Why Leica is the best photography brand

Is it just for the history? No, guys.

Leica CL Edition Paul Smith

A necessary premise to clarify the meaning of this article

I am not a Leica fan boy, in fact i am not any brand fan boy. My relationship with Leica is this: currently I don’t currently own a Leica camera. In the past I only owned the Leica X2, which I decided to keep, buying it, after having done the work on assignment for Leica Camera AG, People of Chapultepec, a documentary project published on the LEICA X catalog in 2013. I collaborated to their official blog for 3 year, since 2011 to 2014. My relations with Leica are good. Their executives with whom I am in contact have reiterated their esteem and said that if something comes out in the future that they think could lead to a new collaboration, I could return to work with them. I hope so because Leica Camera AG has been one of the best clients I ever had.

So why I consider Leica the best photography brand?

As a professional photographer and blogger all over these years I have worked with almost all brands on the market. I used their cameras and I collaborated with many brands, sometimes as ambassador, sometimes for a brief collaboration or a simple review of their products.

To start with the reasons you have more context: I'm not a fool, I know what I'm talking about having had direct experience. I also know the brands from a business point of view.

The first thing, clearly is the history: Leica created the 35mm full frame format. All over the years Leica granted to serious photographers superb lenses and excellent build quality of their products. This is not a personal opinion but a fact. When digital came they experienced a crisis, but they came up with innovation while remaining faithful to their story of making products for real photographers.

The second reason is: try working with a Leica. I have tried a digital Leica M only once but I have worked with the Leica X2 which is basically a compact. Yet the results of simply using JPGs directly from the camera still amaze me years later. From highlights to lowlights images are totally crisp and in some way very similar to film. This year I proposed a reload of my work on assignment made for them and I could work again the files and the results were so exceptional that I decide to publish a new book with that work.

Now I want to talk about a brand policy reason: Leica has consistently maintained a reputation because compared to other brands, it preserves respect for its older products. In fact other brands are all focused on the new to advertise and completely abandoning the old items. Look at their blog where they can interview photographers using a Leica M4 or even a Leica M8. In 2021. For them is OK if you use a Leica camera and it doesn’t matter if is not the last release on the market. This makes it a cult.

Here we go with the 4th reason: a real photography culture. Their consistence can be seen also through LFI their magazine, aiming to Art photography also when is commercial. You can see it on their blog, curated and a real photography culture hub on the internet. I am proud because I collaborated to that blog for years.

Leica maintains a certain playfulness in photography world just like Kodak did a time. This explains a product like the one you see in the photograph of this post: the Leica CL Edition Paul Smith is crazy stuff that some photographers can hate but others can love completely and this makes it also a product for collectors.

Leica also caters to the luxury market and is comparable to the cult of Rolex or Porsche, maybe using sometimes well-known testimonials. We have see Lenny Kravitz collaborating with them and they proposed a special edition camera with the singer.

Their Ambassor program is real and not a joke like the imitators. It is made with real photographers and not amateurs. And counting with interesting workshops that are masterclass. Anything is not improvised.

And with that said, I can tell you more about my direct experience: Leica pays for real the photographers they contracts. With a substantial payment for the work realized. This is the proof they understand what is right to pay the photographers.

Compared to other brands, nothing seems to be left to chance, even the t-shirts or other marketing products. and I am not joking with that.

Are they expensive? Yes, they are. But they are proposing lenses that are still real lenses that you can use in manual focus for real. You don’t see plastic proposed to absurd prices like the imitators do.

Their cameras are products thought for photographers. In fact you don’t see a Leica camera flirting with the video market or other things to make it easy to those not knowing what real photography is. To the point that buying a Leica camera to a total beginner is not the best idea you can have.

This is what i think about Leica. And I think I was able to highlight what are the key points why Leica is the best photography brand.