This article is by Horatio Tan (Website|Instagram|Facebook). It is written as a parody from the perspective of a Leica SL photographer, regarding the superiority of the SL system over the M system. Check out his other articles, also available on his website.
I think that Leica has a problem. And it has to do with how amazing the Leica SL is. Makes you wonder why any Leica shooter would still hang onto their Leica rangefinders. The thing is, I too at one time felt this passionately about my Leica M body rangefinders. Despite the world moving towards better focusing systems, my resolve was unshakable. Nothing was going to get in between me and my Leica rangefinder, to adapt a quote from a young Brooke Shields in her Calvin’s. In fact, nothing was going to separate me from my M. You would have to pry it out of my cold dead hands, as if it were a rifle clinging onto Charlton Heston. I can go all day with my bad adaptation of famous popular clichés.
The point is, we practitioner of Leica rangefinder photography are a loyal bunch. And it didn’t matter to us that the times are a changing. Photography moved on from rangefinder photography, to through-the-lens, to autofocusing. But we few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters) maintained our loyalty, upgrading generation after generation, edition after edition, to the next newer and better M body iteration of rangefinder technology.
Thing is, rangefinder technology really hasn’t improved from the M3 – assuming you could call rangefinder a technology at all.
