Almost 15 years with the Leica M9

The Leica M9 is still an interesting camera. Leica released this iconic camera on September 9, 2009.

It was the first full-frame digital rangefinder camera and a very small camera compared to the many DSLR types around at that time.

It might even sound silly nowadays having a 18 megapixel Kodak CCD sensor compared to the standards today letting Sony produce a 60 megapixel today in a more or less standard camera.
Can we use all those megapixels you may ask? Not in my world, but I know some need it for sport or nature wildlife photography, making it possible to crop pictures. It demands a very good lens though or it will expose the lack of quality, but that’s another story.

The M9 is Leica’s second generation digital rangefinder camera after the M8 and improved in picture quality, leaving back the old sensor having problems with colour photos.
Shooting colour photos with M8 the best advice is to always fit a IR filter. Green foliage suffers too.

The M9 overcame this with the now praised CCD sensor, although the first generation caused corrosion issues on many cameras.

Those obstacles are history, and the M9 today is a very interesting camera. The dynamic range is not competitive with new cameras. Still, it has a more filmlike expression even when highlights are blown out a bit, and it isn’t possible to get much information (or any) from the darks in post-processing.

But who cares? The simplicity of the camera and the beauty of the images it is possible to produce make it stand as a special camera even almost 25 years after it was presented.

Actor Neel Rønholt at the Radio Merkur TV series made a few years ago. The Leica M9 with Summilux 50mm 1.4 wide open.