Leica M10 Monochrom £7,250/$8,299

An extraordinary camera – and an extraordinary price

- Rod Lawton & Chris George

1 Interestingly, the Leica branding is left off the M10 Monochrom. There is no red dot, no Leica logo on the top plate, and no colour on the dials. This is as subtle as you can get.

2 The M10 Monochrom does not offer through-the-lens viewing, but rather a direct-vision rangefinder system.

3 The rangefinder focusing viewfinder takes some getting used to if you have not used one before.

4 You have to remove the baseplate entirely to access the single SD card slot, or the battery.

5 The dials are all mechanical, so you can set the exposure before the camera is even turned on.

Sensor: 40MP full-frame CMOS sensor without colour or low-pass filters

Image processor: Maestro

AF: Manual focus only via rangefinder triangulation and focus peaking in Live View ISO range: 100 to 100,000

Max image size: 7,840 x 5,184 JPEG, 7,864 x 5,200 DNG

Viewfinder: Optical direct vision (not TTL)

Metering modes: Multi-field, centre-weighted, spot Video: N/A

Memory card: 2GB internal SD / SDHC / SDXC LCD: 3-inch fixed touchscreen, 1,036,800 dots

Max burst: Not quoted

Connectivity: Wi-Fi

Size: 139 x 39 x 80mm

Weight: 660g (body only, with battery)

Only Leica could be bold enough to make a camera that shoots just in black in white. When the company first introduced the first Leica M Monochrom in 2012, many imagined that it was just one of Leica’s special editions that would fade away as soon as it had arrived.