The Leica M6 is the iconic 35mm rangefinder. The Fuji GSW690iii is the medium-format 6x9 rangefinder that earned itself the nickname “Texas Leica” (because it is enormous, like everything in Texas, supposedly). Two cameras at very different ends of the rangefinder spectrum. Same family of approach, very different scales.
I met up with Ishkhan Ghazarian in Toronto for a day, both of us loaded with Kodak Portra 400, both of us heading to Kensington Market to shoot street. Ish on the Leica, me on the GSW690iii. The plan was a head-to-head: same film, same streets, same time of day, see what we got.
This is not a competition. We were very clear about that. The cameras are not designed to do the same thing for the same kind of photographer, and pitching them against each other on a points basis would be the wrong frame. But putting them side by side did produce some genuinely interesting observations about format, philosophy, and where each camera shines.
This is the street half of the project. Ishkhan has the studio half on his channel.
What “Texas Leica” actually means
The nickname is meant to describe a class of camera: medium format rangefinders that share a basic philosophy with the Leica (compact-ish body, rangefinder focusing, interchangeable or fixed lens, quiet operation) but on a much larger scale, with much larger negatives. The Fuji GSW690iii is the textbook example. Big body, big negative, fixed 65mm f5.6 lens, rangefinder focus.
I genuinely dislike the nickname. It feels reductive to call the GSW a “big Leica” when the camera is its own thing with its own design philosophy, made by a different manufacturer for a different audience. But the name has stuck, so this article uses it because that is what people search for.
If the search-friendly title bothers any other GSW shooters, my apologies.
My anti-Leica bias, declared
I have written this paragraph in a few of my reviews now, but it applies here too, so once more for clarity.
I am not drawn to top-of-the-table cameras. The Leica M6 is the apex 35mm rangefinder, the camera every other manufacturer has been measured against for decades, with a price and a reputation to match. It is, by any objective measure, one of the great cameras ever made. I have written something similar in the Hasselblad 500C/M review and the Bronica S2A appreciation. The pattern is the same. I am happier shooting the underdog, partly because I find it more rewarding, partly because the underdog is usually a tenth of the price.
So I went into this day knowing I was not going to fall in love with the Leica. Ish, by contrast, loves his M6 and was excited to put it through a proper day’s work alongside another rangefinder.
That difference in stance is probably useful context for the rest of the article.
The kit
The Leica side. Leica M6 with the 35mm f2 Summicron, Ish’s standard street setup. He has been shooting it heavily for the past year. He also brought a Light Lens Lab 50mm f2 (the “Rigid” homage to the older Leica 50/2) for the studio half, but for the street he stuck with the 35mm.
The Texas Leica side. Fuji GSW690iii. Fixed 65mm f5.6 lens. The 65mm on a 6x9 negative gives roughly a 28mm equivalent in 35mm terms, so the field of view is wider than the 35mm Summicron on the Leica. The frame size is, of course, massive. 24x36mm versus 60x90mm. Roughly six times the negative area.
The film. Kodak Portra 400 in both 35mm and 120. We picked it up from Grainnation, the Toronto film lab that has been one of the bright spots of my time in the city. Portra 400 in Toronto is roughly half the price it is in the UK, which has made the trip an excellent opportunity to shoot it heavily, on a film I love and would shoot more of at home if it cost less.
For the day’s shoot, Portra 400 in bright Toronto sunshine was the right call. The dynamic range gives you huge latitude to handle the high-contrast March light, and the colour palette suits the kind of mixed urban setting we were heading into.
![PLACEHOLDER: the two cameras side by side, Leica M6 with 35mm Summicron and Fuji GSW690iii, showing the dramatic size difference]
Kensington Market
Ish’s choice of location. Kensington is one of the more artsy parts of Toronto, full of street art, independent shops, food vendors, and a thriving creative scene. Good for street photography because there is constant visual interest and a population that is generally relaxed about being photographed.
Neither of us is really a street photographer. My natural habitat is the studio or the woods. Ish’s natural habitat is closer to street but he also said he was being pushed outside his usual mode by the brief. So this was the blind leading the blind for a couple of hours, which is its own kind of useful exercise.
A few moments worth describing:
A painter at his easel on the pavement. We both shot him, with permission, from slightly different angles. I went with the wider GSW frame, including a bit more context around him. Ish went tighter with the 35mm and used a small flash for some hard fill on the painter’s face. Two genuinely different photographs of the same subject. Both worked, in different ways.
A wall of mirror bricks. A piece of public art that we found by accident. The mirrors caught the late-morning sun and broke the building behind into a kaleidoscope. Both of us spent a few minutes shooting variations of it.
Ish kept bumping into people he knew. This is what happens when a local photographer shows a visiting photographer around. By halfway through the morning I was joking that the chance encounters were an unfair advantage, which is the kind of joke you make on a day that is not, very deliberately, a competition.
![PLACEHOLDER: a frame from the GSW690iii showing the painter at his easel with context, taken on the 65mm at probably f5.6]
The format difference, in practice
Here is what the negative-size gap actually means when you put them side by side.
The GSW’s resolution headroom is enormous. On a 6x9 negative shot at f5.6 to f11, you can crop hard into the frame and pull out smaller compositions from within the original frame. I took one of Ish in the Kensington crowd, then cropped in on him in the post-shoot review, and the cropped detail still held up beautifully. It is the kind of headroom you do not have on 35mm.
The same crop on the Leica negative does not hold up. I tested a comparable composition from one of Ish’s frames and the same level of crop visibly fell apart, even on Portra 400 (which is a fine-grained stock and forgives a lot). 35mm gives you what 35mm gives you. There is no hidden reserve to crop into.
This is the genuinely useful observation from the day, and it leads to a question I am still thinking about: should I be shooting the GSW with the assumption that I will crop? Composing wide to compose right, with the option to extract a tighter image later, rather than trying to nail the composition exactly in the moment.
It would change how I use the camera. Currently I treat the GSW the same way I treat any other camera, composing to what I want in the frame. The headroom suggests I am leaving capability on the table.
Genuinely unsure. Maybe both approaches have their place, depending on the subject. Worth experimenting.
What the GSW is good at, that the Leica is not
Putting these next to each other made me appreciate things about the GSW I had not fully articulated before:
The negative size. Obviously. But specifically: the negative size means depth-of-field rendering looks completely different. Even at f5.6 the GSW is producing a 6x9 negative that, when printed, gives you a thinner depth-of-field appearance than a Leica wide open. The “look” of medium format wins almost every time on negative quality alone.
The fixed lens. This is the one most people complain about. I think it is a feature. A fixed lens means I stop thinking about which lens to bring or swap to, and I think about the image. The 65mm f5.6 on 6x9 is wide enough for most street and landscape work, and the discipline of a single focal length is good for the eye.
Quiet shutter. The GSW690iii’s leaf shutter is whisper-quiet. Subjects on the street did not notice me firing it, even at close range. Quieter than the M6, which is itself famously quiet.
What the Leica is good at, that the GSW is not
Equal time, honestly.
Speed and responsiveness. The Leica is half the size and a third the weight. Ish was getting more frames per minute and getting closer to subjects without making them self-conscious. The GSW is a brick by comparison. Lifting it to my eye is an event.
The rangefinder patch. The M6 with the MP finder upgrade has a brighter, sharper rangefinder patch than the GSW. I struggled to see the focus patch on the GSW in some of the lighting we were in, and Ish had no such problem. For genuinely fast street work where you are focusing on the move, the M6 wins this one comfortably.
Lens options. Obvious but worth saying. The M6 takes any Leica M-mount lens. The GSW is locked to its one optic, forever. If you want creative range from focal length choice, the Leica is the camera, full stop.
The viewfinder framelines. Real frame outlines that move with the rangefinder, showing you parallax-corrected framing for whatever lens is mounted. The GSW has a fixed finder for its fixed lens. Adequate, not elegant.
![PLACEHOLDER: a frame from Ish on the Leica M6, 35mm, showing the speed and intimacy advantage of the smaller camera]
So what did we learn
Different cameras for different jobs. That is the simplest possible verdict. The Leica is faster, lighter, more responsive, more flexible. The GSW is slower, heavier, harder to handle, but produces a negative that does things the Leica cannot do.
If I had to recommend one for street specifically, it would be the Leica. The GSW can shoot street and produces beautiful frames when it does, but the size and the slower handling work against you for the kind of moments street rewards. The Leica is the right tool for the job.
If I had to recommend one for landscape or considered portrait work, it would be the GSW. The huge negative is the reason. The Leica can shoot beautiful landscapes too, but the GSW gives you something extra that 35mm cannot match.
Both are great. I will continue not to own a Leica, because I am not drawn to the apex of any category, but I would happily shoot one again for a day. The M6 is everything its reputation says it is.
The GSW690iii has its own article where I go into the camera in more detail.
Part two
The studio half of this collaboration is on Ish’s channel, where we took the same two cameras into a studio with a model and tried to do meaningful portrait work with both. Different rules, different problems, different observations. Worth a watch.
Big thanks to Ish for the day and the introductions. Toronto’s film community is genuinely one of the warmest I have come across anywhere, and he has been at the centre of it for me. The links to his work are in the video description.