Sony RX100IV versus Leica M-240

Time for a bit of fun. I've recently sold a huge pile of camera gear with the intention of going back to small, simple kit and slower, more deliberate photography. I've elected to go back to Leica again for the serious stuff, and to have a small "point & shoot" for everything else.I had a Leica M9 a while ago which I always regretted selling because the user experience was just so compelling and involving. Happily the price of M-240 bodies has come down nicely now allowing me back into red-dot land. I also have a Sony RX100IV which replaces my mkII version. The plan is that these two cameras will satisfy all my needs for the foreseeable future. Gone is the Sony A7R, the Fuji X100T, the Canon 1D bodies, the big and not so big lenses. Seriously, kilos and kilos of kit sold.It seemed like a good idea to compare the two cameras so I headed up to London to take some side-by-side pictures to see what the differences are. First a few specs.RX100IVThis is a tiny little camera packing sci-fi like capabilities. It's really small and eminently pocketable unlike the Fuji X100T which is rather bulkier. It has a stabilised 1" sensor packing 20.1 megapixels and a 24-70 equivalent lens which is decently fast at f/1.8 to f/2.8. The popup viewfinder is very cool, and it does up to 1000 frame/sec video plus amazing quality hi def and 4K. It's a real powerhouse of a camera in a tiny body. I bought it to get maximum features in the smallest form factor, with the best possible image and video quality. It sells in the UK for £759 from Amazon.Full details are on the Sony site.Leica M Typ 240A classically-styled rangefinder with a 24 megapixel full-frame sensor. The Leica M bodies are very different in use from DSLRs and modern mirrorless cameras like the Sony A7R - the emphasis is on manual focus, minimal menus and simple operation. It's fairly heavy, I'd call it "dense", and is beautifully made. The 240 has live view on the rear screen and apparently records video. I have a nice triplet of lenses to go with it, a 28mm f/2.8 Elmarit, 50mm f/2 Summicron, and a 90mm f/2.8 Konica M-Hexanon. They are £4,300 with Leica's £500 discount, and my mint used version cost £3,000 which is a nice discount. The body plus Elmarit & Summarit cost me just under £5,000 (I already had the 90mm).Using themThese two cameras are completely different in their approach to getting an image onto a memory card and represent opposite extremes in today's digital camera marketplace. The Sony is like some crazily configurable multi-talented do-everything Starship Enterprise with more menu options than the Savoy. The Leica goes click and takes a picture.It's for this reason that I wanted my main camera to be a Leica M. The Sony A7R I had was amazingly capable with crystal clear images, but it was so uninvolving to use that I just didn't enjoy taking pictures with it. Dull dull dull. Having lived with a Leica M9, I yearned for that simplicity again. Manual focus, manual aperture, very good auto-ISO implementation, and a shutter speed dial gives you everything you need. All the controls feel very "connected" to the camera in comparison to the A7R.Manual focusing take a bit of getting used to if you've never used a rangefinder before, but the advantage of it is that you know exactly what's in focus, and you can take successive shots, turn the camera off & on etc knowing that the focus will remain the same unless YOU do something. By contrast, all autofocus systems need you to trust that they will do it right for you and you have to be happy relinquishing control to them and ensuring you set up the myriad of options (eye focus/recognised faces/fast tracking/slow tracking/this point/that point etc etc). This is a good example of the "connected" feeling I'm trying to describe with the Leica versus the RX100IV.Annoying things about the M include accidental adjustment of exposure compensation before I turned off the direct adjust option (the rear thumb dial is easily turned by accident), and the comparatively long write times to the card. Obviously you need to change lenses on the Leica, but you get to use some of the best lenses ever made.When it comes to trying to take pictures of anything moving, the Sony should ace it with continuous autofocus. The rangefinder is a bit of tough work for moving subjects with wide apertures. Saying that, some pre-focusing worked a treat (mostly!) while the Sony mis-focused on a number of walking person shots. For serious moving stuff, a Canon 1DX is the tool for the job.The Sony is so tiny and handy by comparison. Dare I say it could actually be too small! From a convenience perspective, anyone can pick it up and take some very nice pictures. It has full manual control if you want it, and more options than you can count. The popup viewfinder is a very nice addition allowing a more traditional type of use and a better view of the scene. It's as though someone has looked at a combined spec sheet of every digital camera and ticked all the options.OK, the buttons are quite fiddly, and the menus & descriptive text are baffling, but if you can work your way through them you can get the camera set up exactly how you want. It does feel very remote though by comparison to the Leica. OK, you can turn the ring around the lens to adjust the aperture, but it's horrible and inaccurate and nasty and you can't do it unless the camera is switched on. It's like a Nissan GTR compared to a Ferrari 250GTO - all electronic gadgetry versus actual cables and carburettors.The Leica is just a wonderful thing to use.Image qualityHopefully some of the pictures in this post should give you a good comparison between the two cameras. If you're looking at web-sized images, it's amazing just how good the Sony is. Aside from the obvious depth of field differences you get with a full frame sensor versus a 1" sensor, it's only when you look at a closer crop that you see the "muddiness" of the Sony images compared to the clarity and crispness of those from the Leica. Using Leica prime lenses that each cost more than the Sony is telling, as it should be.It's no surprise that the Leica will delivers the best image quality. The key thing for me here is that the Sony will be very good on it's own for a lot of what I'd call "casual" photography. You may have noticed a ring on the lens of the Sony - that's a Lensmate adaptor which will let me use my Lee Seven5 filter set on it for more serious landscape work.Once you factor in the subject isolation capabilities of a wide aperture lens on a full frame sensor then there's nothing the RX100IV can do - white flag time. Plus, the detail from the Leica is stellar, with clarity and definition in spades - on the next two shots, just look at the right wall and the way the road seems to sparkle as an example.In a similar vein, the RX100IV destroys the M-240 from a video perspective. I don't do a lot of video, but what I have done with the RX100IV is just beautiful - sharp, crisp, not jiggly - very impressive.From an image quality perspective, what the Sony can do is pretty amazing and is probably sufficient in many, many situations. But when you want to get something really special, the Leica is THE ONE. OK, you could shove the 50 Summicron onto a Sony A7RII and have a beast of a camera/lens combo, but then you're back into that remote, disconnected shooting experience which is just so dissatisfying. And if you've ever used a Leica M you'd always know that it would be so much nicer!SummaryTwo very different cameras, both good at different things with a large overlap. I'm truly delighted with both of them.The Leica has been a dream camera for a long time and to have one really is fantastic. I love using it, I love the images that come from it, I love its size and its solidity and its lenses. Clearly I have a whole lot of love for the M. It's more about the feeling of using it rather than just out & out image quality. That it happens to have great IQ is icing on the cake.The RX100IV doesn't get love, but it does get appreciation. It's a utility device that is exceptionally good at what it does. It won't involve you and draw you in to the photography process. It isn't as connected to you as the Leica. But it fits in your pocket, takes great pictures and amazing video, and is sufficient for many occasions.As a two camera setup, I think the RX100IV and the M-240 takes some beating. OK the Leica is expensive, but I work hard to earn the coin to pay for it so happy days.  I have a landscape trip with David Ward up to northwest Scotland in February, and these are my weapons of choice. I won't miss my efficient but boring A7R, I won't miss my delightful X100T. I think I may have reached my gear nirvana (for now).PostscriptI think it's only fair to have a rant at Sony at this point. I bought my RX100IV in the USA while on a trip a couple of months back. Needless to say it went wrong, discharging its battery when not used, turned off and sitting on a desktop, in 8-10 hours. I sent it to Sony UK to be fixed and of course they wouldn't honour a USA warranty saying I needed a "Tourist Warranty", so I paid the fixed repair charge.I then spent ages on the phone to many Sony people and the Sony dealer in the USA to try and find out how to get hold of this elusive Tourist Warranty. Needless to say nobody has a clue. Clueless - that's what Sony are. I am still waiting for an answer. I know they want to stop grey imports, but they should at least know how to help a "legitmate" customer who bought one of their cameras in one of their dealers.Eventually after chasing almost daily and Sony failing to call back in promised timescales, and no parts available, I got the camera back after about 6 weeks with a new main circuit board, and happily it now works properly. What a pain.Sony could learn a thing or two from Leica, whose customer service I've found to be exemplary. As an example, I wandered into their Mayfair store and they offered to clean my M's sensor there and then while I waited, for no charge. That's proper service, but then you get what you pay for. It should be mentioned here that I've read of plenty of people who've waited ages for Leica to fix broken cameras too - not my own experience so far thanFinallyHere's a few more pictures from the Leica. Note that all pictures in this post are full-size jpegs from RAW files. Some have been slightly adjusted to make the exposures match up for easier comparison.