I want this

p much

think it is a good plan, buy a leica already versus spend a lifetime wondering. was it you who said you maybe had access to some that were in an attic, or?

that too

my dad's a "leica dude" and has an m6, an m8.2, and an r-something-or-other at home. but basically all he ever takes pictures with now is a little point and shoot

sure. a guy in a store saw my camera recently and was all ah!, back in the day i ..., i sort of skipped ahead in my head and started imagining being bequeathed his old, dusty, long dormant leicas (this wasn't the point of the story, but remembering it i realise it was the time i left the store without the paracetamol i was buying, maybe such was the depth of my reverie); would be great to get to play around with something without necessarily having to jump right into making your choice. it's nice to know that there's some flexibility in still being able to trade up and down once you have one, though.

I have a M7 and had a R2A - tbh, I'd go Bessa or Zeiss Ikon over a Leica.

gbx I would borrow your dad's m6!

milo I have an autocord - bought it used off eBay, sent it off to an autocord export for a (reasonably priced) CLA. great camera! there slight differences in all the variations, such as what company did the shutter, but they are all pretty much the same. great build quality.

for used Leica, I would break it down like this:

meter or non meter?

meter, you're stuck with an M6 or newer, probably at least $1000, maybe $900 if you're lucky.

non meter, you have M2, M4, M4-2, M4-P. lot to be said for all of them. depends on what you're looking for. measure twice, cut once as they say!

oh i'm totally gonna borrow the M6. and i was thinking if/when I buy a RF for myself, i'd get something non-metered. the R3M is appealing for the 1:1 viewfinder, all manual-ness, and price. plus, i have a sneaking suspicion that it'll be easier to borrow lenses from my dad than bodies.

but i guess my q to you was: you said in the other thread that ebay leicas are overpriced, and that privated dealers were the way to go. but....which dealers?

hmm, well it depends on how much of a risk you want to take... on eBay, check out the seller wye7, who is a pretty well regarded leica repairman who sells CLA'd leicas on the side. all the bodies he sells have been CLA'd by him and he's pretty good at standing by his work.

other than that, private deals rangefinderforum.com and getdpi.com are the way to go. that's tougher though, because the good deals usually get snapped up quickly. and people get burned on those sites too. and it can be a huge timesink, spending every hour refreshing to see if what you want comes up, and trying to be the first in line.

if you want to go this route, look for ads done by "honest abe" types of people - people who make full disclosure, go above and beyond what's necessary to provide a surfeit of detail about their cameras, and who have good feedback.

other than that, you can try KEH, which *had* a good reputation but people have been questioning them lately. and they tend to be above the market price by $1-200 in most cases, at least on leica bodies.

you can still get good deals on eBay, but there'll be big risks. the worst that can happen is you buy a leica, find out it has a problem, and have to send it in for repair, which can be $2-400. (otoh a repaired leica, assuming good internals and no abuse, will then be bulletproof for at least 10 years, or so people say - I haven't owned one for more than a year yet!)

and if you ever decide to sell, you'll probably get most of what you put in - I'd figure about $1-150 in losses at most after factoring shipping, paypal fees, etc.

I've had very good luck with KEH for used stuff, but it's been a year or two since I bought anything from them. Probably going to order a NIkon FE2 pretty soon, though.

If you got a meterless Leica and decide you want some kind of meter, Voigtlander makes (or made) a hotshoe meter that was affordable - imperfect (you can't really see exactly what's being metered) but good enough for negative.

I guess the main thing to emphasize is that, buying a leica will be a money-losing proposition, in some way or another - just depends on where you'll take your lumps! you can buy a bargain leica and later discover that it'll need repairs - that's a lump. you can buy a priced higher than average leica that's guaranteed to work - but when you sell it, you'll take a lump. if you happen to drop that leica or break some part of it, that'll be another lump. and of course you'll be spending money on film and processing and scanning, which will be a big lump.

it does help to think of the money that you lose as akin to a 'rental fee', and that compared to the initial investment, it's not big. and sometimes you break even when you sell, or you can even sell at a profit. those are good scenarios. if you happened to buy a lot of leica equipment about a year ago, you're grinning right now, because leica prices have gone up in the past year, sometimes by 50-100%. this is because of the success of the m9, and because of the rising china middle class. I don't think prices are likely to come down soon unless something like, say, the death of Kodak happens in the next year. which is very likely. then, body prices will likely fall, but I see lenses as either stable or growing, since there will always be digital bodies to use them on.

and that's not to say digital doesn't have its own share of lumps - digital bodies are almost guaranteed to lose money as soon as you click the purchase button. digital lenses are better in this way.

I bought a used M7 and used 35 Summilux ASPH in early 2003 from folks on the Leica User Group mailing list - my total expenditure was under $3k.
Thanks to Leica's absurd price increases over the last decade, I can probably get $4k for the lens and almost $2k for the body.

That is nuts

a 35mm summicron v4 used to go for $1000-1200 a year and a half ago, now they regularly go for $1600-2500 depending on condition

>:|

30 years ago you could kick a leica down a street

I think it's going to be all I can do to gather a little extra cash and get myself a Leica 50mm (probably an Elmar or something) before just writing off purchasing new gear. Oh well, guess film will die and I'll be using a 5D in a few years anyway?

collapsible summicrons are usually pretty cheap, $2-300, because the front element is really soft and is usually scratched up and they are prone to haze. otoh the collapsible 50mm 'cron was HCB's primary lens. shrug!

30 years ago you could kick a leica down a street

kinda thought that was one of the selling points tbh

http://www.bobbyleephoto.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/bresson.jpg

I love the look in his eyes - the gaze of a hunter!

HCBs "primary lens" was his ~eye~, man

I also want to share this picture of Eggleston

http://i.imgur.com/OCikR.jpg

what a gentleman!

btw even tho I think the whole thing is ott and ridiculous, the weird holster thing leica ginned up for that special edition M9 is kind of a good idea?

I mean with a name like Eggleston

what weird holster thing?

holy shit

http://www.shanelavalette.com/images/journal/egglestonandlynch.jpg

O_O

I'm on IPHONE but they did some dum limited run thing with the M9. some VW designer refashioned the body and instead of a neck strap they put a hand loop on the right side of the body. they then matched it to a shoulder holster deal, like the cam is a 9mm or something. I think it looks whack, but the idea isn't a bad one

oh yeah I think several companies make straps like that - they call them like quick...something.

btw that looks like a... contax g2? that lynch is holding.

http://www.louisck.net/2009/03/uso-tour-weblog-kuwait-iraq-af.html

lol louis ck uses a leica. is that good or bad?

obv its good. like, as a huge louis ck stan, i actually swooned a bit when i found out he was a leica dude.

he got some good shots imo. i think you can see his visual sensibilities reflected in "Louie."

haha I dunno anything about the dude, never seen his work

his setup is like $3.5k between the mp and the summilux. O_o

also he has the same light meter I use

not counting his 35 and 90!

also O_o at using a lens w/o a protective filter in iraq

obv its good. like, as a huge louis ck stan, i actually swooned a bit when i found out he was a leica dude.

he got some good shots imo. i think you can see his visual sensibilities reflected in "Louie."

so otm, both points. some lovely pictures out of helicopters on the blog. the pictures of army dudes i find too hard to judge but are neat. visually louie is beautiful - i've read him enthusing about lenses and on stuff like the episode with the neighbours & his pregnant sister you can see how much it pays off.

i think more about the compositional similarities & diffs between photography and cinema than i used to, recently, like i was to play with a film camera to see how it relates

also, all of his prologuing about the leicas - this is awesome, but you can try this one cheaply instead, putting up 'this is a shot taken on film', 'this digital', comparison shots etc are pretty great.

yeah I really appreciated the comparisons. and I think the shot on the helipad is gorgeous

got the go ahead on the M6 btw :D

neat! come with any lenses?

prob at least one. 28mm

When I was an art major, I wanted a Hasselblad XPan so I could approximate Cinemascope on 35mm film.

I mean, I'd still love an Xpan, but it's a lot less doable these days.

Just bought a M3 from someone on RFF - recently CLAed by Youxin Ye at a good price. Realistically I'll come out even on the deal in a worst case scenario.

nice one!

sweet - what's your 50mm?

I don't have one currently. Going to initially try a 35mm (I've got a 35 Nokton SC coming) and use the whole viewfinder, if that doesn't work out I'll probably look for a deal on a used Zeiss 50/2. Before Zeisses got scarce, I was seeing those for $550ish, which might be the best cost to lens ratio going.

the planar or sonnar?

Planar, the Sonnar is pretty expensive.

May not be going that route, just PMed someone on RFF about a Canon LTM 50/1.4. I'll just have to order a LTM-M adapter somewhere.

chinese made ones are cheap and match up pretty well with 'official' ones if you use a digital caliper to measure the thickness

The Voigtlander Nokton (35/1.4, SC) came in the mail today. It's crazy, crazy small. Pictures don't do the size justice.

Hi dere M3
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6156/6256050987_4d4c8364c7_b.jpg
Leica M3 w/ 35mm Nokton by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

The modern M grip I found used looks kind of goofy on it but there's a vast improvement when it comes to holding the camera.