Leica and Contax: A Black & White Review

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. It has been quite some time since my last update.

So I’m not going to waste time with excuses, instead I’ll dive right into it with a well rounded write up of all the equipment I’ve been playing with lately. I’ve done some traveling during my absence and used different gear for each project. They were all personal projects so I used the fact that I didn’t need guaranteed results to experiment with some fun toys.

First and foremost is the Leica M Monochrom Typ 246 digital camera. Obviously it shoots only monochrome images and doesn’t even have a color sensor so it makes really amazing black and white images right in camera with very little post processing necessary. (As opposed to shooting color and converting it in Lightroom or Photoshop where it takes some tweaking to get a “true” b&w image). As someone who got their foundational photo education shooting black and white film I really appreciate what the Leica M 246 can do- it combines the beauty of true b&w photography with the convenience of digital.

The M Monochrom is my first digital camera purchased from Leica (I have a pre-owned R3 that I use on occasion) and I will admit that the price point was a notable factor in my hesitation. Leica makes some of the best cameras on the market and have done so since 1913- so naturally they’re going to charge you for it. The M Monochrom costs around $7,000 which is enough to make most sensible people check themselves into extensive therapy for even considering it. And they would be absolutely right . . . EXCEPT that this camera is worth every penny of that price tag and over the span of a few months has become one of my favorites and my go to camera for portrait work. Leica occasionally offers promotions and sales if you keep an eye out at your local retailer. For more information and specs check out: https://us.leica-camera.com/

The M Monochrom has the classic M body styling that Leica is famous for with one of their flagship models. It was my first time using a rangefinder camera which definitely took some adjustment but I’ve come to really enjoy the rangefinder focusing since it forces me to really concentrate on the composition of my images.

At first I thought the slow process of composition would restrict my use of the camera to carefully orchestrated portrait shoots, but I used it to photograph the band Today Is The Day playing live back in April and the images came out great so it proved itself to be a very versatile camera.

It is on the heavier side but I use it almost exclusively with a small 35mm lens so it’s not too bad to carry around for a day of shooting. However it does make me think before packing it for a long distance travel project. I did purchase a thumb support accessory that slides into the camera’s hot shoe and provides an extra grip point for your right thumb and makes holding the camera feel a little more secure which I definitely recommend.

It goes without saying at this point that I am completely in love with this camera. The images it produces have amazing contrast, true blacks, and are sharp as a tack. It is obviously a big investment, but if you love black and white photography I couldn’t recommend it more. For more samples of what it can do check out my new images from the Indy 500 which were shot exclusively with the Leica M Monochrom Typ 246.

I also recently acquired a mint condition Contax T3 point and shoot 35mm film camera and used that as my primary shooter on a recent trip to Scotland in June. At first I really struggled with it. I hadn’t used a point and shoot camera since before college when I discovered the joy of SLRs and it felt tiny and foreign in my hands. It was a tough transition.

The primary struggle I had was due to the fact that no matter what the shutter speed is, it sounds like it fires slow so I had to really trust my settings and (as with all film photography) hope that things came out okay. It sounded like I was shooting at 1/30 instead of 1/500 which caused mild anxiety.

After a few days I learned my way around the camera and the settings. It offers a surprising amount of manual adjustment for a point and shoot, including aperture priority mode and adjustable auto-focus. Also worth noting is its beautiful, built in 35mm 2.8 Carl Zeiss lens. That being said, while the T3’s adjustable settings are certainly impressive, I wouldn’t recommend it for shooting when you really need the fine adjustments and settings of a full SLR. There is no shutter priority mode so manually adjusting your shutter speed is impossible which did prove frustrating. It offers a manual focus mode which locks the focal length of the lens which sounds great until you realize there isn’t an easily accessible button to transition to that mode quickly, instead you have to muddle through the menu. The menus in general are difficult to navigate without reading the owner’s manual to figure out exactly where to find each setting.

Despite the slow start, by the end of the trip I came to the decision that the camera is great for travel and casual snap shot photography. Its small size means it can fit in my pocket and makes it perfect for street photography when you may not want to point an obnoxiously large camera in a stranger’s face. The downside is when you approach somebody and ask them if you can take their portrait because you’re a professional photographer, some people expect a pro to have the big camera and the tiny Contax makes you look like some sort of weirdo. But it’s an all around fun camera to use and very convenient. The images I took came out beautifully as you can see in the new Scotland gallery and by experimenting with a few different types of b&w film I captured some really diverse photos.

A quick note to wrap things up while on the topic of film, a few years ago I backed a Kickstarter campaign for Film Ferrania, an Italian film company that was going to reopen a factory and begin producing film once again. After several production delays they finally delivered their first batch of P30 Alpha ASA80 B&W film and WOW, what an impressive product. Amazing contrast makes for really beautiful portraits like the ones below I shot a couple weeks ago in New York City. It was well worth the wait. You can find more information about Film Ferrania at: http://www.filmferrania.it/