My First and Last Time Using The Leica M9

My bag was packed with my brand new to me Leica M9 with a filthy Kodak CCD sensor, the Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f 1.4 ( The first generation, bad lens. The second version is good though ) two knock off Leica batteries and a false sense of security in my hardcore German rangefinder.

Starting off the day in the cult classic; sunset district of San Francisco. We wandered around the streets trying to find some sort of organization in the chaos of SF “ suburbs “

This is the point where the M9 began to fail, early on I know - I was surprised too.

At first the error was on start-up, a flick of the on switch would leave the both myself and the camera with a blank empty expression because the on switch simply would not turn the camera on. Quickly I realized this seemed to be a battery issue and opened the bottom plate of the camera, removed the battery and chucked in the extra battery and we were good to go.

Directly across the street from the Sunset is Ocean Beach, complete with sea foam, shore fishermen, and of course a lot of sand being whipped around by the wind, for the duration of the beach visit the M9 behaved itself, turning on and off with no problems and allowing me to shoot mediocre photo after mediocre photo.

One more quick dip into the residential area as this is typically my favorite subject, however I did have to entertain friends and they prefer to see things a bit more grand than a bush and a street sign shadow. We hopped into the car and drove to Sutro Baths to catch some golden hour to sunset light.

Around this time ( yep, right when the light is beginning to become perfect ) The M9 began to fail over and over again, at first thinking the same battery issue was back I tried removing the back, swapping batteries, and putting it back together but even this cure began to work less and less often. The camera was now at a point where it was failing to power on, or even stay on, long enough to meter, compose, and fire before it would shut down and force me to do the dance again. Suddenly it began thinking that the SD card was the issue and I tried mess with that but at this point noting seemed to be able to convince the camera to stay working.

Then suddenly, it was fine.

At this point in the evening I was so paranoid that my camera would outright refuse to take photos that I was no longer enjoying my time on the coast with my friends, I was stressed about starting the Leica M9 ritual early enough to try and grab a shot or two before having to restart everything. Then to add to my misery, I learned that occasionally the camera was NOT writing the images to the SD card, because of course not. The camera decided to grace me with the ability to take photos just as the sun was dipping below the horizon and I knocked out my final few images.

This 8 second exposure of the cityscape was my final photo of the evening, although my friends continued on to take several more compositions after this, the M9 once again threw a fit and locked up completely, this time refusing everyone of the previously used cures. I gave up, put the camera back into a bag and hung around my friends and their working cameras. Fast forward to today; 4 days later and the M9 is in the same condition, I’ve tried everything I can think of to try and breathe life back into it but it continues to lock up. Looks like tomorrow I will be returning the CCD king and picking up an M10, I’m led to believe that camera takes photos!

Moral of the story? The m9 was my dream camera; 18 megapixels, Full frame ‘ Kodak ‘ CCD sensor, Rangfinder, Leica M mount, and solid brass. But my copy is essentially a paperweight, hopefully this is a isolated issue and no one else who buys their dream camera has to ride the same depressing rollar coaster I did this past week.

We’ll get em’ next time.