut that product line overnight.
Still, as a product with artificially-created demand – the M-D deserves to die.
Change 3: Twin card slots.
Nathan suggested internal storage as a “smaller” alternative in his list, but I’m veto-ing that right now. Flash memory is an incredibly fragile technology and has a defined lifetime – look at the way SD cards die with enough use. Internal memory would be subject to the same degradation. Fine in a $150 compact, not fine in a pro camera. Nathan’s original suggestion of dual-slots is the only real solution to the problem. If size became an issue, I’d suggest dual µSD (Micro-SD, or TransFlash) cards as being a satisfactory option. Whenever I retire an SD card from camera use, it ends up in a raspberry pi – so for a long time now, I’ve used adapted Sandisk Extreme Pro µSD cards in their full-size SD adapters in any digital camera I use. Guess what? They work fine! µSD cards perform at the same speed as larger cards, but generally have a shorter lifespan – but then, most professionals (and clued in amateurs) will already replace flash cards on a regular cycle to avoid getting too near the write limit. For a professional photographer, having a backup card is more important than saving $100 a year on buying storage media.
Change 4: The body-lens interconnect.
One way Leica M kit lags far behind other brands is in the way the lenses and bodies communicate with each other. The M communicates two things – lens distance, and in later cameras – lens model. Meanwhile, the Nikon F allowed for several functions that the M does not – most importantly, the ability to alter aperture automatically from wide open to stopped-down to allow focusing at max aperture, and shooting at the user-defined one. This is entirely irrelevant for a rangefinder camera, but for a mirrorless camera it’s vital. The M should add a bidirectional electronic communications port to the mount, like the electronic connections on every other current lens mount. This would allow for a number of features – but particularly in lens adapting and using very shallow DOF native lenses – done right, this would allow for wide-open live view focusing on advanced lenses like the 75mm Noctilux without hampering either backwards or forwards compatibility. It would also allow full compatibility with off-brand lenses through adapters – including proper compatibility with all four types of R lens, and would allow more than the 62 lenses currently available through 6-bit coding to be identified. This could also allow the introduction of digital-only lenses with a leaf shutter. While as a film loyalist I’d be somewhat against this for M lenses, Leica already has a range of leaf-shutter lenses that could then be adapted – for the S system. This would then allow effectively silent shooting, as well as flash sync at any speed.
Change 5: Bring back video.
This will probably be the least popular change for an M – and it was when they introduced it the first time. But not having it makes no sense. When it was first “discontinued”, I had the unpleasant hunch that it was done to better differentiate the SL product line from the M. It’s only a hunch, but so far no other explanation has been given, so it’s what I have to work with.
The only additional hardware needed to support video on an M is a microphone. That’s it. Technically not even that, if the hot-shoe connector (used for the Visoflex) can also support an audio interface, as it does on Olympus cameras. Everything else is software – defining profiles and adding an interface. If Leica are buying in the core of their camera firmware (quite likely, as phone companies do for their GSM/LTM stacks) then it will have this software included anyway in what they are buying. Now, there are plenty of better cameras for video – even at Leica, this is one of the specialisms of the SL series. So why bother having it on an M? Better question, why not? This is a premium product that costs thousands of dollars. Why must you then carry a second camera, just for shooting video? There is no technical reason why an M should not be able to film, and Leica’s own M, R and PL lenses (all of which can mount on an M with Leica-made adapters) would be excellent used with this kind of camera – as would Nikon, Canon, and dozens of other mounts when adapted. Leica themselves even list some great reasons. Who am I to argue?
Change 6: Stop being cheapskates.
The M and M-P are flagship cameras that are usually priced very slightly above those from Canon and Nikon, and moderately above those from the other mirrorless brands. So why is it that Leica always seem to be cheapening their cameras by cutting corners on the electronics? Both the M9 and M (Type 240) were roundly criticized for their tiny buffers. While the M-P and M10 series have improved on this, it still makes little sense that a $9000 M10-P has half the memory of a $50 Raspberry Pi. In a similar vein, the single card slot of the M10-P is not a UHS-II slot, so will only perform at UHS-I speeds no matter what card you put in it. I think we can all agree that Cfast and XQD are too physically large for an M camera, but not properly supporting high speed SD cards is very poor. M cameras have a ‘slow, ponderous, purist’ marketing, and there’s no point for them to try and compete with flagship SLR’s on speed – but they should at least meet modern standards, and a 4GB buffer and UHS-II support are painful in their absence. Shooting a burst of shots is one of the advantages of digital, and it’s useful both in commercial photography, and when trying to keep up with fidgety grandchildren.
Change 7: Offer a digital “Motor Drive”.
One of Nathan’s complaints about the M10 is the anæmic battery. This is actually a common complaint on most mirrorless cameras, as it was on early DSLR’s. The solution has been long established – the battery grip. The Leica M even has precedent on this; electronic motor drives have been standard accessories for the M since the M4-MOT in the 1970’s. The current iteration is the Motor-M, which supports every film M since the M4-2, and uses modern battery and motor technology to be extremely compact and quite stylish.
Most camera battery grips are clunky, because they are designed to take standard batteries. For the Leica, I’d suggest a different approach, making the grip a single sealed battery unit that replaced the cameras baseplate the same way the Motor-M does on an M-A. This allows the grip to be much more energy dense, saving space and preserving style – and it would still be easy to add say – a USB-C port to the grip for both charging, and external continuous power – ideal for video use, or for in-camera charging in remote conditions.
Change 8. Time for another culture shift at Leica.
Leica get regularly mocked online for their special editions. These usually sell out rapidly at huge expense, and I don’t think we could expect Leica to stop producing them, despite the “toy camera” reputation it gives the M range. With that said, I once calculated how professional Leica sees the M range as, and it’s not a big number. The M range is a toy camera, and no amount of wishful thinking (or for that matter, successful use by professionals) will change that.
But that is the thing I want Leica to change most of all. All of the changes I list above are things that you would expect Leica to have introduced to a real pro camera range. Most of them wouldn’t even add significantly to the BOM of the M series. The reason they are missing has nothing to do with Leica’s technical ability, or their knowledge of what pro cameras should and do offer in 2020 – they simply see no need to, because the M10 is a toy camera. And that’s sad. I want to see Leica make the M professional again, while keeping the unique design that has made it such a huge success as a lifestyle product. I’ll even forgive the no-doubt impending Seal “Crazy” 30th anniversary special edition, if it’s built around a camera that a journalist could carry without hesitation.
Thanks again to Nathan for the inspiration for this post, and for those ideas of his that I tried to solve in novel ways. Definitely check his article for even more great-and-simple changes Leica could make to upgrade the M experience.
A final P.S. to my favorite camera brand.
Leica, if you decide to follow my advice on how to “fix” the M, I hereby waive my royalties – but if you could send me one of the new M11-P’s I’ve designed, that would be awesome. Also, please reissue the 50mm Summicron Collapsible. Mine is broken 🙁 Thanks!
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