Then you get me wrong. I am not anti-Leica, I am saying similar things to Ken Rockwell, when he says you can use any camera to make great images. If I ever win the lottery, I might even buy a Leica to put on a shelf somewhere. They are beautiful cameras with a similar level of automation to my Ebony 5" x 4" view camera - the big difference is that I can create massive prints with my Ebony and that is something that is important to me.
As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s a great camera for street photography and reportage where discretion is important. But, for the work that I do, the present M10 just doesn’t cut the mustard. And, as Mike also has a Nikon D750, with similar sensor resolution, we were discussing which is better - he wasn’t trashing the Nikon and I wasn’t trashing the Leica, it’s just that I can’t see why anyone who is taking the kind of landscape shots that Mike has been sharing, especially wide dynamic range shots, wouldn’t use a camera that has a built-in spot meter.
If I arrived somewhere for a shoot and the only camera available was a Leica, I would use it - it’s just so simple to use, but I would have to do a bit of testing to find out the kind of results the centre-weighted metering gave and adjust my technique to using it.
My experience and work is primarily with LF cameras and Nikon DSLRs, with the odd iPhone image thrown in for good measure. The first I can do standing on my head (it helps when the screen is upside down
), the last doesn’t have the same menu problems as a DSLR but, as I have said before, I just set my DSLR up in a way that the only controls I need to adjust are the aperture, ISO, shutter speed and focus - all the rest I hardly ever even look at.
I must say that it did take time to setup my new D850 for the first time - something that could easily baffle a lot of inexperienced new users, but one feature of the Nikon D850 that has made life so much simpler is the “My Menu” menu that has allowed me to “extract” the 6 settings I might need to use from time to time into one simple short list.
But once that that is done, my D850; like my D810 and Mike’s D750 are no more difficult to use than a Leica, especially if the person using it works in manual mode.
Well, my takeaway was that it doesn’t matter what camera you use, as long as you get to know it well.
My only reason for upgrading to the D850 was primarily the extra resolution and the fact that I didn’t want to be forced into a mirrorless camera to get that.
I shall be assisting the less knowledgable members of our photo club on an outing on Saturday, so I’ll be going out tomorrow with my new toy to get some shots for myself. Hey! So Christmas has come early but, then again, I didn’t get any birthday presents this year