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For anyone who is hesitant to pickup a manual focus only camera, fear not: it's actually not that scary at all. My fear was to dump a bunch of money into a Leica M and a set of lenses only to miss a ton of photos of my artistic desires, not to mention priceless shots of my young kids. As it turns out, my fears were the only thing holding me back. Sure, there are focal lengths and apertures that require more precision, but these circumstances are in the lower percentile of what I shoot, so why fixate on them? Zone focusing is faster and somehow far more forgiving than auto focusing.
When it comes to focusing the rangefinder, I tend to cheat a bit. Sure, the scale on the lens is helpful, but sometimes I want/need more latitude. For this, I have to either commit to memory distant points for specific apertures for each lens, or I can reach for an app or website. I haven't found an app that I like yet, but I did find a website that functions similar to an app -as long as I have internet connection. *Update: I found an iOS app called Photographer's Friend and it's simple and easy to use in a hurry. I ended up purchasing the app for the paid features, but they offer a free version with fewer features, obviously. It also works on my Apple Watch! For this, I keep a tab preloaded with DOFmaster.com pulled up on my phone. It remembers the sensor size, focal length, aperture and distance entered from the last search, which I am very thankful for. It's also quick and easy to swap these perimeters should I need to. It's free and I rarely see any ad popups which is uncommon these days.
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I've been shooting my M10 for about a year and a half now and couldn't imagine shooting anything else. The experience is much more intimate than my previous cameras and I feel much more confident since I no longer have any real settings or custom buttons to fuss over. I still have my Lumix S1 and won't be getting rid of it as it still has its uses, but my go to for virtually everything is the M10. In light of what what's been covered here, I feel that it's important to state that shooting precisely with a Leica M does require good eyesight. Especially when focusing at wider apertures -essentially anything wider than f/2. I wear glasses which holds my eye further away from the viewfinder than is optimal, which means the focus patch is a little smaller and the frame lines of anything wider than 50mm require looking around the viewfinder to see them (these are nitpicks that do not affect using the camera in my daily life).
There are screw in diopters for correcting vision and there are also magnifiers such as the 1.4x and 1.25x which make the focusing patch larger (at the expense of making 28mm and 35mm frame lines virtually invisible). Light Lens Lab makes a 1.4x magnifier with a -3 to +3 diopter built in. I haven't used one yet, but like I stated above, I rarely need to shoot shallow depth of field or telephoto lenses. In fact, the fastest lens I have is the 50mm Summicron which has a maximum aperture of f/2 to which I have no trouble nailing focus. I do intend to pickup a copy of the LLL 1.4x magnifier to see if I like it with the 90mm Minolta M mount lens I sometimes shoot with, but so far it hasn't been necessary. There is also the hot shoe EVF. I have the typ 020 and it has a built in diopter, focus peaking and zooms into the image for precise focus (at the massive expense of battery life).
If you are considering a Leica M and intend to start with a single lens, I would recommend starting with either a 28mm or 35mm focal length. The 35mm is considered the "standard" lens of the rangefinder. Without being overly pedantic, it's the closest to the 50mm (the standard focal length for other camera types) that can be used to zone focus effectively. I started with a 28mm because that's what I tended to use (XF18 f/2) with my Fujifilm cameras.
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This post wasn't meant to promote any specific website or app, it's just what works for me. If you find an app that is ad free and as easy to use as DOFMaster, please let me know! If you have any questions please feel free to DM me. Thanks for reading!
