Switching to Leica

I enjoyed the article by Jeremy Walker a couple of months back on why he switched to Leica. I did the same and for much the same reasons around 12 years ago and haven’t looked back. M8, M9, and M Monochrom have been companions. (Plus an M6 for travelling light.) They never sit in cupboards or bags but sit on my desk, ready at any time. They long to be picked up and handled and are instruments of such beauty that when they are not working for a living, they make charming paperweights.

People always moan about the high cost of anything Leica. Here I like to put things into perspective. A new M camera is about the same price as a high-end road bicycle. New lenses cost about as much as the second bike. It is a fairly substantial investment to get into the Leica game but that isn’t the whole story. Second-hand Leica lenses can keep their value but more often they increase in value. They are like a pension plan that makes a pro t. The digital bodies do devalue but at a much slower rate than other makes. My well-worn ten-year-old M9 is worth about 40% of what I paid ten years ago. That’s about a pound a day which is cheaper than smoking, or servicing two bikes. Then there is the respect of the company for their customers. They listen to their customers and do their best to look after and service all models of camera and body, going back to the

rst around 100 years ago. Recently, there has been a problem with the M9’s Kodak sensors corroding. The company replaced them for free for a while but now they have run out of replacement sensors because Kodak went down. So Leica announced last month that if you have an M with a corroded sensor, they will offer around £2,000 if you trade in for a new model. I can’t imagine Nikon giving me four

gures for my ten-year-old D3 but I will surely visit a Leica dealer soon to take them up on their offer.

Leicas do have their disadvantages but price is not one of them. R Shore