Sports Photography with a Leica M3

[gmrobinson@mmm.com]

It is time to return to a discussion about photography with the Leica
camera.  I am curious if other rangefinder Leica owners use their cameras as
I do.  I am an amateur sports photographer and have photographed my sons and
their sports teams for the past twenty years.  I am currently serving as the
team photographer for a university football team where my younger son is a
senior playing defensive line.  I have photographed many different sports
besides football - basketball, baseball, soccer, cross-country skiing,
track, etc.  Much of the below discussion is about football photography, but
it applies to the rest.

I have had little luck using a SLR to photograph active sports.  The
problems are my inability to focus on rapid action, the difficulty of seeing
action outside the viewfinder, and accommodating the time delay from when
the shutter button is pressed and the shutter fires.  

About ten years ago I solved these problems, except for the focusing, by
using a Leica M3 camera.  I chose the Leica M3 because of its almost
life-size viewfinder.  My normal practice with football photography is to
use a 90 mm lens and prefocus about ten yards from the sideline and wait for
the action to enter this zone.  The 90mm lens has adequate depth-of-field to
allow for most moderate focus errors.  By keeping both eyes open I see all
of the action besides that in the viewfinder.  Having a frame that only
takes up half of the viewfinder also helps to see the broad field of play
and makes it easy to center on the action and avoid getting lost.  But, the
main advantage of the Leica is the rapid action of its shutter.  The Leica
does not wait to fire its shutter while a computer calculates the exposure,
finds focus, closes the diaphragm, and lifts the mirror; it goes
immediately.  With the Leica I can easily capture the action at its peak.
For example, I routinely capture a pass when it arrives in the hands of a
ball receiver, a hand blocking a field goal, and a bat hitting a ball.  

Of course a 90mm lens means that I am limited to capturing action only out
to the center of a football field.  I commonly severely crop my pictures to
make them useable.  My film of choice is Tri-X and develop the film with
D-76 diluted 1:1.  This combination has served me well.  

I would like to hear from others who use the Leica for sports photography.

Glen Robinson
gmrobinson@mmm.com