Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2015/03/10
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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. >