Keeping it Simple

[marknorton]

I guess one of the questions we all have is whether Leica have managed to keep the operation of the M8 completely intuitive, uncluttered by unwanted menus and bewildering choices. Even simple digital cameras have lots of options and by the time you get to a D2x (I expect Canon are the same) the range of options is ridiculous. Even though the D2x has shooting banks where you select a pre-defined set of settings, a major issue with this camea is "how can I be sure a setting hasn't got accidentally changed?" and "have I remembered to reset that setting I tried out and didn't like?". Besides, 4 shooting banks is not enough for the dozens of potential option settings.

The M8 will be simpler than these leviathans of course, no autofocus to start with and I doubt integrating an intervalometer was high on their agenda, but I still expect there to be lots of options.

People using film have it easy, they pop in a film which effectively defines - and temporarily fixes - their shooting options, film speed, black and white/colour and, through choice of film supplier, image characteristics. In effect, they are making a single choice for the next job at hand.

Translated to digital, I'd like to see a very simple selection of shooting "mode" on the M8. A single button which allows you to configure what you are doing without the need to scroll through pages and pages of menus. Epson have done something along these lines in the R-D1 with their "films" but as elsewhere with this camera, a good idea is not fully exploited. It doesn't go far enough and I'd like to see the entire gamut of shooting options - including B&W/Colour, ISO, image size and type, image processing - grouped under "modes" so that once the camera is setup to your requirements, you are simply selecting between 1, 3, 5, 10 different modes - or however many you need to define the range of work you do - and only rarely need to revert to the detail.

For my own use, for example, I could see having modes "Black and White", "Available Light", "Normal", "Landscape", "Action", "Email" and so on.

In that way, the M8 will have learned a lesson from film and day-to-day use of the camera will mirror that single choice which film users are accustomed to.

[andybarton]

As opposed to an analogue Leica which has just a "best" setting?

What's the point of spending so much money to take 640 x 480 shots for email?

[marknorton]

Might be handy when it comes to taking pictures of all my old film stuff for disposal on ebay...

[andybarton]

abcdefgh

[vic vic]

the only thing i would like to have there is imidiate change of iso speed.
all the rest is just like the m7, but with the RAW data files this time, instead of the film. i dont even mind about white balance, the siftware later on will do this option automatically as the camera if i want to replay on auoto-white-balance.
nothing else. i will get back home or to my powerbook on lacation, trasfer the images to computer and that is all.
i dont think that the m8 should be concidered as point and shoot camera with jpegs and so on. u have other point and shoot cameras for that like d-lux2 that i do have and c-lux1 that i bought to my sister. they do great job for what they are.

if this m8 wants to retain the true lieca feeling, it should give u "nothing" during the photo-making, so that u will stay totally free (and creative) as it is with leica :-)

i dont mind if in the camea there will be all those options of jpeg and endless menus, but i dont even want to look into this. just a clean raw for me, with imidiate iso choice :-)

[vic vic]

the only thing i would like to have there is imidiate change of iso speed.
all the rest is just like the m7, but with the RAW data files this time, instead of the film. i dont even mind about white balance, the siftware later on will do this option automatically as the camera if i want to replay on auoto-white-balance.
nothing else. i will get back home or to my powerbook on lacation, trasfer the images to computer and that is all.
i dont think that the m8 should be concidered as point and shoot camera with jpegs and so on. u have other point and shoot cameras for that like d-lux2 that i do have and c-lux1 that i bought to my sister. they do great job for what they are.

if this m8 wants to retain the true lieca feeling, it should give u "nothing" during the photo-making, so that u will stay totally free (and creative) as it is with leica :-)

i dont mind if in the camea there will be all those options of jpeg and endless menus, but i dont even want to look into this. just a clean raw for me, with imidiate iso choice :-)

[Rolo]

Thank goodness there won't be a switch to take it from auto focus to manual that can be changed accidentally in the middle of a fast sequence. One can spend hours wondering if you've broken the friggin' thing.

Auto ISO seems to be a nice feature for when you run out of light.

[TimF]

Yes, there's loads of parameter options on my 5D as well. That said, because I only shoot RAW with it, the whole thing is irrelevant so far as I'm concerned.

On the very odd occasions I shot JPEGs before, it was only for specific reasons - ie, for eBay, or to email a picture to someone. The default settings seemed OK for that, and as the file needed resizing anyway, any minor adjustments needed could be done at the time.

It'll be interesting to see how Leica implement these things though. A command dial would be like "a monstrous carbuncle" on the face of an M Leica; the employment on the R-D1 of the 'rewind' knob was a good idea - though as Mark says, somewhat crudely implemented. With luck Leica will take the idea and improve on it.

[pascal_meheut]

I trust Leica to do so. After all, the DMR is as simple as it gets for a digital SLR and 100% intuitive, far, far away from Canon and Nikon.

[rosuna]

I prefer direct controls.

At the top of the camera there is room for a new wheel. You can control a set of basic parameters with a second wheel. ISO, for instance.

I hope the back will not be cluttered with buttons. The LCD and a simple wheel with a central button should be enough. Keep simple.

The Epson R-D1 has a very clever interface. You control the menus by means of a wheel, so the interface is circular, but clear, easy to navigate.

A good interface needs less buttons. See the dial in the DMR. You have a lot of control on the camera with a simple wheel. Do the same by integrating those functions into the LCD (the Konica-Minolta/Sony use the LCD as a parameters information screen AND as a menu-navigation screen) and provide direct control of them. Many of the buttons around the LCDs (see the Panasonic L1) aren't needed in a simplified and well designed interface. Keep the back of the camera clean, please.

I don't like "scene modes". That is good for digicams. The M is a manual camera. The only automatic control could be the shutter speed or the ISO. You cannot define "modes" with those parameters alone. The M user doesn't need "modes" (landscapes, portrait...). It would be interesting a set of "film" sets instead.

[like_no_other]

What about this?
The M8 looks like the the analogue M. Access to all menues via a touch screen display. So no additional buttons are needed at all. The screen is invisible because it's hidden behind a full metal cover. Some smart engineers have found a solution that integrates this cover perfectly into the camera's design while it's very comfortable to remove.

(just kidding...)

[vic vic]

oh no - no more wheels on m8 - it will not be lie leica :-))
touch screen is also possible, leaf camera backs has it, it is really cool. but then u need that little pen on it - cause with fingers it is not really usable - now that is ok for medium format, but for leica ????
a wheel like on c-lux1 is good, no need for all those extra wheels like on d-lux2 (i mean that little joistic etc. and on the back - a single two way button to control the iso speed. this is more than enough. leica m8 should be a proffessionally oriented camera - a real working machin. as for mainly for RAW.
by the way - i also take sometimes jpegs with d-lux2, rarely though. but common on - it is a joke relativly to what u can do with the RAW.

[MJLogan]

I think both the Digilux-2 and the Panasonic L1 have nicely uncluttered-looking backs, both of which include lots of direct controls as opposed to menu options. I imagine the M8 will look similar, if a bit more elegant, with maybe half as many buttons.

There's a "Digital M" image on the website of my local camera store. It's been there for ages, so it can't possibly represent the actual design of the camera. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's quite close to the mark, though...

[jrc]

The thing about touch screens -- or screens at all -- is that you then get into the problem that Mark talks about: the temptation for the engineers to put everything in there. You wind up in a situation where you've got dozens of screens and possibilities. You use very few of them, but the ones you want are buried in the clutter. For the engineers, it's not a problem, because they're not taking pictures, they're just making up menus.

One example: I bought Thom Hogan's CD-based book on the D2x and printed it out; it's 749 pages long, and most of that is simply teaching you the options and what can be done with them. 749 pages. It's like trying to learn Photoshop. BMW made the same mistake with its last big car -- it had a central computer pod that controlled everything. Right. Paging through menus while driving down the 10 in Los Angeles.

The RD-1 got it very close to right, IMHO. I hope the M8 has a jpg lite, a jpg fine and RAW, plus a few image-function and review options (I like the blinking indicator for blown highlights, the three-color histograms, etc.) The ISO setting is extremely useful, and it should be on a dial on the outside of the camera (unlike the case with film, with digital ISO becomes another exposure setting that you can run with.)

Most of this talk is pointless, of course. They may still be screwing around a bit with the firmware, but the camera is either (a) done right now or (b) gonna be very late. They keep saying it's not going to be late, so it's done.

One thing that camera makers have never really done explicitly, or thoroughly enough, is understand that expensive cameras like the Leica are essentially one-half of a computer-based imaging system. There's not much you can do with a digital image from one of these cameras except download it to a computer -- so there's no reason that many of the things on a D2x menu, or an M8 menu, couldn't be in a computer program, rather than in the camera itself. If they supplied a free "other half," it'd be a lot easier to deal with on a big screen than by trying to poke buttons and find menus on a 2-inch LCD.

JC

[rvaubel]

Mark
What's with all these modes you want? Do you shoot alot of JPEG's? I quess I don't care if you have dozens of scene modes, film modes, a la modes, just so I don't have to look at them, or worse, be forced to wade thru menus,buttons and LCD screens. I was a little surprised to see your desires for all this fluff as your comments, up to now, have been for a very straightforword, non-menu driven camera. For myself, I don't even care if the camera has a JPEG mode.

I realize that for commercial success the camera has to have a couple JPEG settings but for this RAW guys, unprocessed output to the camera is all I want. I'll do the rest in photoshop.

Really, I'm curious. Don't you shoot everything in RAW?

wondering in Berkeley
Rex

[stunsworth]

I have a Canon 5D, one of the bloatware models when it comes to settings, but truth be told the only thing I change on a regular basis is the ISO speed. I shoot RAW, things might be different for someone shooting Jpeg.

[lct]

Originally Posted by vic vic

..i dont mind if in the camea there will be all those options of jpeg and endless menus, but i dont even want to look into this. just a clean raw for me, with imidiate iso choice :-)

I'm like you but other users don't like computers that much and/or don't feel comfortable with P'shop or same so they expect that the M8 will give them the results they want directly out of the camera as did their good old Ms previously.
Am I wrong to suggest that most of those users are old clients of Leica with full wallets as well?

[sean_reid]

Hi LCT,

I think that it's important for the digital M to appeal to existing M photographers, to be sure, but also to other photographers (older or younger) who may have little experience with rangefinders. I wrote in an article some months ago that I hope to see a renaissance of interest in rangefinder photography. I'm encouraged by the number of college-aged photographers who have been fascinated by my R-D1.

Cheers,

Sean

[humanized_form]

hmm. i have used computers most of my life, work with all kinds of computer networks all day long, and i'm very familar with all the post processing rituals. i just think they are a drag. the question i ask myself is why are they necessary?

i don't think much post processing should be necessary. what's the point of expensive lenses or expensive cameras if an image from a decent dslr can be manipulated, sharpened, post processed to look quite similar to an image from another more pricey one?

progress is being made though. Leica removing the AA filter is a step in the right direction towards images that are high quality straight out of the camera.

[rvaubel]

Originally Posted by humanized_form

hmm..... i'm very familar with all the post processing rituals. i just think they are a drag. the question i ask myself is why are they necessary?
.

Good point. For those that don't want to do very much post processing, they shouldn't have to. My point is, for those of us that luuuv fiddling around with RAW data till we are blue in the face, we want the least pre-processed files we can get. Remember, we think we are smarter than the camera (a presumptous assumption sometimes).

I just want a switch that turns on RAW and turns everything else OFF. Nothing beyond the basic controls of a film rangefinder except for some manual control of the ISO setting.

Thats it

Rex