Reading the recent "Leica S and digiloyd" thread spurred me to write up my experiences with the Leica S thus far. Hope some find it helpful.
I have been using, and enjoying, the Leica S (006) for several months now. For reference I have the 70mm, 100mm, and 30-90mm zoom leica lenses; the Contax lens adapter; 80mm, 120mm macro, 140mm, and 210mm Contax lenses; the Leica microprism/split image screen (love that thing); and the vertical grip.
By way of background, I have shot a wide variety of medium format cameras (film and digital) over the years and currently shoot with a D800 and Leica M (240) along with the Leica S.
I have had no technical problems with the camera, the adapter, or any of the lenses. The AF is reasonably quick in the context of medium format AF and also reasonably accurate. I've missed focus on maybe 10-20 shots out of a few thousand thus far, and I attribute those to user error (shooting quickly and not verifying where the AF point landed). AF speed is slower than my D800, of course. I'd say it's slightly faster than the AF on my Contax 645. Focus accuracy in any reasonably good daylight is actually on par with the D800: if the light is good, AF tends to land accurately and not hunt.
Nutshell summary of my pros and cons:
Pros:
(1) Great image quality. In addition to just being sharp, images have a pop/presence that I rarely get from the D800 (although my Zeiss ZF 135mm on the D800 rocks and imparts a really nice sense of presence). Moreover, I can really push the files around in post in ways that my D800 files don’t stand up to. Color looks very pleasing to my eye (although I do not have the best eye for skin tones).
(2) Love the lenses. The 100mm 2.0 Summicron is extraordinary. The 70mm and 30-90 are also very very good, but the way that 100mm renders and resolves is out of this world.
(3) Fairly compact body size, even with the vertical grip.
(4) AF button on rear with full-time manual focus override works great for me.
(5) If you have a Leica S and don't yet have the micro prism/split image, get it. Trust me. Although I grew up shooting with manual focus cameras with microprism/split-image screens, it's been so long since I've used one that it was truly revelatory to start using one again and realize how much it aids manual focusing. If you've never used such a screen, you'll be amazed once you learn to use it.
(6) Battery life is great. (If anyone knows why neither of my batteries will charge beyond the blinking yellow “80% charged” signal on the charger, though, that would be helpful).
(7) The Contax adapter works great. No complaints or problems at all, and the Contax lenses on the Leica S focus about as fast and as accurate as on the native Contax body.
Cons:
(1) AF will hunt in anything but pretty good daylight. Hunts constantly under regular intensity studio modeling lights (I'm using Profoto B1s mostly). It's not a huge problem because I then just manually focus, but it does indeed hunt under lighting conditions where the D800 will just quickly and accurately lock focus. (I do have the latest firmware updates for the body and lenses installed). I’ve never tried focus tracking/continuous AF mode. I don’t shoot that way and, in any event, assume that continuous AF on anything other than slow moving objects would not work well with this camera.
(2) This is a small thing, but the cheapo plastic hoods bother me. They function as designed, but really: couldn't Leica have ponied up for some metal hoods with this thing?
(3) Write times can be relatively slow when shooting in a burst and caused me to miss a couple of shots on a recent shoot. My cards are a Transcend 300X (I think) SD card and a SanDisk Extreme IV CF card. By default, the camera writes to the CF card first and then to the SD as overflow, and I don’t see anyway to change that. I can change it to write to both cards concurrently, but I can’t change it to write to the SD first and then overflow to the CF. Under the conditions of the shoot (a model shoot), it wasn't a big deal since I could just recreate the pose, but under almost any other conditions (wedding, street photography, theater, concert, runway), it would trouble me. Don’t get me wrong: the delay while writing after a burst was probably only 4-5 seconds objectively, but it felt much longer subjectively. It’s probably because it’s been quite a while since I’ve shot with a camera where I could shoot faster than the buffer would clear (I think probably since my Contax/Phase One P30+ combo, which I sold several years ago).
Any recommendations as to the fastest reliable CF card that can be used in the Leica S 006?
(4) The lenses are too big, by which I mean too wide in circumference, not necessarily too long or too heavy. I gather that's due to the design of every (or almost every) lens being made to accommodate a central shutter version, but they certainly don't need to be so fat just to cover the image circle. Looking at them next to the Contax lenses (which, of course, cover a much larger image circle) really drives this home: The Contax lenses look svelte next to the Leica lenses.
(5) The Leica gods have apparently decided that one cannot shoot or operate the camera if the memory card door is open or at all ajar. Why would one want to do so? I don’t really have a specific scenario in mind, other than the fact that as a photographer for over 25 years now, there have been thousands of occasions when I’ve been changing a lens or camera setting and something interesting and unexpected happens and I put the camera back up to my eye and fire a quick shot. The point is: when I press the shutter release, I want it to take a freaking picture regardless of whether the computer inside my camera thinks it’s wise to do so.
(6) Speaking of “camera as computer,” two further things, one Leica-specific and one not:
First, I have a love-hate relationship with the non-dedicated buttons that change function depending on whether you give them a long press or a short press and/or depending on what camera function you’re currently in. This is the same arrangement that my prior Phase One back used and I’ll admit that it does in fact increase one’s range of easily accessible functionality without having to dive through various sub-menus on-screen ******IF***** one can remember the difference between what a short push brings up versus what a long push brings up and what you’ve assigned to all the soft keys. Example: While shooting last weekend, I could not remember for the life of me how to change the shooting mode from “program” to aperture priority. Turns out it’s done via a “long push” of the thumb wheel, which must have been how it got changed in the first place: that is, since I never shoot in program mode, I must have accidentally “long-pushed” once while trying to change the aperture. I had to subsequently look at the manual to remind myself how to change this: I could not recall at all during the shoot. Another example: even after several months, I still have to stop to think through which function I have assigned to which soft key (ISO top left/long push; drive mode top right/long push). I suppose that with enough use, I will have these things memorized, but that level of intuitive memory is going to take a very long time to build. Which takes me to the second point:
All of this would be a lot easier had the camera gods not decreed with advent of professional digital camera in the late 1990s that we shall no longer have dedicated dials for ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, but shall henceforth control everything only via little thumb wheels, buttons, sub-menus, and touch screens. Although I’m not all that old (44 years old) and have been shooting digital since the Nikon D100 back in 2001, I suppose I am old (or at least, old-school) enough that this still pisses me off. Of the cameras I presently own, only my film M and film Contax 645 have actual dials to control all three variables. My M240 has aperture and shutter speed rings but no ISO dial. My Sony RX1 has aperture and shutter speed rings but no ISO dial. My Nikon D800 has neither an aperture ring (for most of my lenses other than the Zeiss 135mm), shutter speed dial, nor ISO dial. The Leica S has neither an aperture ring, shutter speed dial, nor ISO dial. Sigh…
(7) I’d greatly prefer to use Capture One rather than having had to re-learn Lightroom all over again just to process Leica S files. C1 will process Leica S files, but as I understand it, will not apply the Leica S profile nor optimally render the images. I’ve processed some Leica S files in C1 and it works in the sense that they look fine, but I’d prefer them to look better than fine, of course.
Images follow below. (I can't figure out how to post more than one image per posting here, so I will make several sequential posts. Only the first and the second (of the two models) received any significant post-processing. The rest received only cropping, modest color adjustment, and +15 "Clarity" in Lightroom.
#1: 30-90mm zoom at 90mm, f5.6, ISO 100, lighting from Profoto strobes. Handheld.
