My Leica M-E finally returned from Wetzlar for the infamous CCD replacement and plus an overall repair & maintenance service recommended by Leica engineers that included the adjustment of the rangefinder mechanism.

The whole thing took around 3 months and cost me USD$ 1900… Enough to buy a new camera. I had no other choice though: spend the money and fix it, or otherwise witness the corrosion progress on the CCD and cry about it.

With this extensive servicing of the camera, Leica issued a 1 year warranty which is really cool. This raises the resell value of the camera. Not that I’ll ever think about selling my Leica M-E though.

Today I decided to go out with the combo above. That Zeiss lens is pretty wide at 21mm so I had to add an external viewfinder. Got one from Fuji with multiple framelines from 21mm and 28mm. Not very comfortable to use, but not that bad either.

The Zeiss Biogon 21mm f2.8 is a wonderful lens. The colours are very deep and intense, and it draws the scene in a very specific way. The gradation of the shadows is rich and amazing, very different from my other Leica lenses. It has a natural light fall-off, but in a very elegant way, with dark areas mixed with bright spots. The chiaroscuro transitions are so smooth.

Below some photos I took today. All straight out of camera RAWs. Click for full resolution and EXIF data.