Follow up on the Leica M9-P

I had posted some thoughts on my switch from a Nikon D3s to the Leica M9-P and now it's time for a follow-up.

I'm still happy with the camera.

Here are some observations:

•  I shoot significantly less images then before. This is a good thing as I spend more time before pressing the shutter button resulting in less post-processing work and better images.
• I still like the Leica M9-P with the 35mm lens. 35mm became my focal-length of choice.
• My photography got better since I have the M9, this however has little to do with the camera itself
• I got more shots which I really like than I lost due to the missing autofocus etc.

But

• I have the 90mm Summarit f/2.5 and its nearly impossible to get the focus right. I'm selling the lens on ebay now. The lens is great, but its very difficult to make correct focus decisions. This basically means that I can only use the Leica with focal lenses < 50mm.
• For actual work the Nikon D3s is the better choice, I definitely miss the 24-70mm/2.8 and 70-200mm/2.8 and the certainty that every images will be usable.
• I did a test-shoot with a Hasselblad H4D-40 and the 100mm/2.2 lens and while I liked some Leica images I loved nearly all Hasselblad pictures. Of course, this comparison is unfair, but I would have never thought that the difference is so big. The Leica made good quality images, the Hasselblads were exceptional.

Amsterdam Panorama with a Leica M9-P & Summarit 90mm/2.5

My first panorama:

Thumbs up for ThumbsUp

I was testing some stuff to pimp up the M9.

So far I liked the Thumbs Up lever which just snaps into the flash shoe and provides a better grip. I find it very useful and definitely worth it.

Their bips, boops and other "soft releases" don't work for me. Somehow it started making funny noises when pressing the shutter button after installing it, so I've removed it again.

I used to be very happy with my "Really Right Stuff"-ballhead. They offer a replacement base-plate for a M9 which makes it about 2mm "more bulky". But then you can directly connect it with the ballhead on the tripod, so I also like this a lot.

Leica Look?

A sample picture:

Left eyed?

Which eye are you using with your rangefinder?

When picking the camera up I kind of naturally always used my left eye. But today I was reading some forum posts about it and remember seeing the images in the instruction manual, where always the right eye was used.

Appereantly, if you are right-handed its likely that you are also right-eyed. Of course the primary question is what feels most comfortable to you and what gives the best results, but for me it just meant switching from the left eye to the right one.

It took about 5 minutes to get used to it and now it works better than before :) Cool stuff ...