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Why choose M9 over M8?


Marignac

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  • 4 weeks later...
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I have both now for there was an offer I couldn't refuse. Some expectations met and some great surprises.

 

- ISO is in fact a bit better than on M8, up to one stop I'd say

- the difference in resolution is incredible

- M9 tends to underexpose and renders WB to cool in auto mode, both is better with the M8. LR WB auto-correction of M9 RAWs however gives very realistic output, more realistic than M8.

- Difference in DOF is more substantial than I thought: two stops between M8+Cron35 and M9+Cron50.

 

This makes the M9 less a low light camera than I thought. As you don't always want to have a narrow mm's worth of DOF you need to stop down the two stops (also to counter M9 tendency to underexpose) to get the same DOF an M8 + 35 plays off. Yet you have one stop better noise, so that makes the M9 more critical in low light than I thought.

 

So at the moment I still feel more familiar with the M8. On the other hand the incredible resolution gives you very much freedom in terms of cropping your pics, which adds a great amount of flexibility.

 

I had hoped for a clear result to know which camera to pass along. Now it's a draw and I have one more hard choice to make. Or keep both? :cool:

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Which version of LR? You should see more difference in low light performance.

 

LR3.5. I've got also LR4 here but this last release is buggy importing M8 files (same with Fuji X100 files), it imports only jpg but no dng. So I need to import with 3.5 and then import to the LR4 catalog which is a bit of an hassle, so I usually keep processing in 3.5.

 

BTW - resolution being the real great difference - what max print sizes do you do with M8 and what with M9?

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M9 - I haven't hit the max. With the M8 1 meter wide was fine without special software ( just a bit of uprezzing in PS.) You know the theory, of course, as long as proper viewing distance is maintained any camera that can do a good 18x24 @ 30 cm can produce prints of unlimited size.

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