[Leica] M9 reviews

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

This has been an amusing and informative exchange. For my part: first of
all, I am so poor I'm not even allowed to look at an M9 if I see one in the
street -- I'm like Lot's wife. I have a second hand CL and a second hand
Bessa R2 and an old screw mount collapsible Summitar 50 with an adapter and
a Elmar C 90/4 and a Summicron C 50/2, all used, oh and the always
affordable detested Hektor 135/4.5 screw mount too -- so you can see I'm the
schlmozzle on the LUG scene.  But I CAN say this:  that I had no interest in
the M8 -- somehow it felt to me like a boondoggle of the M5 variety, not as
bad people made out but still, problematic. Yet the minute I started reading
about the M9 I knew something was different.  And then I recently saw that
the indefatigably informative (albeit not terribly imaginative) Ken Rockwell
on his site calls the M9 the best digital camera on the planet. He's a
die-hard Nikon / Canon man too. Technologically he's an electrical engineer
or something who's been working in digital technology since like the first
clock-radio with LED numbers came out so he's no slouch on that end. He's
EXACTLY the kind of guy who'd snicker at a fashionable camera that cost far
too much.  But he ain't snickering, he's singing like a choir of striped
polo-shirted angels.  (The shirts are a California thing apparently, like
beige wall-to-wall...)

Still we shouldn't get our undies yanked up wedgie-high because Dante and
Marty and some reviewers don' t like the thing. They make reasonable points.
Except for one, Dante: Leica has some kind of weird German relationship with
the idea of reaching a popular audience. They killed my fave, the CL, after
three years because it was too popular (and okay a little hinky too at first
but I think Minolta got that all cleared up -- those boys didn't screw
around) and I have a Panasonic digital point and shoot with this amazing
vario-Elmar 18X zoom on it where at wide angles you can still count all the
leaves on the trees and it was not cheap but certainly affordable -- yet
haven't they given that relationship up? So I don't think they're marketing
to the people who you think can "save" them.  They have managed to survive
as neurotic and behind the times as they are, all these years. I think it's
because of two things: frequently breathtaking optical and even mechanical
success; and a kind of nobility of intention.  Most of the people who have
used a camera and a lens to change the world have used Leica.

And of course the cameras should be designed as they've always been designed
and look like they've always looked -- that's the whole point man.  Who
jumped up and down with joy when Mercedes started looking like Camrys?

Vince