Leica M5

Everybody knows that I have a soft spot for ugly ducklings and cameras that nobody likes or cares for. Admittedly, I am not Leica’s greatest fan, not so much because of the cameras, but because of the image of Leica users in nowadays, the rich and bored with precious little inclination for photography. Still, there was one Leica that fitted Paulo’s criteria of an unloved and trashed camera, the M5. I must confess that I too had little sympathy, the thing seemed like an overgrown ugly rangefinder with the Leica name. Of course, the number of times that I had a M5 in my hands were very few and brief. Since those contacts, my sympathy for rangefinder cameras has grown exponentially to the point that I practically stopped using SLRs. The fact that I already own a M6 TTL made me somewhat curious about the camera that nearly killed Leica.

 

These days, camera values seem to be regulated by a couple of sites or blogs that sell cameras as a side business and they have a huge number of readers that believe every single word that they write. The idiot part of it that cameras like the Olympus Mju:II or the equally plastic fantastic Yashica T4/5 sell for more than high quality classic cameras. However, there is a good side to this idiotic practice, cameras deemed unworthy (read not sold by them) are suddenly relegated to oblivion and sit unwanted on shelves, no matter how low the price is. It was the case with this Leica M5, dirty, worn looking, with a price tag lower than the asking price of a Yashica T5. In fact, I didn’t have to pay one cent to have it, the vendor was quite happy to accept some unwanted cameras in my collection in exchange like the Minolta SRT and the Cosina-Nikon FM10 for the M5. Such is the world we live on, a high quality Leica camera costs far less than a plastic compact of dubious reliability.

 

Back to the M5, what is so fundamentally wrong with it then? Well, after reading one of those blogs trashing the M5 I can safely say that there isn’t anything wrong with the model, just the users and bloggers. In that blog I read that the M5 didn’t feel like a Leica, that ergonomics were poor, anti-Leica and all sorts of idiotic remarks (notice how I like this word!). I noticed that the author was against having a well dimensioned shutter speed dial or to have the shutter button combined with the shutter dial. We can all surely sympathize with this horrific disposition, never seen in a camera. Then I also read that the M5 had another capital sin, the rewind crank was in the base plate, how much worse could it get, remarkable camera designs used this disposition like the Rollei 35 or the Werra, but apparently it wasn’t tolerable in a Leica. The more I read about the lack of “Leicaness” of the M5, the more I became interested in the M5, you see, size apart, that sort of thing only comes from people who actually don’t use their Leica M cameras.

So here I am profoundly disappointed with the M5, that big shutter dial (as big as the one fitted to the last M6 TTL) works a treat, being slightly over the top of the camera allows for one finger operation and it has a sweet and precise action, terrible really, they should have adopted the mechanicals of the Leica II, with a rotating shutter dial and all. The shutter button, in spite of being in the middle of the shutter speed dial works perfectly and I have never confused it with any other control of the camera, terrible really. I sadly have to report that the flushed rewind crank at the bottom works, it actually does a good job at rewinding the film back to its cartridge, how they have managed that without the Leica heritage I have no idea.

 

There is another source of deep frustration for a Leica user, it has a TTL meter! This is really the last straw, Leica owners obviously use external selenium meters to take pictures of their lovely flowers, so what’s this nonsense of a TTL meter? The thing isn’t really discrete as Leica marked the metering area in the viewfinder (it’s a sort of wide spot meter)and even had the audacity to devise one of the most elegant metering info found in any camera, no vertical needle, no plus or minus, just two needles that intersect horizontally, simple , effective and with the selected shutter speed always visible. I was becoming very frustrated with this M5, it really was more Canon 7/7s then Leica M4, the size is the same, the weight is the same and the viewfinder has some info, heresy really.

 

However, when I depress the shutter button, the sound is the same as the M6, with my eyes closed, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Also, the advance lever is very similar, quiet, super smooth. Surely there must be some Leica heritage there.

I have been parodying with the Leica users snobbery, but the truth is, the M5 is really a Leica M and it feels like one. I’ve failed to detect any Japanese influence in it, it’s very Germanic in feel or action. Granted, it’s not perfect, it’s not the most beautiful camera in the world, it’s fat and big and it has one of the most complicated (mechanically) metering systems ever. However, for the price of a Yashica T5 you get a high quality mechanical camera, gifted with a superb viewfinder and one that accepts the vast majority of Leica M or L39 lenses. I really can’t help feeling sorry for those people choosing to fork out huge sums of money for the hyped plastic cameras instead of buying and helping to preserve classic cameras…then again, no I don’t!

 

Done