Alright, so if you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you are thinking about buying Leica… Well first, where do you work and are they hiring? Second, I am going to convince you that you might actually want a different camera for street photography or maybe even spend it somewhere else all together.
I think there are a lot of places you can put that money that will not just get you a new camera, but also make your street photography better and more fun.
Now before I get a bunch of hate from the Leica fan club. I have played with a bunch of them and hands down, they are the nicest cameras on the market. It is the Rolex or Ferrari of photography for sure. They are just expensive.
With that out of the way, we have to set our budget.
How Much is a Leica?
Let’s head to B&H and take a look at our options. If we go with a brand new M11-P body which has the blacked out logo, so you look extra stealthy while you put a flash in an old lady’s face, we are at about $10,000.
If we pair that bad boy with a Leica Sumicron 35mm f/2 APO we are at about $19,000 total.
I am pretty sure that combo is worth more than my car…
If we look at Kelly Bluebook, my 2017 Subaru Forester is worth about $17,000 on a good day.
So yeah, that feels like too much. I don’t know anyone who has spent that much on their Leica in real life.
How Much Have People on Reddit Paid?
Alright, $5, that is a price I can do. Heck, I might even get 2 of them and have money leftover to treat my friends to a round of beers. But if we are being realistic, I don’t think that is a price that most of you will be able to find.
Reasonable Used Price
Let’s check out a used Leica M10 at KEH and Voigtlander 35mm. I feel like that is the most common setup I see from people. Most people can’t really afford a brand new one, let alone the latest Leica.
Now, KEH is not a sponsor, but if you want to sponsor us, hit me up. I gotta pay for my Leica somehow.
So, I found a Leica M10 for about $5,000 which is still an insane amount of money for a camera without auto-focus, but pretty reasonable in the Leica-verse.
I also found a Voigtlander 35mm for about $600.
So that puts us at around $5,600. To make our budget simple and an even better deal than Leica, let’s try and get our dream street photography setup for $5,000 or less.
The Complete Upgrade
First is the complete upgrade. In this you get a Nikon ZF + manual focus lens, a new computer, a RAID system, and 1 year of cloud backup.
Brand New Nikon Zf ($1,900) + Voigtlander 28mm ($900) ~ $2,800
This is a killer camera and lens combo. A friend has this combo and it gives the Leica a run for its money at nearly half the price.
You get all of the core Leica features, less the rangefinder. You can change all 3 settings of the exposure triangle with dials or knobs, you can zone focus with the lens, and you can even turn it into an M-10D by flipping away the rear screen.
However, the killer feature of this combo is the focus confirmation. Since this lens, and all of the other Voigtlander lenses for the Nikon Z system have electrical contacts, they talk to the camera. When a photo is in perfect focus, your active focus point will illuminate green when you have reached critical focus.
This is way more accurate than anything a rangefinder could pull off.
Macbook Pro M4 ~ $1,600
If your computer sounds like an apache attack helicopter when you run lightroom, it is time. Take it out back, and old yeller it. You will be amazed at how much time you waste waiting for the Lightroom to load that you could use to be out actually doing street photography.
My recommendation is to buy a current generation Macbook Pro with the M chip or one of the earlier generation M chip Macbook Pros with higher GPU specs. This will dramatically increase the speed of your computer. This way you can spend less time waiting for photos to load, edit faster, and get back out shooting.
I am going to price this at $1,600 because that is the base price for a 14 inch at the publishing of this video.
Raid System or NAS ~ $500
You need to buy a RAID system, if you don’t have one, then your photos might as well already be deleted. A RAID or NAS essentially copies your photos onto multiple hard drives, so if one hard drive fails you don’t lose all your photos.
I was able to buy a two drive RAID 1 system with two 8TB HHDs for about $500.
Backblaze for a year ~ $100
Unlimited cloud backup for all your photos, your lightroom catalog, and your whole computer. Even with a RAID you still need this because if for some reason your house burnt down, you still have your photos. Sure you’re homeless now, and selling your photos probably won’t help you rent a new place. But you will still have them.
Total Price ~$5,000
This puts us at a grand total of exactly around $5,000 which is less than the Leica, but so much more in terms of improving your photography workflow. It helps you spend less time behind the computer screen and more time out in the streets actually doing street photography.
The Traveler
Get a new camera and go on an exciting trip around the world.
Used Fujifilm X-Pro2 + 23mm f/2 – $1,300
In this option, I recommend you get the Fujifilm X-Pro2. I know this camera is old and already overpriced, but at $1,000 you can get a range finder-esque camera. Although it doesn’t have a true rangefinder, its manual focus aids and real optical view finder make it totally usable as a Leica replacement.
However, I think the biggest draw to the Fujifilm system is that you can get any used f/2 prime for about $300. That means experimenting with focal lengths and building out a kit you like is much more doable.
Round Trip Ticket – $1,000
Now I don’t know where you live, but I imagine a $1,000 gets you a pretty decent round trip ticket to a place you haven’t been before. If you’re in the United States, you can go just about anywhere in the country, Canada, or South America. If that doesn’t get you excited, then maybe make an appointment with your therapist and figure out what the hell is wrong with you.
One Month of Lodging – $2,700
If you work remotely then you should 100% take a full month to go somewhere new. There is something different about being full-immersed in a new location and exploring a place with fresh eyes. It re-kindles your inspiration and forces you to deal with different environments, light, and cultural norms. The more you challenge yourself with new environments, the more your street photography will improve.
Total Price ~$5,000
So, for the price of a Leica you get a rangefinder-esque camera and a month trip abroad. Need I say more?
The Learner
This option might be my favorite, since you get a new camera, a trip, and mentorship by a world class photographer.
Fujifilm X-Pro2 + Prime – $1,300
Once again, I will recommend you the poor man’s Leica. This camera is really one of the only mirrorless cameras that offers you an optical view finder, interchangeable lenses, and a support for framelines as wide as 18mm (28mm full frame equivalent).
Also it is ⅕ the price, so we can get all this other stuff…
Alex and Rebecca Webb Workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico – $2,500
How often do you get to meet living Gods? I mean have you seen the Suffering of Light? That thing is as close to a Bible as us street photographers get.
Workshops are the most slept-on photography purchase. People buy new gear thinking it will improve their photography, when in reality, your crappy photos are just now even higher resolution and suck down even more hard drive space.
Now imagine if you spent that money on actually learning to improve your eye. Sure you won’t have a Leica, but your archive will be stacked with hundreds of banger photographs that you will actually be proud of.
Flight to Oaxaca + AirBnb – $1,000
Since the workshop is in Oaxaca Mexico, you also get a trip out of this! Sure it is not as long as the one I pitched in the previous option, but not everyone can work remotely and take full advantage of it anyways.
The cool part is that Oaxaca is beautiful and if you can swing an extra week after the workshop, you can take some time to practice what you just learned in the place you learned it.
Total Price ~5,000
This is an option that I myself have not taken yet, but I would love to do. Right now, my work schedule makes it tough to take extended time off, but I am hoping that in the next few years that changes and I will be able to sneak in a week-long workshop at some far off place.
Buy the Leica!
Life is short, and if all of the previous options don’t appeal to you or you have already done them, then get it. It is an incredible camera.
If we look at dollars per hour, street photography is probably the cheapest form of entertainment in my life. There are times where I am spending 20+ hours a week taking pictures, editing and looking at photos.
I am going to show you ridiculous math to justify all of this, but you will get my point.
Let’s say I buy the Leica for $5,000 and I shoot for 10 hours a week on average. So 1 hour after work each day and 5 on the weekend. In about 5 years, or exactly at 4.8076923077 years, it will have cost me $2 dollars an hour to use.
I have spent way more than $2 dollars an hour to get entertained. Movies cost like $20 bucks, bowling is like $10 an hour, heck a beer is $8 dollars.
So really it is actually cheap, if you use depraved street photographer math.
Don’t Listen to Me, I’m Just Some Dude on the Internet
Obviously, these are just my opinions and you can do whatever you want with your money. I just hate to see street photographers buy more gear thinking it will improve their photography. When in reality there are so many better places to put it.
If you ask me, at the end of the day you want to optimize for having more time to shoot, creating better photos, and spending less time looking at your computer screen.
Until the next one, see you in the streets!