All of a sudden I became interesting in seeing how well the EV-2 EVF finder for the Leica M240 works. What better way that testing it in practice?

I currently have three variations of the Leica M240 cameras. Each one seems perfectly paired with one particular lens. The ME, which is a late, 2019 introduction in gun metal, seems to be most at home with a 50mm lens in the mount. One of the black ones, the one with the most wear and tear, seems comfortable with the 28mm in the mount and a 28mm bright line finder in the hot shoe. But the third one, a pristine, black enamel version that looks like it just came out of the box, is the one that is a jack of all trades. Meaning that when new lenses come into the gravity field of my camera cabinet this is the body that greets them and takes them out for the first spin. 

Over the last few years, as I acquired the three bodies, I also came across, from time to time, the auxiliary EVF that Leica sold to go along with that particular family of cameras. They call it the EV-2 and since I owned an Olympus EP-2, which used a remarkably similar external EVF, I was able to compare the Leica version with the Olympus version of the finder. Excepting the logos on the front of each unit they are identical and, in fact, interchangeable. Each time one of the Leica versions came up for sale at my favorite Leica dealer --- for a low enough price--- I bought one. Now I own two. But I always thought I wasted my money because the live view with the M240 slows everything down (you have to enable live view to use the EVFs...) and causes a not trivial amount of finder refresh delay. I tried each one out to make sure it worked and since then they've languished at the back of a drawer filled with other orphaned accessories. 

But all that changed when I recently bought two lenses in quick succession. The first one is the Carl Zeiss 85mm f4.0 ZM lens. It's an M mount lens that even has the six bit information on the mount that interfaces with the cameras and conjures up an in-camera lens profile. The second lens is the much more recently delivered (by the skin of its teeth) Thypoch Ksana 21mm f3.5 lens. Also with an M mount. 

The 85mm was the first impetus for pulling out one of the EVFs. Why? Well because there are no frame lines in the Leica M finders for 85mm lenses. You can default to 90mm and use your mental powers to understand just how much more of the image will appear outside those frame lines or, you could put an EVF in the finder, implement live view and get very exacting compositions. And, as you focus the lens via the focusing ring the M240 camera will punch in and show a magnified image that makes fine focusing as easy as it can be with any mirrorless camera. Since I wanted to give the 85mm a really good test and I really wanted to see how hard or easy it would be to work with what is now an antiquated EVF, I took  both the lens and the EVF out for a photo-stroll. 

All of the images here were made with the 85mm lens and the EV-2 finder using an M240 camera. Not the highest resolution EVF  these days, by a long shot but, remarkably, still very adequate for composition and fine focusing. But what I found is that with a lens that is well calibrated to the M camera rangefinder the optimum way for me to work is to: see something I'd like to photograph, put the rangefinder window up to my eye (ignoring the frame lines), focus quickly via the rangefinder patch and then just use the EVF for composition. It's actually a fast and efficient way to work with dedicated M lenses. It's slower if you use the EVF for both focusing and composition but you sure don't have to work that way. The camera rangefinder is always on...

There is one compromise. The M240, used in the conventional way, without an external EVF, is legendary for its amazingly robust battery life and its parsimonious sipping of that stored energy. You can shoot a lot and go days with the same battery if you shy away from live view. Even more so if you forgo the EVF. But even so, I shot about 150 raw frames this afternoon with live view and the EVF and kept the camera on for long stretches of time. When I got back to the VSL H.Q. I checked the battery status on the camera and it was still showing 85% full. Not a bad performance at all. 

It's also nice to use the EVF with the 85mm because the image fills the finder window while the 90mm frame lines in the camera viewfinder are quite small and you'll do a fair amount of squinting if you really want to frame precisely. The EVF and live view also cure parallax. So as you focus closer you don't see your framing compromised. 

The only other compromises are color and contrast of the image in the EVF. The EVF image is notably less contrasty than what you are going to end up with on your monitor for post production. And you'll find that color precision is much lower than the modern EVFs which have four or five times the resolution and much greater ability to render believable dynamic range in a scene. 

I'd say that working with 21mm, 75mm, 85mm, 90mm and 135mm lenses on an M240 works best when you use the EVF. It's not the quickest way to work but you'll have confidence about what will eventually be in or out of the frame. If you need speedy frame-to-frame performance you'll have to revert back to using the rangefinder/finder window on the camera. But it's nice to have good options for different kinds of work. Landscapes and urban architecture are a natural for the EVF. Fast moving stuff? Not so much. 

At the other end of the focal length ranges sits the new Thypoch Ksana 21mm f3.5. It's a tiny lens with very, very good optical performance. See the blog post previous to this one for lots of examples of this lens's performance capabilities. I used it in that outing with a Leica SL2 camera body. It worked well. The EVF in that camera is pretty much state of the art and so easy to compose and focus with. 

But using the Ksana 21mm on a naked M mount rangefinder camera is tough even though the lens is natively an M compatible lens. The finder in the M240 cameras maxes out at 28mm and even with a 28mm lens I struggle to see the edges of the frame through the camera's optical finder window. At one point Leica made an elegant 21-24-28mm zoom finder that fits in the hot shoe of cameras. It doesn't adjust for parallax and doesn't feature a built-in diopter. But the frustrating thing is that the finder doesn't have bright frame lines. In fact it has no frame lines at all. You click from focal length to focal length and the magnification in the optical external viewfinder changes to show the effect of the focal length you choose. 

But without hard edges showing the boundary of the frame getting a perfect composition is a crap shoot. The external zoom optical finder is great for quick shots with a zone focus lens but if you need to be more precise you'll end up back at live view. And if you want it to be comfortable and fun with live view you'll add an EVF to the mix. 

I've tried the 21mm lens both ways. Even with the slight delay between frames I much prefer the EVF to the external optical finder. If you are like most users of 21mm lenses you'll only need to use the EVF to focus if you have the lens locked down on a tripod and you are taking great care to place the focus very precisely. Most Leica M users who are using wider lenses like this one are much more apt to zone focus the lens and then use an aperture like f5.6 or f8 to add a bit of "in focus insurance" to the mix. The depth of sharp focus with a 21mm focused at 10 feet and with an aperture of f8 gets you pretty much from four or five feet to infinity of sharp focus. Used this way the external finder or the EVF can both be used just for framing up the image. You can pretty much ignore picky focusing. 

I've use the 21mm and the M240 both ways. The EVF and the Optical finder both have their advantages and disadvantages. Since the optical finder doesn't require power you get back your legendary, long battery life with the M240. Since the optical finder doesn't require or need live view you save yourself from shutter lag and buffer molasses syndrome. You give up parallax accuracy in close focusing, a well defined set of boundaries for the frame and the ability to see how the camera is handling exposure and color. But remember that the EVF itself is no great shakes when it comes to color accuracy or, for that matter, easy to gauge exposure accuracy.

The main selling points of the EVF are that it provides compatibility for composing, via live view, with any focal length lens you are able to attach to the lens mount. from 10mm all the way to, and over 1,000mm, if you can find something like that in an M mount. Or something compatible with an adapter to M mount. The other selling point is the precision of the compositional capabilities. With the EVF you know for sure where the edges of your frame are and what will and will not be in the final image. 

In theory I like the optical finder better. In practice I like the EVF better. But frankly, if you are using a Leica M240 I am of the belief that you should stick to lenses from 28-75mm and when you get further outside those focal lengths it's much more convenient, efficient, quick and accurate to just default to a mirrorless AF camera. In the Leica system, for me, that's almost always an SL2 when using stuff like a 20mm or a 200mm lens. It just works. 

I have used both of the above mentioned lenses on both M240 cameras and on Leica SL cameras and for the most part, if I'm not embracing the idea in the moment that friction makes creativity better, the working methodologies of the SL cameras are much easier because these two lenses are good examples of the ragged edges of the rangefinder's frame line performance envelope. 

If I were to buy an M11, Leica's most current M series rangefinder I would not hesitate to buy the much more capable EVF Leica has for that particular camera. It can make a rangefinder camera at least competent as an all-around camera instead of a specialty tool for street and travel photography. But most important consideration is the fun quotient. It's fun to be able to take time and do things a bit old school --- unless a client is looking over your shoulder and your next month's rent is on the line. Then the fool proof solution takes precedence. Almost always.