I've Taken Thousands of Photos With Leica's New M EV1. These Are My Best.

Rich colors and sharp focus. A good effort from the camera.

The focus is a little softer here but I still think it works well. I love the contrasty tones from the camera's monochrome profile.

I shot this at f/1.7 and I'm pleased to have nailed focus on the dog's face as she's looking up at the treat. 

The camera has physical dials for shutter speed, which I normally left at automatic, letting the camera decide on this setting. I set my aperture manually using the ring on the lens.

Inside the pub, I set the ISO speed to 3,200. This image still looks clean. I actually like the slight natural grain, which has given it a more filmic look. 

Despite sitting down and having all the time I needed to achieve focus on this blanket, I still managed to miss it slightly, focusing a little in front of the pattern. This is the DNG raw file, which I've slightly adjusted. 

But I shot in in JPEG as well using Leica's Vivid color profile, which has given it a more punchy look. 

Another edited raw file where I've leaned into warmer tones to complement the scene and added a slight amount of extra grain for a more filmic feel.

The focus was better here, but in my haste to take the shot, I've unfortunately introduced a bit of motion blur.

Shooting through these railings. This shot is acceptably sharp.

These cowboy boots really stood out to me, especially as their owner remains hidden. This is a rare example of a shot where I nailed the focus and managed to get the timing just right as a cloud of vape burst forth. 

Inside Edinburgh's most beautiful museum, I like this wide shot of the figure centrally framed. This is the JPEG: Other than adjusting the geometry to ensure the uprights are all actually upright, I've done little else to alter it. 

This straight-out-of-camera JPEG has nice tones. By focusing to infinity I've been able to achieve a sharp shot.

I've brightened this JPEG slightly and adjusted the geometry for the uprights.

A quick street snap where I have completely missed focus like the buffoon that I am.

This JPEG is completely untouched and looks great. Thanks to me just focusing to infinity and shooting at f/4.8 it's pretty much sharp. 

I wanted a slow shutter speed to blur the motion of the passersby here, so I set my aperture to f/16 and my ISO at its lowest of 50 in order to get a shutter speed of just a 15th of second which was enough to get some nice blur to this jogger. 

I've slightly brought down the highlights here and given it a wide, narrow crop that nicely fits the building, the railing and the sidewalk. 

A narrow f/2.4 aperture helped me turn these leaves into a nice out-of-focus frame for the ship in the background. 

By using the built-in digital crop I was able to bring this boat slightly closer into the frame, using the old pier as a leading line. It looks OK when viewed in full, but when you zoom in it's clear that there's a drop in quality -- as you'd expect from a digital zoom.

I used the digital zoom to focus my composition here as well and I like the result. I focused to infinity and the shot remains well-focused as a result.

I liked this collection of posts with the crossing in frame and the mill in the background. This is the untouched DNG raw version.

In this case, I've adjusted the tones and exposure and corrected for the uprights. 

I focused to infinity on this image, resulting in the background looking pin-sharp. 

By keeping my camera manually set to infinity focus, I found it easier to experiment with compositions here. In this case, I used a foreground railing to frame the ship in the background.

The digital crop helped me get a good view on this scene, which combines the front of two ships with the nice element of the parked car in between. 

A straight-out-of-camera JPEG. I manually set my white balance to be quite warm. That's the one area where I do think the M EV1 is at fault. 

In auto mode, its images tend to lean cool, with much more apparent blue and magenta tones. It may or may not be technically correct but it really didn't look right to my eye.

By manually adjusting the white balance I was able to get the warmer tones I was looking for. This isn't just the case with the M EV1, I work this way on my Q3 43 and I remember it also being the case when I tested the M11. Leica just loves cool tones, I guess.

These photographers on these rocks caught my eye as I loved how the natural shadow in the scene created a frame around them. But I managed to miss my focus almost completely and the camera's cool tones don't do the scene any favors here. 

I manually adjusted the white balance here -- and the individual colors of the yellows and oranges in Lightroom -- to create this golden, glowing autumnal scene, which I love. 

And I did pretty much the same here. 

A top-down look at my Danner boots in the leaves. 

This image is a completely untouched JPEG. I used a slow shutter speed to blur the motion of the passerby, which helps draw the eye more to the static figure on their phone. I love the tones in this scene. 

Focus is acceptable on this scene.

Whereas here I'd managed to miss critical focus on the man's face, despite sitting here for about a minute framing up and working on this shot. I was so confident that this was a shot I'd nailed, so I was disappointed to see that it wasn't quite right when I looked at the files later. 

I'm not 100% sure what I was focusing on here, to be honest. The kid looking round is the most in-focus part, but even then it's not properly sharp. It's close enough though and I quite like this image despite its softness.

Whereas this one is a total failure. Neither of the foreground subjects are in focus as I intended them to be. It's a real shame. As someone who's been taking photos for around 20 years, I feel like I should be able to do better.