5 Frames with a Leica M typ 262

By Hamish Gill

I’ve only had this camera for around a week, and haven’t formed any particularly strong opinions about it yet – but did think a 5 Frames post would give me a chance to share a few very early thoughts. If you read my Leica M9 review, you’ll know I was hoping to find that replacing it with the 262 was going to be a relatively painless process. Thankfully, so far that seems to be the case.

Whilst the files it produces are definitely different from those churned out by the M9, there is at least a familiarity to them. For a start, they definitely seem to retain a bit of the magenta based colour when it comes to skin tones. This is something a much prefer compared to the slickly-green skin tones I get out of some of my Sony cameras.

In terms of usability it’s bang on too – so far I can’t fault it at all. I made a point of using the exposure compensation wheel a couple of times when I was out with it the other day. It’s so much easy to use than the jog dial on the M9 – it even clicks nicer making adjustments with the camera away from the eye after a shot easy to do just by counting the clicks. The screen is also profoundly better!

I shall no doubt come back with a more full review once I’ve got my teeth into it properly. For now, here’s my 5 favourites from the first 99 shots I took with it.

Norah Connie Norah Counting Powick Rusty sign

There’s a few more shots here

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About The Author

By Hamish Gill
I started taking photos at the age of 9. Since then I've taken photos for a hobby, sold cameras for a living, and for a little more than decade I've been a professional photographer and, of course, weekly contributor to 35mmc.
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Comments

Harry Machold on 5 Frames with a Leica M typ 262

Comment posted: 03/01/2018

Hamish, thank you for sharing your very private life with us here.
I am looking for all of your posts with the greatest delight and I am saving all of them.
I was about to buy a Leica M 8 but refrained from doing so since I own already a Sony Alpha 7 and own almost all of the adapters for it to enable me to use my M 645, Pentacon 6 and Hasselblad lenses with it. I can even use the old Hasselblad/Kiev 88 lenses on this so versatile camera.
You truly love cameras but you also use them permanently and share your pictures with us.
Thank you again and with all of my best wishes for you and your family
Harry
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 03/01/2018

Thanks Harry! :)

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Mark on 5 Frames with a Leica M typ 262

Comment posted: 09/01/2018

Most of my digital shots are made with a second hand M 262. Like most Leica digital Ms it seemingly has trouble with excessive reds affecting both skin tones and some fabrics, but if you find it a problem adding a UV/IR cut filter seems to help immensely.

I am still not completely sure about the camera (after more than a year :-) and still occasionally wonder about trading it for another film body. However, the black-and-white conversions are really nice and very different from 35mm analogue options..

One feature I really like is being able to set the post-shot image review to only display while the shutter is held down. This efectively turns off image review except for shots where it is useful to check the exposure.
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Hamish Gill replied:

Comment posted: 09/01/2018

Yeah, that does seem to be a bit of a leica house look - I quite like it, and find it easy to control using camera calibration in LR

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