By Ked · May 2026

M7 vs M6 vs MP: Which Film Leica, and What Aperture Priority Is Really Like

May 2026

Three film M Leicas were in production at the same time in the 2000s, and a lot of buyers get stuck choosing among them. The M7, the M6, and the MP shoot the same lenses, frame through similar finders, and produce identical negatives. The decision between them is not really about image quality at all. It's about one question: do you want the camera to set the shutter speed for you, or not?

This post is about that decision, and about what the M7's answer to it, aperture-priority auto-exposure, is actually like to live with. For the specs the M7 shares with its siblings, and for what each body costs right now, the M7 price guide has the concise version. Here we go deeper on the parts a spec sheet can't tell you.

The Decision in One Sentence

The M6 and MP are fully mechanical bodies with a built-in meter you read and obey by hand. The M7 has an electronic shutter and can set the exposure for you. That single difference, mechanical-and-manual versus electronic-and-automatic, is the whole choice. Everything else is secondary.

• M6: mechanical shutter, manual exposure only. Fires at any speed with a dead battery; the battery only powers the meter. The value pick of the three and the one most shooters land on.
• MP: mechanically identical to the M6, with brass top and bottom plates, a classic dial and rewind layout, and the older round Leica script logo. A brand-new mechanical M for purists, and priced like one.
• M7: electronic shutter, aperture-priority auto-exposure plus full manual. Needs a battery for nearly everything. The working camera of the three.

If you already know you want a camera with no electronics in the exposure path, you're choosing between the M6 and the MP on budget and cosmetics, and you can stop reading here; the M6 variants guide covers that side. The rest of this post is for shooters deciding whether auto-exposure earns its place in a Leica.

Where Auto-Exposure Actually Helps

Aperture priority is not a convenience for its own sake. It changes what you can react to. The cases where it earns the M7's price premium and its battery dependence are specific:

• Fast-changing light. Walk a street that alternates between shade and hard sun and the correct exposure can swing two or three stops every few steps. On an M6 you re-meter and re-dial at each transition, and your eye keeps leaving the finder. On the M7 you set an aperture, leave the dial on A, and the camera tracks the light frame to frame while you stay composed and ready.
• Candid and street work. When the picture is a half-second window, the shutter-speed decision is overhead you don't have time for. AE removes it. You think about the frame and the moment of release, not the dial.
• Events and receptions. Mixed and shifting indoor light, subjects moving between windows and lamps. AE keeps you shooting at the rate the room demands.

The common thread is that AE pays off most when the light is moving faster than you can comfortably meter by hand. When it isn't, the advantage shrinks to almost nothing.

Where Manual Is the Better Tool

Plenty of shooting rewards setting the exposure once and forgetting it, and in those situations the M6 or MP is not a compromise, it's the better fit:

• Steady light. Overcast days, open shade, studio, most interiors with constant lighting. Meter once, set the dial, shoot the roll. AE solves a problem you don't have.
• Deliberate, consistent exposure. When you want every frame on a roll exposed the same way regardless of how the framing changes, a fixed manual setting does that and AE actively works against it.
• High-contrast scenes you want to expose your way. A backlit subject, a bright sky over a dark foreground: deciding the exposure yourself is often faster and surer than nudging an automatic system toward the reading you already know you want.

And there is the trust question, which is real even if it sounds like superstition. The M7's shutter is timed by electronics, so most speeds need a working battery; only 1/60 and 1/125 survive a dead one. Some shooters simply don't want their exposure decided by a circuit, or want a body that will still fire decades from now with no working board to depend on. That's a legitimate preference, not a fault in the camera. If it describes you, buy mechanical. (The battery specifics and backup speeds are in the price guide.)

Aperture Priority in Practice

Choosing the M7 is the easy part. Shooting AE well on a rangefinder takes a little technique that's worth spelling out, because it's the difference between AE saving you and AE quietly handing you bad frames.

Lock and recompose is the core skill. The M7's meter is center-weighted, so it pays most attention to the middle of the frame. When your subject isn't in the middle, point the center at the tone you want correctly exposed, half-press the shutter release to lock that reading, then recompose to your real framing and fire. The locked value holds until you release the button. This is the same instinct as manual metering off a key tone, except the camera holds the number for you instead of you holding it on the dial.

Tricky light is where lock-and-recompose stops being optional. Center-weighted metering gets pulled by whatever dominates the frame. A bright sky behind your subject drives the meter to underexpose the subject; a dark background does the opposite. In those scenes, meter off the subject's face or another midtone, lock, then recompose with the sky or the shadow back in the frame. If you'd rather not, the M7 has exposure compensation to dial in a correction and hold it across a series. The point is that AE doesn't excuse you from reading the light, it just changes what you do once you've read it.

Mind the half-stop. The M7 chooses a stepless shutter speed, not a click-stopped one, so it can land at, say, 1/350 when the M6 would have forced you to pick 1/250 or 1/500. That precision is a quiet advantage for slide film and other low-latitude stock, where a half-stop matters. It also means the speed shown in the finder is an exact reading, not a rounded one, so treat it as information: if the M7 is choosing 1/15 in what looks like daylight, something is off, your lens cap is on, the aperture isn't where you think, or the light is darker than it looks. The readout is a fast sanity check on every frame, and learning to glance at it is part of shooting the camera well.

Drop to manual when AE would fight you. The M7 is still a full manual camera with the same two-arrow meter display as the M6 when you turn the dial off A. The fluent way to shoot it is to live on A for changing light and flip to manual the moment you want a fixed exposure, rather than treating the camera as either automatic or manual for a whole roll. The switch is one thumb movement on the shutter dial.

So Which One?

The honest summary is short. Buy the M7 if you shoot in moving light, came to Leica from a modern auto-exposure camera and don't want to give that workflow up, or simply value keeping your eye in the finder while the exposure takes care of itself, and you don't mind carrying a spare battery. Buy the M6 if you want the most camera for the money and are happy metering by hand. Buy the MP if you want a new, fully mechanical M and the finish and feel that come with it.

None of the three is the wrong answer. They were sold side by side because they genuinely serve different shooters, and the worst outcome is buying the mechanical purist's tool and then wishing it would set the shutter for you in the street, or buying the working camera and then resenting that it needs a battery. Decide the auto-versus-manual question first, honestly, and the rest follows.

When you've settled on the M7, the M7 price guide tracks live used prices and walks through what to check on a used body, including the electronics, which are the one thing that can turn a cheap M7 into an expensive one. Or browse current M7 listings on UsedCameraTracker to compare bodies, viewfinder magnifications, and prices across the market.