The Leica M6 is one of the easiest film camera’s to use, especially for shooting my 4 year old who is constantly running around like a madman and only sits still to fart or watch lizard videos on Youtube. The Leica M6 is of course, a range finder and if you try and focus precisely with every single shot, especially if you’re doing street or photographing moving subjects e.g a fart in a hurricane, you are going to have a very hard time.
But fear not, because the Leica M6 is not really designed for punters to carefully match up the images in the rangefinder. This is a camera designed for Hyperfocal Distance focusing or Scale Focusing (also known as Zone Focusing). Basically you set the lens to have a particular area in focus at a given aperture. Each aperture will give you a different zone that will be in focus, and at large apertures the zone will increase. As an example, most of the time I’m shooting 400 speed film in shitty light (cloudy), if I’m walking around the streets I can set my 35mm Summicron to F8 and everything from about 5-15 feet will be in focus. Hyperfocal distance focusing is when you have everything in focus from a particular starting distance, for example, everything from 8 feet to infinity. I could probably a write a whole post about this but am currently too busy picking my nose, but check this article out for a good explanation.
Back to the Leica M6. There are two types (excluding all the special/limited editions), the Leica M6 Classic and the Leica M6 TTL. They’re both practically the same, with the exception of a couple of rather important things. For one, the Leica M6 Classic has a much smaller shutter speed dial and two, the light meter on the Leica M6 TTL is apparently not fixable. When I first bought my Leica M6 I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I was buying and had read the TTL was a bit easier to use only for the fact that the shutter dial was larger and therefore supposedly easier to change. Looking back, and having now used the Leica MP, which has the same size dial as the Leica M6 Classic, I can say that I think I was right, the large dial really is easier to use. However, quite often I’d find myself blocking the light meter when adjusting the shutter dial because it protrudes out the front. Perhaps that was just the way I fumbled around with the camera but even in it’s last days (before being sold) I still found myself occasionally blocking the light meter window, which results in the rangefinder patch turning red.
Perhaps it’s because I’m used to the larger shutter speed dial on the M6, or perhaps it’s just because I’m a shit photographer, regardless, I do find the smaller shutter speed dial on the Leica MP (and on the Leica M6 Classic) a bit more difficult to adjust. I hope I get used to it, perhaps by the time this gets up I might have.
Anyway, the Leica M6 is a wicked camera. If you’re looking at getting into film and/or have never tried a rangefinder and are shitting your pants at the thought of how difficult they might be to use – don’t be. Again, if you’re going to try and precisely focus everything by matching up the two images, then you’re in for a tough time. Sure, this can be done for things that aren’t moving, but if you’re shooting holidays with the kids, forget about that and use zone focusing. If it’s such a wicked camera why did I sell it? Greed and ego mainly. The Leica MP is that much better. Some say it’s basically the same camera with minor improvements, but you can tell subtle differences, more of which you can read about in my Leica MP review here. I was just going to go for a Black version of the Leica M6, but when i looked the prices were getting close to the MP (since then I found a Black version for less than HKD$10,000), so I thought I might as well fork out bit extra and get the MP.
Back to the M6 TTL version’s light meter not being fixable. I was told that if the light meter craps out you can’t fix it. To me that didn’t matter and there’s not a lot of reports out there, as far as I know about, that point to this being a major issue. It’s a film Leica, they’ll go for years and years unless you treat them like Brad Pitts kids, or get unlucky. If I was buying again, I wouldn’t worry about this issue. If you’re anal and worry a lot, then go for the classic.
Overall, the Leica M6 has been a great camera, sometimes I even regret selling it for sentimental sake, but there’s a lot around and I know I can pick up another one if I really wanted to for relatively cheap (Leica speaking). If you’re thinking about the Leica M6, go ahead and get it, you won’t be disappointed. If cash is not an issue for you, get the MP but at the same time, you’re not going to miss the MP if you only have the M6.
Need a Leica M6 Classic or TTL, Black or Chrome version. I live in Hong Kong where there are thousands on the used market and might be able to help you get one if you ask nicely.
Check out some more film cameras that I have here.
