Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/11/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I have had the M8 for 19 hours (including one sleep, while the battery recharged) and I can report that at this stage -- "Don't worry: be happy" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ L1000011.JPG.html "Happy loving couples make it look so easy" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ L1000068.jpg.html When I turned 40, Helen surprised me with an M6, a decade later, I've just bought my first pair of reading glasses and Helen has bought me an M8. So here are some impressions from day one. Firstly, thank you to Helen and the guys at camera exchange. It has been a pleasure dealing with you for over 20 years. Its only a shame the shop is so busy ;-) Thanks to the warnings of others, I had the the battery charged before I arrived, so I was ready to experiment as soon as it was loaded in the quirky "chamber". If you just want the results, here's an album: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/Images+from+the+M8/ But to read some comments, please continue "So take a letter Maria" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ 028.JPG.html Point One: Leica should be congratulated on this camera. Even with the undoubted shortcomings, and I will show some of my examples later, this is the first generation of a high quality rangefinder digital camera and most of what they have done seems to work. Leica rely on third parties for the sensor, and will NEVER in my life time be likely to do otherwise. Leica do not have the cash flows of Canon and do not have the experience in digital photography: lets be honest, no one has the grunt or experience that Canon have, BUT Canon do not make a rangefinder camera, so it is really pretty pointless making too many comparisons with Canon SLRs, except to hold them up as today's gold standards. It is a long way from: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/Leica-Product/ product001.jpg.html In my opinion based on a days use (big deal I know) Leica have made some good progress. The camera is "faster" than the DMR, the software seems a little more refined (my experience with the DMR is also limited so this is just a gut feeling), the files come up faster, write to the card faster and are smaller. They download faster to the computer as a result and I only needed to buy a 2 gig card to hold close to 200 images. Then there is the underlying reason many of us will buy the M8. We want to use our M lenses and we like using rangefinder cameras. I suspect we are using the M lenses but not to their fullest extent (even though Leica would like to tell us so), but the results are really very satisfying in terms of Lens to Image translation. Point Two: unlike Tina, I found the camera "flew" into action very quickly. I focused on a table under very low light, kept watching through the finder as I turned the camera "on" and then waited for the camera to give me a shutter speed on "A" setting and fired ASAP. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ 041.JPG.html Well I reckon that the image was shot in just under one second: I was delighted. The camera also seems to fire up as quickly from "sleep". So touching the shutter release, or swinging the camera to on as you raise it to your eye will give the camera time to be ready to shoot. Point three: shutter lag is not noticeable EXCEPT with TTL flash, where the initial flash makes a delay that I could notice, and I wondered if the dog's eyes were "blinking" by the time the shutter and real flash fired. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ flash1.JPG.html I have not used it yet as fill flash with people, but the lag may effect the result. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ 032.JPG.html My first impression was how small the battery was, how light, how neat, no wonder you will have a limited battery life. Because the battery is so small, it will be no effort to carry one or two spares, and using a small battery has limited the weight and size of the camera. Knowing that battery technology is improving, this may mean our cameras or the next generation will have even better life, but I managed to take a full 2 gig card, chimp through the images at the restaurant 2 or 3 times and download to the computer before it died. We are told it will get better, so i think it will be "good-enough" if not excessive for a user like me. Then I un-wrapped the camera, and it is solid, well in fact it is heavy, but apart from feeling like my M6 on steroids, the M digital is as everyone else has reported, an M feeling camera. A few minor lessons and within minutes I was shooting in "A" (aperture priority) and "M" (manual, or as I have always thought of it shutter priority). The viewfinder is bright, the rangefinder seems accurate and I was even happy focusing the 135mm with it. I suppose I reached for the winder on 2 or 3 occasions, but the "strange" feeling was that the camera was living after each shot, as the motor recocked the shutter. That and the noise were a little off-putting to a M user, but I soon became used to it. "As tight as a dope fiend's fix my friend, step in close and take your stuff" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ tightas1.JPG.html It has never really bothered me that the framing in the M was a little "loose". I've always done my own printing, I have great enlargers and the quality of film was good enough to allow me a happy "wastage", but I feel a bit different with digital (though I suppose it will pass). Being as most of you know a bit "tight", I like to get my value, and so if I've got 10.3 million pixels to use, I want to use them all. Besides, the sensor real estate is expensive and already crops my lenses back by 30%. I immediately noticed that the "image verification" which hits the monitor with lightning speed (except in very low light conditions such as leaving the mirror down on the visoflex) was showing me a fair degree more than I had expected. On my very crude test: focused at as close as I could get to the figure the framing means I go from an image of 3900 x 2600 Pixels to 3300 x 2100 (ok, I know I have not done this in perfect ratio, but you get the idea) a loss of about 15%. So step in close then take another step. So here is the result http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ tightas1.JPG.html And this is about the excess outside the framelines http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ tightas2.JPG.html "Dust clusters to me like moths around the flame" I was reasonably careful, I did not "inspect" the shutter and changed lenses as swiftly as I could, The earliest image I kept - frame two, seems free of dust, but by frame 7, it was there already. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ dust.JPG.html This dust problem must plague all non-self cleaning cameras and the M8 is no different but cleaning the sensor is pretty easy. You need a fairly fully charged battery before the camera will even let you do it, but you switch to clean sensor in the menu, open the shutter and blow away furiously with the rubber knob of the blower brush: http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ deDusted.JPG.html the next day, I did this and could only find a couple of small remnant specks, BUT this shows how idiotic some of our obsession with pixel perfect really is, and again, makes me very impressed with the Olympus E 500, who still has no sign of dust after hundreds of "unprotected" lens changes. Of course the Olympus takes much longer to start up!!!!. I would like an ultrasonic cleaning of the sensor at the touch of a button "when I wanted it"!!! Seems dust is now my enemy before I reach the darkroom. "Oh dear what can I do, baby's in black and she's turning blue" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ bINb1.JPG.html The above image of black clad persons in sunshine, and below a group, where I at first wondered if the T shirt on the girl in the foreground was affected, till I spotted the black T shirt on the girl behind: I think the colours are pretty good in these situations. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ bINb4.JPG.html So what of the famed "issues" which have already been discussed on this forum and others. I reasoned that the infrared problem would be worse at night. After all, there is less normal visible light and the body may give off a greater percentage of IR. Well to some extent I suspect it is true. Above are two images of people wearing black in the sunlight, and I'm not sure how much effect there is, but at night in the restaurant I took an image of the waitress who was in "black". The first image is the camera's impression of the scene under "tungsten" setting ISO 1250 http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ bINb2.JPG.html and the second with PS's "auto-colour". Compared with the belt it remains pretty "blue". http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ bINb2a.JPG.html I'm pretty impressed with the high ISO performance, though I know the Canons do it better, this is not too grubby compared with film!!! I agree that Leica or Kodak or someone needs to find a reasonable solution to this IR cast. If I am right and it becomes a real issue in low light, then we will need to have hi-pass filters on our Noctilux ;-) As Helen said: dark blue is NOT the new black. For me, iffff it is an issue at high ISO and low light levels and I have to put up with it, I'll live with it and try to remember to put a filter on. "When everything old is new again" http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ Everythingold.JPG.html I have attached the visoflex and it works, but the shutter arm is on the edge of the release, and you do need to give the camera time to set the meter, so it did not work with the last instant mirror release setting. You needed to raise the mirror slowly and then hit the release. Of course I soon noticed that the framing was "off" before realizing that the framing difference was the difference between the 35mm film size and the sensor size. http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ everythingold2.JPG.html So it was very late when we got home to feed the dogs ;-) http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/M8+testing/ availabledark1.JPG.html Summary The DMR is an interesting hybrid and has 2 possible big selling points for longevity: 1) to replace the sensor, Leica could continue to develop the back and I would not have to buy a new camera and 2) you can get to the sensor. I've already praised the Olympus dust reduction on this list: it seems to work very well, but for how long. Compared with cameras which rely on a return to the dealer for cleaning, the DMR and now the M8 are streets ahead, especially if like me you are planning on using them for 2 to 5 years. If yesterdays experience is anything to go by, the camera would be heading back to be cleaned DAILY. The colour problem needs to be solved: I may be able to live with it using filters, as long as the situations in which the filters are needed are predictable and few. It is the only real failing of the camera so far in my testing. So here are a few other examples in one album http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Alastair/album184/Images+from+the+M8/ Thanks for listening and happy shooting Cheers Alastair