[Leica] a shot in the dark - life at iso 25600

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2010-08-19-19:29:17 Mark Rabiner:
> Every day in every way we are getting better and better.
> The time to get a new camera body is never now. Its next year.
> The problem is when are you going to want to take a picture?

Exactly!  Which is why I'm glad to have bought an M8 and used it for
almost three years to make a whole bunch of pictures, a few of which I
really like and am grateful to have been able to make.

All while you were proclaiming that the M8 wasn't "full-frame" and
therefore wasn't worth having and you were waiting.

And now, yes, I hardly ever use the M8, because I was able to manage
to buy an M9, which takes pictures a little better and which I am
using to make a whole bunch of pictures, a few of which I really like
and am grateful to have been able to make.  So if I calculate the cost
per frame of using the M8, it might be pretty high.

Maybe even as high as using film.

Since I'm a low-volume shooter compared to many on this list,
Lightroom only counts 8,991 M8 frames in my catalog.  Of which
probably 2000 are good enough I wouldn't be ashamed to let someone
else see them, and a few hundred are good enough that I actually have
shown them to other people.  And probably 10 or 20 may be ones I'll be
proud of for years.  But that, to me, seems worth it (even though I'd
dearly like to have been able to spend less).

But I know that many of the pictures would've been either different or
nonexistent with a different camera, because I've seen the way people
sometimes duck and cover when I point a big ol' SLR at them.

And I don't want to be making fun of someone for purely not being able
to manage to afford an absurdly expensive camera.  I realize that I've
been fortunate that way (although it's also been about priorities -
M8s and M9s are far less expensive than fancy new cars, which I haven't
been buying recently).

But... yes, you have to buy a tool you think you can do good work with
now, because if you keep waiting until the ultimate camera is out
you'll wait forever, endlessly second-guessing.  And in the meantime
using a small-sensor Nikon you'd rip to shreds if you applied similar
standards to it to the ones you've spent years using to tear down the
M8.

Making good work with that little Nikon, published work, work to be
proud of.  But maybe not quite the same flavor as you'd have gotten
with a snappy digital rangefinder and that nice glass already on the
shelf.

 -Jeff