Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/09/14

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Subject: [Leica] Leica M8 hands on
From: nathan at nathanfoto.com (Nathan Wajsman)
Date: Thu Sep 14 11:47:04 2006
References: <p0623090ac12f368b3f05@[10.1.16.144]>

Hi Henning,

Thanks for this--my keyboard is all wet with drool.

One little detail: what kind of storage does the M8 use? Compact Flash?

Cheers,
Nathan

Henning Wulff wrote:
> 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.
>
>

-- 
Nathan Wajsman
Almere, The Netherlands

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Replies: Reply from henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff) ([Leica] Leica M8 hands on)
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