[Leica] Tell the TRUTH!!!

[pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)]

Frank:  I pretty much depleted my large-scale toy fund with the M8, so I'm 
not really in the running for any new Leica body at this point.  For most 
of my purposes, the M8 is the best digital camera I've ever tried.  I'm 
just not that upset about its flaws.  The IR filter issue stops being an 
issue once you put on the IR filters and forget about them. The 1.33x crop 
was just a matter of changing lenses down one notch. I'm not a super 
wide-angle guy. The pain of buying a couple of CV 28s was soothed by the 
joy of discovering what a 50mm can do on the M8.

The major issue of the M8 for me is the focus shift with fast lenses, and 
that's not really a camera issue.  I'm sure that it exists with fast lenses 
on DSLRs as well, and we would see it even more if DSLRs dispensed with 
their anti-alias filters like the M8.  Solving it may require new lenses, 
and maybe giving up f/1.4 and f/2.  You can pry f/1.4 from my cold, dead 
fingers...

As for SLRs, no, I'm not really in the market for a Leica SLR. First off, 
I'm primarily a rangefinder guy. An SLR is my secondary camera, primarily 
for tele and macro, and the times when I want to carry only one thing but 
have a range of focal lengths. In SLRs, the Japanese offer much greater 
value for money.

I just picked up a lightly-used Olympus E-510, and I already have a good 
28-108mm equivalent lens for it (the 14-54 f/2.8-3.5 Digital Zuiko). And a 
couple of OM teles and a macro.  I like small and light, and Olympus 
delivers that in the E-5xx, along with in-body image stabilization that 
works with any lens. And the new digital Zuiko lenses are very, very good.

--Peter