[Leica] Leica M8 hands on

[grduprey at mchsi.com (grduprey@mchsi.com)]

Henning,

Thanks for the report.  Looks like Leica has delivered on the M8.  I just 
went through the DPreviw and it looks great.  Now how do I get the money to 
buy one?  ;-)

Gene


-------------- Original message from Henning Wulff 
<henningw@archiphoto.com>: -------------- 


> Well, DPReview has said that Leica has now officially announced the 
> M8, posted pictures and spec so there's no point in being quiet any 
> more. 
> 
> Tom Abrahamsson got hold of an M8 about a month ago, and shortly 
> after let me use it for about 10 days so that I could evaluate it and 
> do a write up. 
> 
> Firmware version was 0.23 so final image quality and some electronic 
> operational items are certainly going to be different than what I got 
> to use. Reasonably, I was asked not to post pictures from this 
> camera. Various family members have gotten prints from it, but they 
> really couldn't care much about which camera they came from. I took 
> about 1600 pictures. 
> 
> I had a couple of interesting moments w.r.t. other people's 
> reactions. A couple of times while walking around downtown someone 
> came up and said 'nice camera' while sporting their own late model 
> Leica's. I slipped my fingers over the 'M8' logo and held the camera 
> back against my body, went into grumpy mode, grunted and walked past. 
> Then we had a gathering at our house, and among others the neighbours 
> were there. A friend of their son came to our door, asking for 
> Christoph; I let him in and he saw the M8 on the counter and 
> immediately oohed and aahed. Turn's out he's a photographer and while 
> born in Vancouver now lives over the LeicaShop in Vienna. After that 
> I 'disguised' it, but it still was recognized at times. 
> 
> So - the camera. It handles like an M, except your hands miss the 
> grip that the wind level gave you. The extra thickness is easy to get 
> used to, and the responsiveness is very good. Because of the firmware 
> issue, the testing I did on it is meaningless, but there was nothing 
> negative to my perception. The shutter, while certainly different 
> than the rubber-curtained one on the film camera, is not particularly 
> loud, either in firing or winding. I think the dampening they did on 
> the transplanted R9 shutter had some effect. It doesn't have a high 
> frame rate, but neither do the film M's and that's not important to 
> me. The shutter travel includes a detent for locking the exposure 
> that was a bit hard to find, but a lot better with one of Tom's 
> softies. 
> 
> The covering is fine grained and a bit too slippery, especially since 
> I missed the wind lever for holding the camera with the right hand. 
> Some kind of molded bump like on the Hexar RF would be nice, but I'm 
> not sure right now how that could be implemented in line with the 
> desire to retain the 'classic' look. 
> 
> Frame lines were bright and useable, and came up in the pairs that 
> you would expect due to the traditional lens mount activation. The 
> frame for the 24 is reasonably visible with glasses. It works with 
> the Visoflex III, and it worked fine on the Aristophot I got 
> recently, and I shot some pictures with the various Photars. I also 
> put on my 17mm fisheye, and it looks like this: 
> 
> http://www.archiphoto.com/Various/Incognito.jpg 
> 
> All lenses that I tried, including 12, 15 and 21 CV; 21, 35/1.4, 50 
> and 90 ASPH, and older 35/2, new 50/2.8, 50/1, 75/1.4 and 135/4 
> worked, and worked well. I wouldn't hesitate to use any of them and 
> there was no vignetting that wasn't visible on film as well. Those 
> angled microlenses do their job, and erase one of the main objections 
> I had re the RD-1, which was really not useable with lenses beyond 
> the range of 24 to (slow) 75. Image quality was outstanding in 
> general, the best were easily on a par or, in the case of wideangle 
> shots, readily exceeded that of the best on the Canon 5D. My 
> favourite lenses on the M8 were the 21 and 35/1.4 ASPH and 75/1.4, 
> but I wouldn't hesitate to use any lens. 
> 
> Menus were fine, and quite direct. There is no 'dedicated' button for 
> ISO (full stops from 160 to 2500), but since you can get at two 
> different menus by pushing two different buttons, changing ISO's was 
> very fast and efficient. There are also good user parameter save 
> options, so after you set them up you can go from low ISO with -1/3 
> compensation, colour, colour histogram, bright LCD screen, high 
> resolution with DNG and fine jpeg with medium sharpening and low 
> saturation to high ISO, not compensation, B&W, dim LCD screen and 
> regular jpeg with higher sharpening in a very few button pushes. The 
> dial that's concentric with the arrow pad is also very nice and works 
> well. 
> 
> The little door to the left of the screen just has a connector for a 
> dedicated cable, which I didn't have so don't know whether it's USB2 
> or 1394. 
> 
> Mainly, it felt like an M, and within a couple of minutes of picking 
> it up you could shoot with it like an M, and except for the sound, 
> lack of winding and having more than 36 shots, it really wasn't 
> different than an M. 
> 
> And that's good. 
> 
> 
> -- 
> * Henning J. Wulff 
> /|\ Wulff Photography & Design 
> /###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com 
> |[ ]| http://www.archiphoto.com 
> 
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