I recently came across this refreshingly simple and different ‘review’ of Leica’s newly released M11 rangefinder camera. Leigh doesn’t talk about specs or performance or the thousand other things that almost all reviewers talk about these days. Instead, she gets to the soul of why anyone wants to take a photograph, and how this particular Leica allows her to get to grips with her motivations.
Towards the end of the video, she mentions how tactile the camera feels and how that is so important when taking a photograph. Now, I am fairly certain I’ll never own a modern Leica anytime soon and therefore unlikely to experience the same emotions as her. But years of shooting my Fuji X-T20 a certain way means I think I come close.
The camera is almost always attached to a 7-Artisans 35mm f/1.2. This is a fully manual lens, with zero electronic assists. It has an aperture ring. The Fuji also has separate shutter and exposure compensation dials and main mode dial is set to “M”.
So each time I pick up the camera, it is a deliberate thing to size up the frame in my head, look through the viewfinder, turn the aperture ring, step turn my way through the shutter dial and lock in everything before pressing the shutter. Sometimes this is a fast process, but most times it is not. I miss many shots because it takes too long. I curse myself often because of it. But in the end, this slowness allows for a tactileness that makes for wonderful memories later on.