Leica Dream

Last week I took delivery of a camera system I've dreamed about shooting for years: the Leica M.

The M series has been in production since the 1950s and is the quintessential rangefinder system. It's small, relatively light, and has been used for everything from war correspondence to casual street photography.

On paper in 2026, it makes no sense. There's no autofocus, ergonomics are streamlined but somewhat inaccessible on the fly, and when you look through the viewfinder you're not looking through the lens, you just see frame lines that represent the field of view for your current lens. Apart from the lack of autofocus, that doesn't sound so bad, but it's easy to forget how much modern photographers (self included) have come to rely on electronic viewfinders to help envision their photos and manage exposure settings. There's just so much data in your face you can easily adjust.

But that's also very much not the point. The system is an absolute joy to use because it's stripped down to the bare essentials. Manual focus is slower at first, but I've found it to be totally manageable. I've long been an apologist for fully manual settings control, including ISO, so adjusting to a system that encourages you to put both shutterspeed and ISO in the camera's control (albeit with easy access to an exposure compensation dial) took me a minute. Actually, only having to think about aperture frees me up to be more aware of my surroundings. I finally understand why people wax poetic about what shooting manual does for their eye.

It's just so small and unobtrusive, and I have such a blast walking around snapping photos of whatever catches my eye. Last week I took Haleigh out for ice cream. This week I caught up with some MOPs community friends over beers and had dinner with a few other Vercelians who were in town for an event with Amazon. I just love carrying this camera with me everywhere, I don't even care that my little sling bag looks like a purse.

Here's a few exposures I've made so far.