London, Dancers, Leica M 240, Off Camera Flash

Dancers are brilliant. I love photographing them - they have such awareness of their body positioning and are superbly agile, as well as being comfortable in front of the camera and aware of compositional considerations. So when Rosa got back in touch and asked if I could do a shoot up in London I leapt inelegantly at the chance.The brief for the shoot was a intriguing - her company are putting together a piece on the theme of power and protest and wanted some grungy locations in London. I suggested we also shoot at some "capitalistic power" locations as well. I put together a plan for an early start on a Sunday morning at Bank, followed by a walk up to Shoreditch and a few locations on the way. This wasn't to be a "traditional" leaping in tutus shoot.Another great thing about dancers is that you can find a photographically interesting place, tell them why it's interesting, and they'll figure out how to interpret it and devise a mini "scene" to act out for you to shoot. This takes a load off the photographer's mind - it's like having a bunch of artistic directors on hand to help to construct the look for you and letting you focus on the photography aspect.Gear for this shoot was lightweight and portable, made up of a Leica M-240 with 28, 50 and 90 Summicron lenses, and a Sony RX100IV just in case. Lighting was a 19" McGillicuddy collapsible beauty dish and a Canon 580EXII flash with a pair of Pocket Wizard triggers. I had a few filters to keep my shutter speed within the Leica's flash sync range (though the Sony goes to 1/2000th which is why I had it with me).The plan was to use the flash to bring up shadows gently where necessary and provide some subtle light to add a little big of zap to some of the images. Many were shot with just natural light to keep the flow of the shoot going as we popped from one place to another.The Leica has a 1/180th max flash sync speed which immediately begins to limit your options and means shooting in shade with the aperture stopped down a bit and needing more flash power. The Sony RX1 which I sold a while back was great, with a 1/2000th sync speed like the RX100IV which I had with me, allowing wide open shooting with flash in bright conditions. But the Leica sensor and lenses are so super that I elected to compromise and put up with the slower and less flexible shutter speed rather than using the RX100IV in most situations.Working with the Leica is a dream for this sort of job. Simplicity of operation and the tactile feedback from the camera allows it to blend seamlessly into the background and let you focus on the job in hand. It's simply a pleasure to use, as always. Ideally I'd have two of them with different lenses on to avoid lens changes. As it was, I shot a lot with the gorgeous 28mm f/2 Summicron, and the remainder with the similarly tasty 90mm f/2 Summicron AA, which incidentally I don't find tricky to focus at all.Using off camera flash is quite simple, though restricted by the 180th flash sync speed if you're coming from anything with a leaf shutter (RX1, RX100, X100T etc). As you can see in the setup image below, the little McGillicuddy softbox/octabox/beauty dish is a really handy light modifier. It does suck quite a bit of light out of the flash, which I had on full or half power most of the time when shooting in the shade.My Pocket Wizard Plus IIs work fine with the Leica. Just slot one on the hot shoe, connect the other to the flash, set shutter speed to 1/180th or slower and you're sorted - totally reliable and no misses at all. Having a Human Powered Light Stand is very handy too.With total control over the scene, and the dancers willing to run as many takes as I wanted, there was no need to fret about having to focus quickly. The Leica isn't really a camera that you want to use for fast moving action at shallow apertures, so where there was movement I'd either pre-focus or use a smaller aperture, or both.That being said, I'm perfectly comfortable with rangefinder focusing. After a while it becomes totally natural and second nature. I generally use the "return to infinity" method whereby after shooting I'll put the focus to infinity. This means that the next time I pick up the camera, I know where the focus is, which way to turn the ring, and approximately how far.What I would like is to have a visible ISO dial on the M. I like to just look at the camera and see what all the settings are instantly. The Fuji XT-1 is good from this perspective.This obviously brings me to the Leica M-D (and the M60 - yummmm!). With an ISO dial on the back all 4 main controls (focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO) are to hand and visible at all times. But of course it has no rear LCD. Does this matter?I looked back at this dancer shoot and thought through how often I used the LCD. I have auto-review turned off by default, so am used to not chimping after every picture. From my sports photography experience, you can't afford to do so anyway so I'm not in the habit of it.What I did use the LCD for is the initial checking of exposure when I first set up a scene, using the histogram in particular and sometimes the blinkies. On an M-D or M60 I could rely on the camera metering on the area of key exposure (i.e. by moving in closer and taking the settings from the subject), take more time, use a light meter etc. There is a lot to be said for building up total manual experience of this sort, as the more you do it, the easier it becomes.I also used it for setting the flash power. It's very simple with the LCD. Set your general image exposure (maybe 1/2 a stop below ambient), and the ping the flash, check how it's looking, adjust, ping again and you're sorted. Again, I could use a light meter for this, and there's a reason film photographers used Polaroids back in the day.So, I used the LCD for quite important things and it made the shoot easier than not having it. I love the idea of the M-D and M60 for the ISO dial, but don't like the removal of the LCD. I also can't see the point of not having a remote shutter option on the M60 (which I used on the M-240 in the shot below). What I'd like is for the next M to have an ISO dial AND an LCD. That must be do-able while maintaining the design aesthetic.In conclusion, the Leica M and lenses remains extremely potent tools which are a delight to have and to use. They did everything I wanted on this shoot, and turned in very high quality images. Using the Leica is very involving, yet there's nothing that gets in your way. My Sony A7R by comparison was just so complex and non user-friendly that it was simply not enjoyable, which is why I sold it. I'm more than happy to trade megapixels for feel and usability.And I recommend all photographers have some dancers in their contact book. Shooting dancers is GREAT, especially ones such as those above who are inventive, creative and love experimenting.