Leica M10 Monochrom review

The Leica M10 Monochrom is an extraordinary camera at an extraordinary price – is it worth it, and who would buy one?

Leica M10 Monochrom review
(Image: © Rod Lawton/Digital Camera World)

Digital Camera World Verdict

This is a camera that simplifies the picture taking process, and forces you to concentrate on one thing. It may seem like an anachronism, but the Monochrom drives you towards seeing, composing and shooting images in a very different way. It makes no concessions to novices, and it's up to you to make the effort to master it. That alone will divide opinion... though not as much as the price.

Pros

  • +

    Classic Leica design

  • +

    Traditional rangefinder focusing

  • +

    Touchscreen LCD with LiveView

Cons

  • -

    No option for color shooting

  • -

    No autofocus or video

  • -

    Cost

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The Leica M10 Monochrom is remarkable for three reasons. The first is its use of a decades-old manual focus rangefinder design. The second is that it shoots only in black and white. The third is a price tag higher than any other M-series camera except for Leica's prestige special editions. What's going on?

Only Leica could be bold enough to make camera that shoots just in black in white. When the German 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. 

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Rod Lawton
Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com