theonlinephotographer has posted a pro and con “review” of the Leica M8 and since it is not a review, and since there are so few pro’s I thought I would weigh in since I actually have used the camera…
this is really the limit of the pro:
I wasn’t able to do a whole lot of shooting with the M8—five sessions, none very long or intense, resulting in not quite a whole 1-GB card. (That’s about 80 button presses folks…) Outdoors the metering is pretty accurate and the default white balance good. The files are large and detailed, as you can see in the example below.
TOP feels the camera is primarily a “a handy note taker” and his four reasons for liking it come down to one of
• you already like it
• you already have a Leica
• you want what no one else can afford
• it might close to what I really think it should be.
None of which even remotely comes close to “reviewing.” He tosses in a few smallish jpegs to show that he actually pressed the shutter button.
The con-job goes on a lot further, and includes an anecdote about a long lost girlfriend who evidently had more money than sense according to the reviewer, which we are to surmise is how a lot of M8 buyers must seem to him. He says he won’t judge how others choose to spend their money, and then goes on to do just that. The tone is clear, “dear reader, from one sensible person to another, leave this camera to the uneducated, uncalibrated, and “chirpy.” This is probably the weirdest part of the whole article, and definitely the part where I actually lost a lot of respect for the author, as I found it demeaning, not humorous, and very, very….weird.
You can read the post yourself, but there is not much point I’m afraid. I can’t even understand the comments that this is a fair, even handed review, I mean, come on folks?
I have no idea why the need to go so far out of ones way to present such an obtuse appraisal of a piece of photo equipment. I don’t think that Leica themselves has ever courted this kind of reaction, of course, it is the legion of Leica-fan-boys that encourages this kind of reaction, (like Apple) and obviously this is to them: you are not going to see me get worked up about this 5000 dollar camera in the way that you get worked up…but let me get worked up just the same but hide behind a kind of ‘meh take it or leave it attitude.
So what is left? Let me list the chief negative points he makes:
1. as an M camera it is not that good based on build quality, shutter feel, responsiveness of the electronics
2. color fidelity suffers from Ir contamination
3. noise
4. lcd he says the worst part
5. everything else is not material
6. cost-only a chirpy uneducated idiot would spend this money
Let me address some of these issues:
In terms of whether or not the M8 is as good as other M’s-my basis of comparison is an 80′s build classic M6, bought used. There are differences, the M8 is definitely nosier, but this is a moot comparison-my M6 does not have a winder. If my M6 had a winder, it would be a louder. This is part of the Leica mystique that needs to go away, the relative loudness of the camera has never been an issue except for the shy, myself among them. And then a miraculous thing happened, I got over myself, got out of my own way, and found that it didn’t matter. A quiet camera will not help you much. A silent camera maybe, and they are out there. But it is overstated. You as a photographer are obviously in the room, are you not? The sound is not really the issue.
I can agree that the shutter feel is not as good, the M6 has a very soft release and is all mechanical. For the M8 Leica has gone for a three stage release that reminds me of the gilette shaver commercials….”the first stage activates the camera, the second memorizes the exposure, the third stage releases the shutter”. Why there are three when there only need to be two is beyond me. A two stage release would definitely preserve more of the feel of the traditional M’s. So I can acknowledge this is a chaffing point, and a significant one given that it is so so good on previous M’s. But then, I have never used a M3, which is supposed to be the holy burrito of all. See, this is how it goes, no one likes change, and so the criticism piles up. If TOP is criticizing the M8 based on how poorly it compares to the M7, then lets go all the way and criticize all M cameras back to the M3. This is obviously pointless. The M8 is its own camera, and has its own feel. Get used to it, as I have. This is hair splitting. It is not a hindrance to making pictures.
In terms of build quality my opinion is that the M8 is as solid as any other M. The camera feels solid, and has been with me daily since early February after the initial failure which was definitely early adopter effect. That was covered, and since then, there has been no problem. If we are talking comparative M’s I could probably complain about the build quality of my M6-it has lost a plastic bumper over the strap lug, and the shutter, that famous cloth shutter, has never been in spec despite service to tune it’s speeds. It is also widely known that the mechanical shutter of the M’s never really delivers the stated speeds above 1/125, whereas the electronic shutter of the M7 and M8 will delivery accurate speeds until self-destruction some hundreds of thousands of frames later. There is no comparison, older is not better in this case. And I finally have speeds up to 1/4000th of a second, great for shooting wide open in daylight. Try that with a M6.
The viewfinder, the primary interface in ANY camera, (or should be, no live view LCD is the same) is the best there is. Lets say that again-The best. It is better than my M6, as the M6ttl and M7 improved the focus patch to avoid flare. If you have not used a rangefinder, this is the chief selling point, the almost liquid transparency of the viewfinder, the kind of connection between you and what you are seeing that is only second best to eyesight. It is probably 50% of the total reason why you would want this camera in the first place. Compared to ANY dslr, whose viewfinders are muddy toilet paper tubes to look through this is still state of the art, a design over 50 years old. But other camera manufacturers have done the cost analysis and have concluded the viewfinder is now unimportant with the lcd on the back. Even the cheapest Minolta X700 from years ago is better than all of the dslr’s on the market today, save perhaps the 7000$ mkIIds. How’s that for a waste of money, 7000$ dollars just for a usable viewfinder! Positively makes the 5000$ Leica a bargin!
As for the responsiveness of the electronics the cameras firmware has changed three times since release, so there is obviously some work to be done. And yes mine did die mysteriously after 24 hours, so there are issues. But since then, it has been rock solid, and a great example of a simple user interface with a modicum of features. I believe any 1.0 release is difficult, and looking for example at the Canon ipf5000 debacle, proves that it is not the size of the company that matters, but experience. Leica as I have said, is very late to the table, and they have missed out on the experience an earlier M could have generated. But the engineering mountain was very high, higher than for dslr’s. As only the second digital rangefinder, they are doing very well.
About the color fidelity, this is where TOP really let us down, not really investigating what was fact and what was old news. Yes it is true that the original shipping firmware had horrendous white-balance issues, and the Ir thing. The current firmware has vastly improved white balance, to the point where I have ceased to notice it is problematic. Contrary to their report, skin tone is excellent. If you shoot jpegs you might get surprised now and again, but hey, if you shoot jpegs with this camera all I have to say is what are you doing?
About the Ir issue. I have written about this before, so there is not much to add, filter-up, and the issue is gone. I like the fact that Leica made a very bold engineering decision to optimize for the lenses, which is really the biggest draw to the Leica system. I feel this is another point that the TOP article failed to acknowledge, the real engineering feat of getting the rangefinder lens design to work as well as or better than it did on film, and adapt that to digital capture. And this is the point-if Leica had mucked with the output, if it had lost the characteristic of the lenses, then that would be it. Game over for them. The other 50% for me is the glass. And this is the part where “good enough” is not good enough to me. Canon L lenses were driving me mad. Of course I was comparing them to medium format glass, Mamiya 7 and Hasselblad, which is unfair, except in the sense that 35mm digital capture is now very competitive with medium format (film). See, if you could make a digital Mamiya 7, that would be my holy burrito camera. So it is very much about the optics, and Leica has done a backflip and accepted a high cost to maintain their advantage, and for that I am thankful, and also willing to accept some unprecedented trade-offs that ultimately make a lot of sense.
Much has been made about the necessity and cost of coding lenses, but look at the alternative-a new mount. We have the M mount, all mechanical, but we have a new imaging system which needs to incorporate focal length and aperture specific information to process the image. Short of going to an electronic mount, which every other camera maker has done, how do you preserve some of the best and most expensive optics in the world? You pay 125$/mount to code them, or do it yourself with a sharpie in the interim. This is another no-brainer folks, the solution is elegant, inexpensive and effective in comparison to every other idea out there.
Finally, there is the whole point for point comparison to the Canon xti, a 10mp consumer wunderplastik camera that TOP finds superior. There has always been the argument of “good enough for government” and I think this is where he gets stuck, because yes, the xti is good enough, on paper, and in average conditions sometimes. Leica is never going to win on features, it has no features, which is precisely the allure. Photography is absolutely not quantifiable in this feature for feature manner however. And this is where TOP really went down the rabbit hole, in failing to really dig into just what it is about the Leica that makes it such a great camera. I don’t think you have to mythologize to make the point either. The point of the matter is that if you like rangefinders, which are not all things to all assignments, and never have meant to be, and if you appreciate what Leica is good at, lenses, usability, a dedication to some traditional ideals, then this camera is fantastic. Of course slr’s are much more flexible, that argument was satisfied 35 years ago with the Nikon F. But the rangefinder has persisted, and blossomed and not for some arcane, effete, or otherwise unreasonable reason. It is easily the most fun I have had making photos in 25 years, and that is saying an awful lot. I have used lots and lots of cameras, in many different environments. I think the only other camera that is as fun is the Mamiya 7, and for a while, the 5D when I began using it. But after a while, the technology part of the dslr experience began to wear, the unreliable autofocus, the awful viewfinder, the feeling of separation from the basic exposure controls, dlsr’s just do what they want to do mostly, and you have to work overtime to wrest control back.
So where does this leave us? The podiatrist photo? Yes, it begins to make sense now. The review contained two pictures of store windows, neon signs each, one an Apple, the other the aforementioned foot, and a school exterior and a BMW, presumably the reviewers car. I guess that shows some affection for German technology?
Desultory would be an accurate description of the photos, boring, closer. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to not have at least tried to make decent photographs while using this camera. Perhaps the feet were sore and the podiatrist was calling? If that is the case, my sympathy, sore feet, painful bunions or perhaps a nasty case of athlete’s foot definitely needs more attention.
I think this was a case of what users of Apple computers have come to know as “a Dvorak” which is a kind of provocative “journalism” practiced by John C. Dvorak in PCmag.com in which the idea is to write something so wrong-headed, so hairbrained, or just plain stupid about Apple computers, and then sit back to watch the fallout. It makes for hits on one’s website, for sure but not respect. An awful lot of words to step around ‘meh, I don’t get it.
Robert, this was a bit rant-y, but you got a lot off your chest. I agree that TOP’s “review” was more than a bit wrong headed and that you addressed all of the salient points of possessing an M8. However, your point of all points was stated most eloquently with the inclusion of your images. You win hands down for being right headed in your arguments and a much better practicioner at the art of imagery than any other reviewer. Great shots, your joy shows. Mike.
i have been using the m8 professionally now since i bought it.. in the beginning it was quite buggy.. but with the updates this camera never ceases to amaze.. the prints and the files speak for themselves
Since I was loaded with LEICA Lenses for years, I did not have any needs to go for anything else.
I shoot with booth: R & M digitally.
I love manual focus and whatever comes after the M8, please LEICA, keep it manual as is.
The DMR and M8 Complement each other very well. in the future,… who knows, they may become MR System, with appearance of Panasonic Lumix, G1, viewfinder camera Micro 4/3. As mentioned above, with the print 11 X 14 or above,… it speaks 4 itself.