Leica M7 review

These are some initial thoughts on the Leica M7 (and Motor Winder M - 14408).

If you've used Leica in the past, then every time you handle a "new" piece of equipment for the first time you're usually struck by the feeling of familiarity.  Every camera, every lens, every accessory proudly displays its lineage - if you've used an M3 then you can instantly use an M7 (and an M9, but that's a slightly steeper learning curver).  The shutters are the same (cloth, capped at 1/1000s), the viewfinders largely the same (mostly unchanged since the M4-p), loading film is the same (that is to say, a pain in the ass), ergonomics identical.  The only exception I can think of is the M5 - that was about the most radical departure for Leitz orthodoxy that you can imagine.  But the M7 is no different from the other classics.  The shutter firing mechanism is different and there are more electronics involved but you can sense that Leica engineers spent a large amount of time figuring out how to keep the camera shooting characteristics largely unchanged for the shooter.

So what's different for the M7?

Autoexposure (AE)
The big one, it seems this feature caused some diehards to throw their hands up in disgust - at least until they actually used it.  Then it seemed only natural to include a feature that was standard issue in the 1980s.  So why didn't Leitz include this feature in the 80's?  Well, they actually did start to innovate with the M5 and the introduction of that camera body almost wrecked the company (you can read about that story elsewhere on the internet).  One can only guess that if the M5 had been a smashing success (it wasn't), then there may have been more of an incentive to introduce AE in later bodies.  As it turned out though, introducing electronics into the standard M body was impossible at the time so they increased the dimensions of the M5.  Because of this failure, I'm assuming that adding AE became much less of a priority (at least in relation to keeping the body dimensions and handling the same as the classic Ms). Fast forward a couple of decades and it became technologically possible to add the electronics and keep the body the same, so they did it.

So how does it work in practice? Very well, actually. If the ultimate goal of photography is to distill the experience down to simply framing and capturing moments then it succeeds admirably.  Granted, I can most of my exposure through guesswork and a handheld meter which makes it just as fast as AE but probably not as accurate in most cases. The exposures themselves seem to be much more accurate than those on my M3 & M4, I'm assuming because the electronically controlled shutter means no more inaccurate shutter speeds.  

Quiet Shutter

Before shooting with an M7, I would have said that nothing could beat my double stroke M3 - it has the merest whisper of a snicker for a shutter sound and it's largely the reason it was love at first sight for me.  But incredibly, the M7 has it beat especially at slower shutter speeds (1/15s or slower).  It's almost completely silent, and doesn't have the click/whirring sound that other Leicas do at slower settings.  Even at the faster settings it's quieter - amazing.

Ergonomics

The ISO dial on the back is truly meh and really could have been implemented differently.  Turning the wheel feels slightly gritty on mine, as if there's a bit of sand stuck underneath it.  To change exposure compensation you have to press a button then rotate the outer wheel.  To change the ISO settings you rotate the small inner wheel (too small for my fingers) - there's no button to press first though so conceivably you could accidentally rotate this without knowing it.  An ideal design would have safety locks on both compensation on ISO dials.  

The shutter speed selected is displayed in the viewfinder, if you've used an M9 or M8 you're very familiar with this.  It's pretty unobtrusive and you won't notice it after a while.  

Besides that, this thing is pure Leica and if you've used one you've used them all. 

Rangefinder Flare
Ugh.  Flare is a major problem - my RF patch flares indoors, outdoors, everywhere.  Low light or bright light.  To counteract this I ordered a SHADE from leicagoodies.com and it's helped tremendously (but simultaneously lowering the brightness of the framelines by a stop or two).  I had a similar problem with my M4-p.

Can't use IXMOO cassettes 

This one is a big disappointment to me, as I have roughly 30 IXMOOs that I use on a regular basis.  But the addition of the DX reader required a slight narrowing of the space where the film is inserted.  This amounted to a couple of millimeters but it was just enough to prevent the IXMOO from fitting.

Compared to:
For now, I'll just do a quick comparison with my current stable.  As time goes on, I'll update this review with what I remember from my previous bodies.

Leica M3 - this is still a sentimental favorite, although it doesn't get as much use as it should.  If you use a 50mm (or the 40mm Summicron) then there is no better body. Period.  Focusing accuracy is just incredible and easily beats the M7 where it counts - accuracy, magnification (.91), and flare (there is none at all).
Leica M4 - a jewel, probably the best of the post M3 bodies.  Combines the build quality magnificence of the M3 with the more modern handling of the M4-p/M6 lineage.  This might be the last M body before cost cutting and the use of more modern materials.
Leica M9 - best digital camera I've ever used, warts and all.  Full frame without adding very much bulk to a standard M body.  Battery life sucks hard.  High ISO is poop.  LCD is shite.  Frame buffer is non-existent.  Who cares? Buy more batteries, turn off the chimping, buy fast glass, shoot at ISO 1250, use Lightroom, and get a DSLR if you want to bang away like Rambo.  This is a serious camera built around the idea that when building a camera, image quality is the only consideration.  They engineered the hell out of the sensor and it's an amazing combination of digital sharpness but it still somehow looks like film.  Hmm, I should write a review for my M9 soon.  I think the time is ripe, it's only been released for 4-5 years now.  But compared to the M7 it suffers a bit because of the handling issues - battery, LCD, slightly thicker, and the shutter sound is pretty loud in comparison.  The M7 is just graceful somehow, which is lacking a bit in the M9.

Conclusion
Well, after 10 rolls in about a month I can say that I'm sold - this is pretty much the best M body that I've ever shot with (and I've shot with most of them).  It simply makes you want to go out and shoot. 

Leica M4

This is the Leica M4 along with two Summicrons. The monster is a 90mm cron, known as the v2. It's a hefty lens and simply towers over 90mm rangefinder lenses. All this heft has a purpose - even though its about 50 years old the optics are still stunning (when it focuses correctly). Which brings me to the problem. The rangefinder mechanism in general is pretty inaccurate and prone to errors. For a wide angle lens a bit of focusing slop isn't necessarily a deal killer - any slop will probably be covered up by increased DOF at with a wider focal length and with the lens stopped down. At telephoto lengths the slop becomes harder and harder to ignore - on a 90mm lens at f/2 the DOF is razor thin.  Unfortunately my lens has a pretty big front focusing problem, about 30mm or so by my measurements.  As soon as I saw the test chart I immediately boxed up the lens and sent it to DAG Camera.

This is a shot with the 35mm Summicron, shot wide open on an M9 (see original here).  This particular version won't win any beauty contests, it has a rather large blob on an interior lens element that was attacked by fungus.  The fungus was cleaned out but the coating on that section is completely gone.  This is at the edge of the lens, so there's a slight loss of contrast wide open.  Stopped down to f/2.8 and it's razor (I mean razor) sharp.  And by f/5.6 it's game over - the amount of micro-contrast is nothing short of spectacular.

And the 90mm Summicron, here on Acros 100 and an M3 (original found here).  It was very sunny out, so I stopped down to probably f/11 here which explains why everything was in focus.