[Leica] M8 RAW--high ISO improvement!

[Peter Klein]

Ken, the uncompressed files were just too big for the M8 electronics to
handle at any reasonable speed. Reviewers and many users would have
screamed bloody murder. Leica found that when they compressed the M8 files
using a square root algorithm, they "couldn't tell the difference" between
the uncompressed and compressed files.

That was true at low ISO, for files that didn't require much stretching or
pushing of the dark tones. But as we know, things fall apart above ISO
640.  The M8 met Leica's initial goal of getting a digital M into the
marketplace as a "Kodachrome camera" – one that could utilize most of the
Leica lenses' image quality, as long as the light was a reasonably good. So
we ended up with 10 MB compressed files as our only choice. That didn't
help those of us who regarded the Leica as an available light camera.

IIRC, M9 users have a choice of compressed or uncompressed DNGs, so they
can get the same advantages without having to mess with extra software.

Nathan's observation tells us exactly why Leica made the decision to go
with compressed DNGs for the M8. But since I don't have an M240 or MM
(yet?),  the M8 uncompressed RAW files give me a way to shoot in darker
dark with what I have now.

--Peter

On Tuesday, March 10, 2015, Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> wrote:

> Interesting indeed but what you write below is a deal breaker for me.
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
>
> > On 10 Mar 2015, at 08:07, Peter Klein <pklein at threshinc.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > The disadvantages are that the files take almost forever to write to the
> SD card. You can only take a couple of shots before the buffer fills up.
>