Tool Kit: Leica Cameras Have Eye-Popping Prices, With Photos to Match

Leica Cameras Have Eye-Popping Prices, With Photos to Match

Aaron Durand and Nick Bilton/The New York Times

A train speeding through a tunnel in San Francisco. This 30-second exposure was taken with the Leica M9-P and a 28mm f2 lens.

Today’s smartphones can take pretty crisp pictures, so buying a regular camera might sound like a waste of money. Now imagine buying a fully manual Leica digital camera that, with a body and lens, can cost as much as $20,000.

Ridiculous? Perhaps. But the hard-core photographers who own a Leica swear by its craftsmanship, lens quality and lack of bells and whistles even as they acknowledge that their beloved camera gear is, well, not for everyone.

The question is whether your love of photography â€" and perhaps your skill â€" run deep enough to justify dropping enough money to buy a car, on a camera.

“For most people, the Leica is absolutely the wrong camera. But if you’re really, really dedicated to the craft, then the pictures it can take are beautiful,” said Christopher Michel, a photographer and investor with Nautilus Ventures.

Leica, based in Germany, released its first high-end digital camera in 2006, the M8, but the company has been in the camera business for almost a century. In the 1950s, Leica rose to fame when it introduced the M-System camera, its first so-called rangefinder body with an interchangeable lens mount.

Although it had a rough start crossing into digital, Leica now sells almost a dozen varieties of digital cameras, including some point-and-shoots. But the most coveted models are still in the rangefinder M-System series.

Unlike DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras, in which a photo subject is viewed through a mirror, rangefinders offer crisper images because the lens is closer to the sensor of the camera. The shutter on a rangefinder is also incredibly still and quiet â€" unlike the DSLR, in which the mirror flips up and down at the moment a photo is snapped â€" so little vibration is added to a photo when the shutter is pressed.

Still, focusing with a Leica rangefinder is not as easy as just snapping a picture with your iPhone.

First, the camera focus is completely manual. A Leica viewfinder shows two versions of the scene before you. The trick is to line up the images and make them overlap over the area to be in focus.

Leica offers several digital camera bodies. The Leica M-E is the lowest-priced model of the M-System. The bare-bones M-E body costs $5,450. It has an 18-megapixel sensor and can shoot at an ISO of 160 to 2,500 (the ISO number measures the sensitivity to light). Photos taken during the day will be flawlessly clear, while in very low light the images will deteriorate and become grainy without a flash.

The latest high-end camera from the company, the Leica M, was announced late last year and costs $6,950. It features a newly designed 24-megapixel CMOS sensor (CMOS stands for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), which makes it possible for the camera to shoot in lower-light situations while keeping a crisp image. The Leica M is the only M-System camera that can shoot video.

Leica also offers the Leica M Monochrom, an 18-megapixel camera that can shoot only black and white. Some people might ask why anyone would buy a camera that cannot even take a color picture, but Leica has poured years of research and development into optimizing the sensor on this camera for the subtlety of black-and-white photography.

The results from the Leica M Monochrom are astounding. Pictures have the tonality and contrast that make them look as if they were shot with real black-and-white film. The M Monochrom can also shoot at an ISO up to 10,000, which allows pictures to be taken in extremely low light.

Keep in mind that once you buy a Leica camera body, it still needs a lens. But this, professional photographers say, is where Leica excels.

“Leica makes a lens the way it should be made, with metal and glass, while everyone else is making plastic lenses that are meant to be thrown away in a couple of years,” said Ken Rockwell, a photographer and expert on cameras and lenses. “The Leica lenses are so special because they are smaller, faster and sharper.”

Mr. Rockwell notes that Leica’s lenses, which are still assembled by hand in Germany, do not have the added features of modern DSLRs, like motors, and that the company uses the highest-grade glass available.

“The Leica glass,” Mr. Michel said, “adds that special ethereal quality to the image that no DSLR can match.”

I have tested almost all of the company’s cameras and lenses. The control I have with a manual Leica makes me realize that today’s abundance of buttons and features on most cameras often makes people take poorer pictures.

Leica’s lenses can vary in price from $1,650 for the Leica 50mm f/2.5 Summarit-M, to the Leica 50mm f/0.95 Noctilux-M, which costs $10,950. Once you have recovered from seeing the price of the Noctilux-M, keep in mind it is considered one of the best low-light lenses in the world and has such a wide aperture it can shoot almost in darkness.

The company names all of its lenses based on the amount of light a lens can let in through the aperture; these include the Summilux, Summicron, Summarit and Noctilux.

If you have been doing the math, you might have noticed that the best Leica setup will cost almost $20,000. My personal Leica setup is half that. I own a used Leica M9-P with a Leica 50mm f1.4 Summilux lens, which cost almost $10,000, and although the price might make you choke on your morning coffee, I would give up my iPhone before I’d part ways with my Leica.

This was true decades ago and is still true today. Henri Cartier-Bresson, considered by many to be the father of photojournalism, said in his biography, “The Mind’s Eye,” that when he discovered the Leica camera in the beginning of his career, “It became the extension of my eye, and I have never been separated from it since I found it.”

But be forewarned: Although Leicas are tough and rugged, if your camera does break, be prepared to wait a couple of months for it to be fixed, because the company’s repair facilities are only in Germany. If you do buy a Leica, it will also take a long time to become completely used to the rangefinder and manual setup. Leicas are in such high demand that there is a three-month wait to purchase several of the latest models.

“Don’t think that if you buy a Leica you’re going to be taking the same photos as the world’s best photojournalists,” Mr. Rockwell said. “The camera doesn’t take good pictures; the person holding it does.”