How did you get into Leicas?

Back in 2009 some silly blogger wrote a facetious post titled "The Leica as Teacher."

I promptly burned a big hole in the shutter curtain of a borrowed M6 (which Mike conveniently forgot to mention as a possibility) and Leica has been trying somewhat unsuccessfully to teach me ever since.

EDIT - After all these years of sending various Leicas back and forth to repair techs I still firmly believe that the Contax II is a better rangefinder.
 
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In the 1960's I was about 15 years old. My best mate lived over the back fence.

I'd just climbed over the fence, when his parents gave us a trunk of "stuff" to go through and take what we wanted before the rest went to the tip.
It was full of radio and other bits and pieces. At the time, I was interested in radio and using my chemistry set to make smells and explosions.

I chose some early radio parts (coils, tubes, etc.). I wondered at the time though, what this old funny looking camera was. There was only a tiny viewfinder and a wierd bracket joining the body to the lens.
The body of the camera had a printed word which said "Leitz". In front was the word "Anastigmat".

I chose the radio bits.

Around 30 years ago I realised what I had missed out on.
A few years later, I found myself able to afford a Leica M3. Since then an M1, M2, M4, M4P, M6, 1A(converted to 1C), 3C and 3C(converted to 3F); plus various Leitz and other lenses.

I hate to think of what happened to the first Leica I ever saw.
 
I started to use my father's Zorki 4 - the first rf I got in touch with. It was so nice that I had to buy an M6 second hand from a camera store in my hometown.
 
Easy: I got into Leicas because I came across your book called Low Light and Night Photography. In it you had a picture of the M6 and more importantly you raved about a tiny, powerful, expressive lens called the 35/1.4 Summilux. There were also plenty of interesting pictures to stir my creativity. I had at about the same time seen an advertisement in PP featuring Mike Maloney talking about how he shot discreet pictures of world leaders in the USSR and elsewhere using an M6. So I got the camera and the lens and though it took a while to master and sometimes I go off to other cameras like Nikon F-series or the Fujifilm X100 -- which looks like a Leica M shrunk in the wash -- I always come back to the M6 and now also an M7 with the .85 finder for the longer lenses. After years of shooting HP5 and then going to digital I feel refreshed to have gone back to film: this time FP4, after admiring Denis Thorpe's shots and still shooting the little Summilux. And it's all your fault, Roger. Seriously though, thank you; when the pictures work there is nothing as satisfying as having shot film in a Leica and NOT being able to see results there and then.
 
In 1968 I was a student at the University of Tennessee. I was waiting on the street for a friend when a fellow walked up with 3 M's around his neck. We started talking and I found out he worked for the news paper and was leaving it to take a job in Alaska. To make the story short I told him I'd done quite a few professional jobs and he expressed an interest in seeing my work as there was an opening at the paper. I took my portfolio to him and got the job.

Henry Peck was his name and over the next few weeks before he left the paper and headed to Alaska we became good friends. I tried out Henry's cameras and another journalists friends Nikon S3 and SP. I wound up liking the Leicas the best mainly because I hated the focusing wheel and the bayonette of the Nikon. Inside of a few months I had 2-M2 bodies, a M3, 21 f3.4 SA, 35 Summilux, 50 Summicron, 90 Elmarit, 65 Elmar, 135 Hector and 200 f4 Tellyt with S Visoflex 2, bellows and MR meters.

Still using a similar kit to this day minus the Viso and viso lenses. Also no 135mm.
 
How? I wanted an excellent 50mm lens. And I walked out the door with a V.3 Chron and a near-mint M3.

That did it.

I still have the Chron. The M3 went to another good home when an unwanted divorce suddenly brought likely homelessness into my near future. The M3 has been since replaced with one that's more shooter-grade.

I simply fell in love with Leica M film cameras.
 
May I offer a somewhat contrary post, that eventually leads to the same conclusion?

My love for Leicas is shared by an equal passion - for Rolleiflex TLRs. I've owned a Rollei of one sort or another since 1966, and now have five. All get used.

I adore Rolleiflexes for the same reasons all the posters in this thread love Leicas - except for the format and technique for use, which of course greatly differs. Different strokes, different folks.

Like everyone else I know, I went into Leicas in the mid 1980s, when I hd a little money to throw around for the first time in my career - I bought first an M2 and then a near-mint L3 single stroke which was so mint(y), I resisted even taking it out for fear of getting a speck of dust on it. In very fast order I added an Elmar 50/2.8, a lovely lens, then a Summaron 35/3.5 screw mount with an M adapter which produced lovely pastel tones but was unsharp at the corners at settings lower than f/5.6. Ditto an Elmar 90/4, a 135/4.5, and even a Telyt 200 which I kept for a year but never used, being basically a wide-angle sort of shooter. The M3 came with a Summarit 50/1.5, a lens that always produced superb results in low light situations.

Some of my very best 35mm images in the half century I've been involved in photography, were taken with the M2 and the Elmar, a lens hood, a K2 or UV filter to suit whatever film I was using, and a Weston Master V meter with an Invercone for exposure readings. I'm now scanning some of the several thousand Leica images, and still marvel at how sharp they were, with such beautiful mid tones. Good films were available at the time, which also helped. Part of my great joy in photography left me the day Rochester stopped producing Kodachrome.

After about 12 months fiscal reality set in, notably so when my elderly 404 Peugeot broke down and needed massive (and hideously expensive) repairs, the money for which I didn't have. So the Leica gear was sold off, mostly for better prices than I'd purchased it. I've missed it to this day, but having learnt my lesson well in the '80s, I never reinvested in Leitz, mostly due to ridiculouslyhigh costs for the equipment in Australia where users tend to construct altars for their Leicas, light candles and burn incense to them and worship them like holy icons.

My Rolleis still get used and continue to give me exceptional images, alongside Nikkormats and D-Nikons. In the early 2000s I bit the bullet and bought (at a time when film camera prices had plummeted due to the inflow into the retail market of the first really cheap DSLRs) a Contax G1 kit., which to me is ALMOST as good as owning a Leica. It isn't really, of course, but I make do, as needs must.

Earlier this year I lucked into the find of a lifetime, an almost mint Leica M3 single stroke with 35, 50 and 90 lenses from a deceased estate, at a price I couldn't pass up. My partner uses it, and produces truly fine work with it. I long to expropriate it for my own use but bite my tongue, swallow my envy, and go on using my Contax and Rolleis. From the same source I also got an almost mint 2.8E2 kit which serves me well and keeps me from slipping back into Leicaphobia - yet the temptation remains, it's a lifetime thing.

To all of you who own and use Leicas, may I say - I envy you. But my time has passed.
 
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I worked at a little weekly newspaper all through high school. I went to an airshow probably my junior or senior year. I ran into a photographer shooting with a Leica SL or SL2 with a 400/5.6 Telyt. We struck up a conversation. He also had an M2. I had read about M's my never handled one. He actually handed over his M2 and let me walk around with it and make images. That pretty much started the obsession. A few years later I bought an M2 with a new 35/2. When I saw how a RF changed the way I visualized my images that pretty much sealed the deal.
 
A friend let me have a go with his M3 with a Canon f1.2 LTM lens and that was it. I bought a beaten up M3 on a trip to New York, then picked up a collapsible Summicron for it, and have since had an M2, M4, M4-2, CL and a bunch of lenses with lots of trades on the way to the current M6 and CLE. Currently looking to make the shift to digital with an M9.
 
How did you meet your significant other?

How did you meet your significant other?

Reading all these reviews, one realizes the love and strong binding between man (woman?) and machine. It would be nice to hear how you met your significant other, and see how it compares to the passion you felt when you met Leica. :)
 
I met my future wife in high school.
I was first introduced to Leica in college.

I loved my wife who bore three wonderful children for me.
I love my Leica and it has produced countless wonderful images for me.

Cancer took my wife from me.
My Leica will be passed on to my children.
 
I had bought a Nikormat FS in high school, and my brother, five years older, was a confirmed Nikon S3 user. Some time in my freshman year of college he told me a friend of his was selling a IIIf and 90mm lens for a good price, and I should just buy it, so I did. It caught my attention and that was all it took. Somehow, an optical finder has always worked better for me, which I immediately understood when I had a chance to use one.

My wife: In college I was half-dating someone from her hometown who, trying to gently dump me, introduced us. It worked.

My parents' story is somewhat better. Their school went from 7th to 12th grade. One fall, soon after school had started, my sophomore father was walking up the stairs in the school and spotted an 8th-grader, someone he'd never seen before. "I'm going to marry that one," he said to himself, and he did.
 
I was doing some PJ work in the early 1970's. Equipment was purchased through a well-known broker in the Boston area. Naturally, I purchased my Nikons (F's and FTN's) through him, along with lenses, etc. One day I mentioned that I'd really like something less taxing (physically) that would also perform well with a fixed focus lens in order to do "my own work."

The guy lent me an M3 for the week. Never looked back.

Eventually off-loaded the Nikons when I moved on to other career options ... but kept the M3; eventually adding an M2 and then later several M4-Ps and lenses 28 through 90mm ... all Leitz.

Never bought another camera, until someone convinced me to try to find a digital vehicle for these old but trusty lenses ... purchased a used M8.2 with 517 clicks on the shutter. It's an okay box, I suppose. The crop factor and the filter requirements are irritants, but the images can easily be mixed and (somewhat) matched with the scans of legacy and newer Kodak film emulsions.

Actually use the M8.2 to "sketch" and the film cameras to capture the final images whenever possible. That being said, more than a few of the DNGs created by the M8.2 are finding their way into the current portfolios.

Hopefully, I don't need to purchase another Leica camera body as the costs are astronomical. If anything bad happened, I'd replace the M4-Ps with M4/M6 combination, I suppose and forget the 8.2
 
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When I became serious about film photography in the 1990's I wanted a fully mechanical, new camera. That was back in the days before the internet, and used stuff wasn't as prevalent in the local stores. Anyway, the choices were a few SLRs (Nikon, Contax, Leica) and an M6. Since my grandmother shot an M3 through the 50's and 60's, I opted for the M6. That M6 is now long gone, replaced by all sorts of different cameras -- a journey in itself -- until I landed on an M3 (and Leicaflex SL, Nikon S2, Contax II, and a few others).
 
Tried to match the quality of prints in the paper sample books in camera shops when there were camera shops. New Pentax cameras and lenses just did not cut it no matter what I did.

A new neighbor loaned me a M3 and I used the same bulk roll of film, same batch of developer, same enlarging paper. Double blind study looking at prints showed a clear winner..
 
While managing a 1Hr photo shop in the early 80's a coworker brought in her granddads M3 with a 50/2 Chron and 135/4 Tele-Elmar. I was happily shooting my Nikon FE2 but had never tried a RF. Borrowed it for a weekend and got terrible pictures from The Tele-Elmar, but loved the M3 body.

I've had 6 Leica's since and still have a IIIc and IIIg. Not as smooth as the M's, but just love their compactness. Classics all the way.

Gary Hill
 
Leica R lenses adapted to EOS cameras
Leica M lenses used at Sony system cameras
Leica compact cameras
Leica M8...
 
First Leica was an M9.

First Leica style camera was the Sears Tower Type 3.

The Tower Type 3, the Nikkor HC 50/2 ltm lens, and Efke 25 was what introduced me to rangefinder photography.

The M9 is long gone. The Tower Type 3 is still here.
 
my story is a little different
I wanted an rf camera in 1973 to shoot in low light
a wheeler dealer I knew said a friend of his that bought and sold cars had taken a leica
as partial trade on a car and didn't need it
a few days later I met him at his small lot -- it was an m3 with a 5cm f3.5 Elmer
the shutter didn't work , we agreed on a price
I sent it to leica , back then as now they insist on a full service about $250 , I passed
some one told me about Joe zuckerman who repaired old cameras downtown Pittsburg
it was near the river , one of those affairs where you go up a steep story and a half staircase
he asked me to leave it ,
about a week later he called with a $75 repair , its done he said
I shot tri-x but the lens was too slow in low light , the f1.4 was expensive
I sold it to a guy who was going to photo school in salzburg Austria

I end up buying a nikon s2 with the 5cm f1.4 , I still have it today .

I purchased another leica an m5 with the 35 summilux in 1982 or so and shot with it 20 years
 
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