There鈥檚 a photography term called 鈥渃himping鈥澛爐hat describes the habit of taking a picture聽and then immediately going,聽鈥淥h, oh, oh,鈥 like a chimp, while reviewing it on the camera鈥檚 LCD screen. Don鈥檛 do this. If you鈥檙e ogling the display,聽you might聽miss the next important shot. But it鈥檚 a hard habit to break, which is why we鈥檙e thankful for聽Leica鈥檚 new,聽LCD-less聽$6,000 digital聽.
That鈥檚 right. Leica wants you to pony up six Gs for a digital camera that has no review screen. It gets better. The camera doesn鈥檛 shoot video聽or JPEGs (only RAW), and it has no fancy controls beyond basics like shutter speed and aperture. Much like Sean Connery placing a typewriter in front of Rob Brown鈥檚 character in Finding Forrester and yelling, 鈥淧unch the keys, for God鈥檚 sake!鈥 Leica seems to be telling the user to just take the damn picture.
We love it.
While fancy functions like image聽stabilization聽are useful in some situations, it鈥檚 great to see a company making a camera that puts the art of picture making first. Of course,聽you will聽need some basic skills to use the thing. You鈥檒l need to be familiar with ISO, and you鈥檒l need to know how shutter speed and the lens aperture work together. It鈥檚 definitely a film-style approach, except the M-D allows you to pull the SD card and plug it into a computer instead of laboring in a darkroom. As Leica puts it, 鈥淸The M-D]聽brings back the joy of anticipation of waiting to see how our pictures turned out.鈥
With some trial and error, the pictures will likely come out beautifully. Under the hood, the camera has some very nice bits, like a 24-megapixel CMOS sensor that records DNG files, an ISO range of 200 to聽6400, and a max shutter speed of 1/4000th.
That $6,000 price tag聽is for the body only, so we can鈥檛 imagine Leica selling many of these cameras, and we certainly wouldn鈥檛 recommend one to most people. But if you鈥檙e an old-school purist, you should be very, very tempted.