Why the Leica M3 is still the best camera ever made

The viewfinder

The M3 has a 0.91x viewfinder. This is the largest, brightest viewfinder ever put in a 35mm camera. When you look through an M3 viewfinder, you see the world nearly at life size. The framelines for the 50mm lens are bright and clear. The rangefinder patch is large and easy to see.

Every camera made since -- including later Leica M models -- has a smaller viewfinder. The M6 has a 0.72x finder. The M7 has a 0.72x finder. The M-A has a 0.72x finder. Leica reduced the magnification to accommodate wider lenses. The 35mm framelines don't fit in a 0.91x finder. So they made the finder smaller.

If you shoot 50mm and longer, the M3 viewfinder is better than anything else available. If you shoot 35mm and wider, you need a different camera.

The shutter

The M3 shutter is a horizontal cloth focal plane shutter. It runs from 1 second to 1/1000. The sound it makes is a quiet, precise snap. Not the loud clunk of an SLR mirror. Not the electronic click of a digital camera. A mechanical sound that tells you exactly what happened.

The shutter in a well-maintained M3 is accurate to within a few percent at all speeds. I've tested cameras that were made in 1955 and still running within 10% of the marked speeds. The design is that good.

The M3 shutter has a self-timer and a flash sync at 1/50s for X sync. That's it. No auto exposure, no program mode, no aperture priority. You set the shutter speed, you set the aperture, you focus, you shoot. The camera does nothing else.

The build quality

The M3 body is brass, chrome-plated. The top plate is machined from a single piece of brass. The bottom plate is brass. The lens mount is brass. The camera weighs 580 grams without a lens. It feels like a precision instrument, because it is one.

I have an M3 that was made in 1957. It has been used regularly for sixty-seven years. The chrome is worn on the edges. The leatherette is cracked in a few places. The shutter is accurate. The rangefinder is aligned. The camera works.

Nothing made today is built to the same standard. The materials are different, the manufacturing tolerances are different, the economics are different. Leica makes excellent cameras today. They're not built like the M3.

The argument against

The M3 doesn't have a built-in meter. You need an external meter or a separate metering device. The Voigtlander VC Meter II mounts in the hot shoe and works well. A smartphone app works for rough metering. After a while, you learn to estimate exposure without a meter.

The M3 doesn't have 35mm framelines. If you shoot 35mm, you need a separate viewfinder or a different camera. The 50mm framelines are perfect. The 90mm and 135mm framelines are useful. The 35mm framelines don't exist.

The M3 is expensive. A clean, recently serviced M3 costs $800 to $1,500 depending on condition. That's a lot of money for a camera made in the 1950s and 1960s. It's worth it, but it's a lot of money.

Why I keep coming back to it

I've owned a lot of cameras. Nikon F2, Nikon FM2, Hasselblad 500C/M, Rolleiflex 2.8F, Contax RTS II, Olympus OM-1, Canon F-1, Pentax 67. I use all of them. The M3 is the one I reach for when I'm going somewhere and I want to make photographs.

The M3 with a 50mm Summicron is a small, quiet, precise tool. In Florida, where I've been shooting for twenty years, it's the camera I trust. The viewfinder shows me the world. The shutter fires when I press the button. The film advances smoothly. Nothing gets in the way.

That's the argument for the M3. Not that it's the most capable camera. That it gets out of the way and lets you make photographs.

More from the journal

Related