Feeling good: Leica M-240 acclimatisation

While online reviews of the Leica M-240 are numerous as it has been out for a while now, I always struggled to find anything that gave me an insight into how it feels to get to know the camera. I'm not so interested in the number of pixels or sensor type these days as so many digital cameras are brilliant technologically. What's really important to me is whether I actually enjoy using a camera, as that enjoyment translates into putting more effort into taking/creating worthwhile images.Having to struggle with a clumsy interface or imprecise controls spoils the whole experience of photography for me. When I was shooting sport professionally, the tools for the job, generally 2 or 3 Canon 1D bodies, were honed to the task after years of tweaking, updating and feedback from pro photographers worldwide. The result is a camera which gets out of your way and lets you focus on doing your job of getting the image, the moment, precisely and accurately, and then shipping it off to the picture desks as fast as possible. Ideally suited to the task, the pro Canon and Nikon bodies are excellent examples of evolution for the precise demands of professional snappers.Now I'm no longer shooting sport, the 1D bodies and big lenses have gone, as has a load of other gear, and I've downsized to a Leica M-240, 28, 50 and 90 lenses, and a Sony RX100IV. It feels somewhat cathartic to relive myself of all that camera kit and instead use what I consider to be an ideal minimalist setup. I've had the M-240 for a couple of weeks now and have had the opportunity to take a couple of outings to England's south coast to get to know it. Here are a few pictures and words to describe how things are going so far.Firstly, down to Dungeness, which is a shingle proto-spit formed by longshore drift on the south coast of Kent, which is to say the least, "quirky". It's a mishmash of award winning architect designed mini-houses, semi-derelict wooden dwellings, totally derelict sheds, old railway carriages and boats, a railway, lighthouses, shipping containers, oh and a nuclear power station. It's a bit of a must-do location for photographers as there's so much to see and so much variety, in a rather odd setting. It was this oddness that I was looking to capture.I only needed a small bag (I love my Billingham Hadley Small which I've had for years) to fit the two cameras, lenses and filters into. The Leica setup is even more compact than my Sony A7r and lenses ever were - while the A7R body is very compact, the lenses are relatively large, so that's the first real difference (yes I know I could use my M lenses on the A7R but it's really not very satisfying to do so). Add in a carbon fibre tripod and it's all very portable.Hand holding the Leica really is a delight. It's a dense, solid thing that feels gorgeous. It almost feels wrong to put it on a tripod but with low pre-dawn light and using a ND filter I needed to keep it steady. This was the first time I was using my Lee Seven5 filters on the Leica. This little filter set is ideal for a small camera setup and I have an adapter for the Sony RX100IV as well (from Lensmate). It's much smaller than the 100mm series, precisely made, and the filters have no colour cast. I have the "deluxe kit" 3-ND grad set, polariser, and 10-stop "big stopper". It works well on the Leica, though you need to use live view to correctly position the graduated filters as obviously the viewfinder is not "through the lens".I found the best approach when using the tripod was to focus the Leica using the rangefinder - I'm not too keen on focus peaking - and then put it onto the tripod for final compositional tweaks using live view. Being quite tall I hate stooping down to peer through the viewfinder if the tripod is set low. OK - a tilting screen would help here. I'd then clip on the filter holder and make the final adjustments to the filter position before firing the shot with a 2-sec delay. I must get a cable release.Live view implementation on the M-240 is excellent. Simple and useful information is available, and the actual exposure can be seen simply by half pressing the shutter. No need to dive into fifteen menus to find and toggle the obscurely titled "setting effect ON" option as in the Sony A7R.Another thing that is most satisfying is the simple act of adjusting shutter speed and aperture. Set at half stops, you know that if you close the aperture by 2 stops or 4 clicks you need to slow the shutter by 4 clicks. Simple as anything, and you can see the settings without needing to turn the camera on or look through the viewfinder. It all feels very direct and connected, compared to the A7R which always felt too "fly-by-wire". Lovely.One problem I did have was accidentally setting exposure compensation by turning the thumb dial without noticing, usually when carrying the camera or taking it out of my bag. I disabled the direct setting option to prevent this, and exposure compensation (which I rarely use) is now available by pressing the front button and simultaneously turning the thumb dial which is OK. Unusually for Leica, that setting is a bit tricky to find - you need to hit Set then go to exposure compensation and it's in there.So far, so good. I found rangefinder focusing very easy except where there was no stand-out object to align (e.g. just shingle on the beach and a horizon is pretty tricky). I use the "return to infinity" method - putting the focus back to infinity after shooting a scene so next time I focus I know which way to turn it and roughly how far. I did just use the lens markings to set focus a few times which is all very simple and easy as long as your aperture is sensibly small. The shutter noise is delightfully precise and adds to the overall experience.After the light picked up I ditched the tripod and just went hand-held.  I got a wrist strap for the camera but in retrospect I think I like a neck strap more. It's easier to change lenses with the camera hanging from your neck, and obviously you can keep both hands free if you want.Lots of people write about how they slow down and take more consideration when using a Leica M camera. I find this is true. It's not a "run and gun" camera. It encourages care and attention to detail, which I feel is then reflected in the way that I approached things in Dungeness. It's rewarding to use as you have to put in a lot of thought to what you're doing and physically slow things down. It involves you in the scene you're trying to capture more than any other camera I have used. This may not be to everyone's taste, but it definitely is to mine. Of course you can use it very fast as well if you want to - the fact that the lens stays focused where you set it and you can be in total control allows you to pre set everything and just lift the camera and click the button. No need to align a focus point on your subject then recompose if you've previously focused on it.A second trip took me down to the Isle of Wight. For some reason I had expected it to look & feel very different to the mainland, but rather disappointingly it's just the same. No palm fringed beaches & coral sand unfortunately. What we did have was ridiculously ferocious force 9 winds which were so loud they made my ears actually hurt. Made for interesting photography conditions! Once again the minimal camera gear load was appreciated as we walked up to the Needles on the west side of the island, where the full force of the gale hit us and made standing upright impossible (a friend was blown over 3 times in 20 yards).I found I had the 28mm Elmarit M on the camera for the majority of time. I do like this lens. It's tiny, lovely and smooth, and incredibly sharp with very good contrast. The best 28mm I've ever used - it's really excellent on the M-240. With glasses on you do have to work at looking right around the viewfinder edges to frame your shot accurately as the framelines are right at the extreme edges. Without glasses your eye is much closer to the finder so things are a bit easier.The 50 Summicron is also a real star. Very nice rendering and contrast, lovely to use, though I do wish it had a focus tab like the 28. I'm still a bit unsure about the Konica M-Hexanon 90 2.8. I have a nagging feeling that the Leica equivalent will be better, but every time I look at the Konica images there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. The Konica's aperture ring isn't as precise as I'd like, but otherwise it's super. I'll have to have a play with the Leica 90 range to compare & contrast.Just before rain stopped play, we headed down to another bit of the coast where I slid my ND 0.6 filter right down over the lens to slow the shutter speed to about 1/5th of a second to get a bit of movement in the water for the shot below, but not so much as to blur everything into nothingness. I then headed onto that strange structure, which is actually a chair lift for going up & down the cliff, and set up for another shot safe in the knowledge that the waves were passing nicely underneath the deck of the thing.Of course, a big wave came in shortly afterwards and hit hard, soaking me and the camera. Aaagghh! My lovely Leica and 28mm lens covered in salt water. Disaster! The M-240 is supposedly weatherproof but I wasn't taking any chances so ran back up the cliff, removing the battery as I went,  found a tap and soaked my lens cloth in fresh water before wringing it out and giving the camera and lens a good wipe over and dry off. I then let them dry out in the car with warm air from the vents getting rid of any remaining water. Happily everything is OK, but I really don't want to do that again!Aside from the sea water dunking, there's lots of great things that I love about this camera. Sure you could take the same sort of pictures with lots of other cameras, but that's not really the point. I've reached the stage of my photographic "career" where the process of taking a picture is as enjoyable as the end result, and the Leica really fits the bill beautifully.The only real bugbear so far is the sensor's propensity to attract dust. I'm changing lenses quite a lot which won't help things, but it seems to be more liable to getting dusty than other cameras I've used. It might be that there's just a lot of dust hanging around inside the body which needs to work its way out.I'm really looking forward to spending 2 weeks up in north west Scotland in February. I have a week's tuition with David Ward, followed by a week with friends from down south, and I hope to really put the Leica through its paces.