Leica CM a Compact Leica M Camera

Compact Leica M

The Leica CM viewfinder is more to the left than the Minilux, and has a manual focus selector with a focus by wire manual mode, making CM a Basic Rangefinder. CM is a compact M camera.

Operating a Leica CM is similar to operating any other point and shoot camera but there are a few additional precautions that can be taken to ensure quality photographs.

Center Focus

It can only focus on a spot in the center of the image. If someone moves, you’re back to square one.

Minimum Hand Held Shutter Speed

In general, the guideline is that the minimum handheld shutter speed is the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens. For a 40mm Leica Summarit lens, it’s 1/40th of a second. It can be a bit too slow to take sharp photos of all but still human subjects. If you’re trying to take close up portraits, for example, someone will almost certainly move and look fuzzy.

Not Too Close

Although the CM viewfinder shows the focus setting, the lens and the viewfinder are completely separate. When you get too close, you probably aren’t going to get the picture you intended to get.

Manual focus

In Manual mode, Leica CM is similar to Leica M system. Experianced shooters can focus anywhere else in the frame, they learn by how much to move the focus dial to compensate blindly.

Attention

The focus dial moves very easily out of position when one tries to change the diaphragm value or take it out of the bag. When focusing is performed manually, the corresponding distance is also displayed on the camera back LC-Display.

Equipped with automatic and manual viewfinder displays, this Leica rangefinder offers the best conditions for individual picture composition even in low-light conditions. The Leica CM boasts a large illuminated LCD display that generates high-quality images and keeps you informed of the battery condition, the date setting, flash readiness, exposure override, self-timer, etc. 
Brilliant real-image viewfinder with detailed LED display make composition and controlling photographic parameters easy.
40mm f/2.4 LEICA SUMMARIT lens (6 elements in 4 groups) with multi-layer coating.
Passive phase-detecting autofocus.
Exposure override from -2 EV to +2 EV in 1/3 EV steps.
Autofocus and manual focus.
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