Introduction: 

Why I decided to do it: 

Given the transient nature of the trip — three days — I didn’t want to lug around my kit: Leica SL body with two SL zoom lenses is roughly 6.5 kilograms. Add other accessories, and we see at the 10 kilograms mark — 22 pounds! (I previously wrote about the weight of creativity, in case you missed it.)

So instead, I decided to shed some weight. I decided to pack Leica’s M11 and M10M Monochrome rangefinder cameras. For lenses, I packed four lenses: 21mm, 50mm, 90mm & 135 mm. Given that both those cameras have supersized sensors — 61 and 40 megapixels, respectively — digital zooming would come in handy. The kit with chargers, batteries, and a handful of filters fits in a Peak Design sling bag, and I left the tripod at home. Even though I am fiercely loyal to my Leica SL, I did find the idea of packing the entire kit in a small sling bag quite attractive and freeing. 

Leica’s M rangefinder cameras are perfect for street and documentary photography, journalism, and portrait photography. They are famous for cityscapes and travel photography — given the brand’s history, it is not surprising. You rarely hear anyone discuss Leica as a camera preferred by landscape artists.

The more famous landscape photographers, such as Ansel Adams, used large-format cameras. Later, it was Hasselblad and its square medium format cameras that were popular with landscape photography pioneers. Fine art landscape photographers such as Michael Kenna used Hasselblad cameras. I asked Leica if they could help me identify some of the more famous landscape photographers who used M cameras, and even Wetlzer couldn’t answer my question.

However, when it comes to landscapes, most of the top photographers gravitate to cameras from Sony, Fuji, and their elder brethren, Canon and Nikon. Even those who use the Leica, like me, prefer the more modern Leica SL system.

I can understand that in the film days, landscape photographers wanted the larger film sizes to get higher resolution, but in modern era when cameras such as some Leica M10 models and Leica M11 have uptown 60 megapixel sensors, live view screens and ability to use electronic viewfinders as attachments, I am amazed that M-bodies have not caught on as landscape making machines.

It is pretty strange. Jonathan Slack, a fellow Leica enthusiast and a landscape photographer agreed that a modern M-camera such as the M11 is “perfect for trekking long distances.” He pointed out that most landscape photographers “think you need to carry a tripod 15 minutes before dawn,” which is strange because “the ISO possibilities with modern M cameras the tripod is pretty pointless!”

My sentiments exactly!

There are obvious pros and cons of M cameras. 

The Pros:

• The M11 is a little lighter than a Leica SL, but it is much smaller in size. 
• M Monochrome is lighter and smaller. 
• The Leica lenses are manual and small compared to modern autofocus lenses. You can use manual focus more effectively, thanks to modern features on M: focus peaking when using live view or an additional electronic viewfinder. 
• Both cameras have WiFi and can be easily controlled with the Leica Fotos app. Typical rangefinder usage limits how low you can go to the ground, but the Fotos app allows many new angles.
• And more importantly, the Fotos app can geotag photos.

The Cons:

• The M batteries are smaller and run down fast, especially in freezing weather. I had to pack two batteries for the Monochrome. 
• The cameras aren’t weather sealed. 
• The all-metal (brass) bodies get extremely cold. My fingers got numb, and I had to use heavy-duty gloves. (On the upside, manual lenses and buttons mean I can use the camera with gloves without much problem, which I can’t sadly do with my SL.) 
• The external EVFs on these M bodies suck. They are like a middle-aged guy getting Botox. It works, but who are you kidding? 
• Swapping out memory cards in the field is a chore: all rangefinders before the current m11 need you to remove the baseplate for changing cards and batteries. Dust, Rain & Snow aren’t good for the camera when the baseplate is off, and a few seconds are enough to cause damage. (I bought 128 GB SD cards for both cameras and thus avoided any need to swap memory cards.
• Single memory cards. I am being paranoid, but I appreciate two card slots on my SL. I use one slot for a backup memory card. 

The Surprises:

• The M11 is perfectly fine in cold weather. I never had to use the extra battery and only charged the camera when I returned to my room.
• My biggest fear was falling snow and how it would impact the body. Instead, it was dust on the sensor that was a problem. I was swapping lenses often enough that the M11 sensor attracted quite a bit of dust.  
• The M10 didn’t attract that much dust because it had a “curtain” in front of the sensor. 

When I was swapping emails with Slack, who lives in the United Kingdom, he pointed out that “the M10 and especially the M11 are pretty well sealed.” He was out taking photos with M11 and a 50mm lens for “two hours in torrential rain” without damaging the camera. 

While I wasn’t in the rain, I was out in a pretty strong snowstorm and managed to use the cameras and swap lenses, though I had to retreat to the car to warm myself. I sometimes use a large Ziploc bag (with a hole cut out) to cover the camera. 

The Photo Adventure: 

I have become so accustomed to using the SL 24-90 lens with my SL body on “photography” trips that I often get sloppy in the field. I don’t think about the compositions from a specific focal length. Instead, I use zoom to lallygag my way to the optimal image — lazy photography. 

Switching to manual cameras and manual prime lenses meant I needed to reprogram my eyes and my brain. For the first few hours of the first day, I had to slow down and start to see the landscape when viewed through a single focal length. Given my comfort with the 50mm focal length, it felt prudent to start there, and I slowly worked my way to 90mm and eventually 135 mm focal lengths. I had a 21mm lens — but I didn’t expect myself to be using that all that much. 

I decided to go to the Elk Refuge and the outskirts of the Grand Tetons Park with my friend and landscape maestro, David Brookover. We came across some big horn sheep — the rams were too busy chasing the ewes to pay any heed to us humans. I used the 50mm and the 90mm lenses to make environmental portraits of these beautiful animals. 

It had started to snow heavily, and the light was fading fast — ideal for making some minimal landscapes. I didn’t take long to fall into the familiar pattern of using 50mm as a landscape lens. I am still surprised people use ultra-wide lenses when a 50mm focal length helps create pleasing and familiar images. 

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The next day, I decided to go down to the far end of the Grand Teton National Park, almost making my way to the southern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. These forests are some of my favorite places for photography. I am not into forest photography, but individual trees are a weakness. I like this specific area because I find leafless trees standing against the snowy backdrop as an ideal starting point for minimal work.

It was snowing steadily for most of the morning and midday when the sun peaked. Seeing the shadow play on the vast frozen snowscape of Jackson Lake was fantastic. Climate change has been unkind to the lake, which had receded so far back in the summer that all you saw were mudflats. Even in the winter, you could make out the slow, winding Snake River. I tried to capture that with 90mm and 135mm lenses. Here is a subset of photos from that day.

On the first day of the year, I went to Idaho, which was super foggy. While the classic Grand Teton view is majestic in its beauty, I find it more appealing from the other side — from Idaho. I love meandering around on the roads that crisscross the farmlands, covered in snow, occasionally revealing farmhouses, silos, and rusting vehicles—distant trees in clumps, snow-covered undulating farms, seductive in their gentle curvatures. Telephone poles, broken fences, snow-covered dirt roads, and endless horizons are some of my favorite things.

I primarily used the 50mm lens on the Monochrome and switched between 21mm and 90mm on the M11 body. And I rarely use the 135mm to get some closeups, but 50 and 90 are my two favorite focal lengths. On my way back, I saw a sprinkler system in a field and spent at least an hour trying to compose the photo. And eventually, I found a suitable composition that made me happy. It is my favorite photo from this trip and the newest addition to my portfolio.

The Leica Lenses I used:

• ELMARIT-M 21mm f/2.8 ASPH.
• Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.2 ASPH
• APO-Summicron-M 90 f/2 ASPH.
• APO-Telyt-M 135 f/3.4

The two Tele lenses, the 90 and 135, are spectacular and are perfectly coupled with modern M bodies and their sensors. The photos are sharp when wide open, though they are nowhere as crisp as the images from the APO-Summicron-M 50 f/2 ASPH. I love taking photos wide open because it adds a certain glow to my landscapes and saves time when editing photos. There is a weird balance between sharp, crisp, and imperfection that I like with the 50 Summicron. On the 90mm version, I found balance at around f4, while the longer 135mm lens behaves magically around f/5.6. 

On this trip, I brought the released version of Noctilux-M 50mm f/1.2 ASPH. It is woefully imperfect when wide open, but if you use it between f/2.8 and f/8, it is as sharp as any other lens. I did take a lot of photos with it wide open. Sadly, I didn’t much care for how the final images looked, and almost always, I ended up using the lens at f/2 to f/5.6. The results surprised me because this lens has all the quirks I like in my images. I will be sticking to my 50mm Summicron. 

The biggest surprise for me was the 21mm focal length. I have never liked 24, 28, or 35 mm focal lengths, and I also find the ultra-wide lenses unnatural and difficult to use. And yet I need help explaining why I like the 21mm focal length. 

From what I have read, when you use 21mm in landscape format, you can place your subject at a perfect 90 degrees. That explains why it is easy to compose with 21mm, a focal length initially developed for aerial photography. The 21mm can provide context, but for me, it is not the context but the ability to get a lot of negative space, even when getting closer to a subject. 

The lens itself isn’t great — it is old, suffers from distortion, and is hard to correct when editing photos. I might look for another 21mm lens — though I am unsure which one is small, light, and gives me quality images.

The Cameras: 

• The new M11 camera is a bit divisive among the Leica community. As an SL owner, the new menu system and the touch screen made it reasonably easy for me to use the M11. What Leica have done is the equivalent of Porsche taking their old design and turning it into an EV. The M11 is so advanced in its capabilities that you have to come home and bring up the images on your big screen monitors to see the nuances captured by the sensor and processed by the onboard processor. The M11 captured the subtle winter skies in such a delicate fashion that I had to touch the photos for editing barely. The M11 is a great camera, and I can’t wait for Leica to put the 61-megapixel sensor and the new Mastero III processor in an SL body. 
• The M10 Monochrome, however, is a class apart. I am gobsmacked by the shades of grays and multitudes of whites that this camera captured. The ISO – whether high or low doesn’t matter. The images are clean – perfect, as I saw them in my head when I pressed the shutter. M10 Monochrome will be the next camera I am going to buy! 

Other notes:

• I struggled with the rangefinder itself: my eyes aren’t that great. I wear progressive lenses, and I had a rough time focusing and found that I missed focus in many photos. I will bring a different set of glasses in the future, as part of the joy of using an M-camera is looking through the rangefinder window for composing. 
• That said, it didn’t matter for most broader landscapes, as I put the lens on “infinity” focus and auto-ISO and used the “screen” to compose! 
• For close-ups, I resorted to using the electronic viewfinder. While it is useful, it feels unnatural, and at times, I found myself looking through the rangefinder, even though EVF is still there.

Conclusion:

I am and will primarily be inclined to use the SL body and will use the 50 and 90-mm lenses. I will add 21mm to my arsenal. But in the future, I will pack an M monochrome. I just checked the whole kit fits in a 10L Peak Design sling. I don’t need anything more! 

February 5, 2023. San Francisco.