The M8's Wacky Cyan Wide Edges

[larry]

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That said, the core design concept of an M has always been quickness and simplicity. Nothing is more contrary to this concept than implementing status settings. For example the whole "lens detection" setting, buried in a menu, is simply dreadful and confusing. Add a few more such virtual switch settings and you'll turn the M8 into a studio-only camera.

 

Exactly -- continuing to add settings will only serve to turn the M8 into a just another digital camera with an incomprehensible labyrinth of menu choices.

 

Larry

[AlanG]

Well, that's one of the reasons why I'm no longer using filters for my work - it leaves so much scope for forgetting and getting it wrong - without filters the changes required for landscape and travel are quick and trivial, and it allows me to leave lens detection to 'On' (no IR) and simply forget about it.

 

 

If I shot primarily landscape and travel, I possibly could get by without filters too. But most of what I would use the M8 for would require the IR filters.

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[Guest guy_mancuso]

Well the other side of the coin is do what i do leave the ON/IR filter on and forget about it completely and just have filters on the lenses . About as simple as it gets . To me there are only 2 ways to do this and keep it simple Filters on and menu On IR or no filters at all. I personally am not going to play the on or off game . It's all or nothing and which ever you choose is fine but going back and forth just leads to mistakes and forgetting things. When i shoot i want nothing in my way and frankly is this one of the very reason we went with the Leica DMR or M8 because it is simple to operate. Personally i don't want to screw around with menu items , i know folks want this and that but we need to be real careful on what we ask for and whatever is in the first 15 lines on the menu better be useful otherwise get it out of there and /or drop it down to a second level so you don't have to deal with it. my theory turn the sucker on focus and shoot

[woodyspedden]

Well the other side of the coin is do what i do leave the ON/IR filter on and forget about it completely and just have filters on the lenses . About as simple as it gets . To me there are only 2 ways to do this and keep it simple Filters on and menu On IR or no filters at all. I personally am not going to play the on or off game . It's all or nothing and which ever you choose is fine but going back and forth just leads to mistakes and forgetting things. When i shoot i want nothing in my way and frankly is this one of the very reason we went with the Leica DMR or M8 because it is simple to operate. Personally i don't want to screw around with menu items , i know folks want this and that but we need to be real careful on what we ask for and whatever is in the first 15 lines on the menu better be useful otherwise get it out of there and /or drop it down to a second level so you don't have to deal with it. my theory turn the sucker on focus and shoot

 

Guy

 

I could not agree more. Even now the M8 requires that you really pay attention to the settings. I don't want any more things to screw me up but perhaps at 70 I am just a little brain dead and lazy

 

Woody Spedden

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Woody being lazy is actually good and i don't mean it in the truest sense but that fact of keeping it simple pick a direction and process and stick with it. I am under the gun a lot and i HAVE to deliver . The more crap i have to deal with the more chances of screwing up. Lets face it i don't care how many years experience i have , i can screw up just as easy as anyone if I am not careful and think. Keep the thinking simple and your focus should be on what your shooting than playing with menu options and putting filters on or off. I honestly don't want to think about filters and IR be them on or off. Just want to shoot.

[scott kirkpatrick]

@Scott: Leica has, in some respects, a much more difficult firmware path with the M8 than contemporary dslr camera manufacturers have. In particular, the camera's knowledge of, and control over, the camera's lens is severely limited. (Perhaps the M12 will feature a tiny camera that takes a picture of the lens barrel when the shutter is pressed to determine the focus and aperture.) So this leaves more onus on the photographer to inform the camera in the form of potential camera status settings; that is, settings that the user must make to inform the camera of its status. (This is quite distinct from the preference settings of todays cameras, which inform the camera of the user's status.)

 

That said, the core design concept of an M has always been quickness and simplicity. Nothing is more contrary to this concept than implementing status settings. For example the whole "lens detection" setting, buried in a menu, is simply dreadful and confusing. Add a few more such virtual switch settings and you'll turn the M8 into a studio-only camera.

 

The M8's color programming just needs to get much more savvy, versatile, and sophisticated. Hopefully Leica will also feel the need for software refinement and will be able to implement it within the current M8's facilities.

 

As far as I am concerned, the lens detection should be ON all the time. Leica got worried that it would sometimes see lenses that aren't really there, and they don't want to behave that way.

 

The other two settings are user preference settings -- I prefer my vignetting corrected, or I want things just as they always have been, and I prefer clean colors so you fix up the corners...

 

Incidentally, the camera has a pretty good handle on the lens aperture by comparing the reading of the blue dot with the internal metering off the center of the closed shutter. This usually tracks the actual aperture with less than half a stop error in even lighting. Very uneven lighting, or covering the blue dot, will fool it. Tracking the focus distance is pretty hard but not impossible, and will only happen in some later model M. I've read the focal distance readout on my E-1 and it is pretty approximate, at least for wide angle lenses, so this doesn't seem to be a problem that anyone else has solved. Maybe it isn't needed all that much.

 

I don't know what the prospects are for better white balance. It seems to me that you need three exposure readings with different color balance sensitivites to really anticipate mixed lighting and warm or cool to fix it, and I don't think they have the sensors to do that.

 

scott

[ken_tanaka]

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@Scott: Interesting about the M8's ability to approximate aperture. Is this true and, if so, does anyone know how the camera actually uses this information?

 

Regarding white balance, this is a wheel that's been invented long ago. Each of the major camera manufacturers has its own proprietary,and guarded, white balance code. Perhaps Leica will be able to license code from someone rather than trying to re-invent (as it appears they've already tried).

[wlaidlaw]

The Contax G2 had a similar arrangement of external light meter and TTL. If you had the databack, it would list an interpolated aperture. Although the lenses were orginally designed to report aperture to the body and contacts were put there for that, it was never implemented and the contacts remained unused. I never discovered interpolated aperture to be more than one half stop out. I would assume Leica could acheive a similar result.

 

On the filters, much as I dislike putting an extra piece of glass between me and the object, with the added risk of flare, in this case it would seem from considering all the evidence, that there is little alternative. It does have the merit of protecting expensive front elements. I have ordered another 46mm Leica filter and a 60mm for my Noctilux. Now if only I could order a better set of eyes for focusing the Nocti.......

 

Wilson

[jonoslack]

The more crap i have to deal with the more chances of screwing up. Lets face it i don't care how many years experience i have , i can screw up just as easy as anyone if I am not careful and think. Keep the thinking simple and your focus should be on what your shooting than playing with menu options and putting filters on or off. I honestly don't want to think about filters and IR be them on or off. Just want to shoot.

Hi Guy

Now we can really agree with each other - it's just a different direction (and for different photography).

My thread was about thinking about the possibility of using it without - there are reasons for the filters, and reasons against; but the reason for all or nothing is incontrovertible!

Nice to see you on Dpreview - sometimes it's fun over there.