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M8 stays in hotel room; shoots in Japan with Canon G9


MarcRochkind

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Having both cameras, and having done some pfutzing around with both taking the same pictures;

 

1) the G9 is impressive for being 10% of the cost of the M8

 

2) the G9 most certainly has more noise;

 

3) the lens is not as sharp as my CV25; (same equiv. focal length)

 

4) I love wides; the M8 with CV lenses beats it at this corner, too.

 

5) Aperture on OSX can not read the G9 RAW files; I have to convert them to TIFF before I can import. (that hopefully will change soon)

 

But, the G9 is most certainly an impressive little camera. My wife and I are going on a week long trip, and have discussed bringing only her G9 along.

 

JohnS.

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I dont own a G9 since I prefer Ricoh GRD and GX100 as small cameras - and have used several other small sensor cameras.

I just cant believe that the G9 delievers the same IQ as the Leica with TE.

Usually small sensor cameras are either noise or they loose detail because of noise reduction when you go over ISO 200.

Another problem is usually pretty limited dynamic range, blown out highlights and sky, and tonality/ tonal gradiations not as fine.

This on the IQ-quality side. Then there is the user interface: viewfinder, shutter lag etc.

I am convinced the G9 is a great little camera (as I think is the GX100), but IMO it just cant do the same things a M8 can do.

For me the M8 is -as you said- in the middle position - between a small P&S and a SLR- and the middle position is the one I use and need 85% for what I do.

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5) Aperture on OSX can not read the G9 RAW files; I have to convert them to TIFF before I can import. (that hopefully will change soon)

 

John, have you tried running them through the Adobe DNG converter?

 

If someone prefers a different camera then good luck to them. Would I swap my M8 for a G9? Nope, but that's my choice.

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I had a G7 and it was a pretty good camera but the issues I had are not solved with the G9.

The manual viewfinder is totally useless and the lens is pretty crappy, with lots of distortion at the wide end and kind of milky at the tele end.

 

Hopefully now with RAW processing you can control the strong CA easier and that will help IQ a lot.

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John, have you tried running them through the Adobe DNG converter?

Nope - how did I miss that program??

 

If someone prefers a different camera then good luck to them. Would I swap my M8 for a G9? Nope, but that's my choice.

 

Not my choice either, but my wife can not use my M8, because of her eyesight being very different from mine. Rather than being frustrated with my M8, she has her own little "Mini M8" that is a really impressive little camera for less than the cost of the new CV 35 1.4. :o

 

 

The manual viewfinder is totally useless...

 

I don't know about that, but have wondered if a CV 35mm external finder on the flash hotshoe would work well.

 

Also, I now need reading glasses, which means that without ANY viewfinder, I need to bring along my glasses, put them on, take a picture, put them away. Any viewfinder is better than none.

 

JohnS.

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Have tried the G9 today in a photostore and was impressed by the build quality, the operations buttons and the viewfinder.

 

I was not impressed by how bad it feels really holding this small little brick in your hands. There could be much better surface, like Nikon uses on the P5100 and also some dent for your thumb as well as some sort of small grip, of course coated with a rubber like surface.

 

And I would like a 28, so for me a 28-150 or 180 would actually do. I do not need the 200. But I guess it is easier to build a 35-200 than a 28-150 at reasonable quality.

 

I hope the G10 will bring these advantages. :o

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My goodness, when does the clan gather in front of Nick Devlin's house and burn a Canon poster - I can see it now - Noctilux tattooed to their foreheads.

 

I don't know Nick Devlin but I doubt he believes the G9 is up to the M8. The man was having some fun and made a couple of interesting points. I have both and the G9 is a nice little shooter but no match on any level for the M8. The M8 is unique in so many ways both good and bad.

 

I found some of the slagging and personal commentary on his photos shot with the G9 not up to the level this forum usually operates at. This is all about fun, I think!

 

In recent threads I FIND the defensive response to any thing that it is even slightly critical of Leica, the M8 or anything Leica for that matter, brings out the worst in all of us MYSELF INCLUDED.

 

The M8 is far from perfect and had any other company laid this egg it would have been pilloried forth with. There, I said it, yikes. Kissing Leica's butt does not help them move forward and they need to move forward for all of us loyal fan boys (myself included)

 

(Andy your attack comments about Nick's exposure issues with the M8 are totally out of line and you know it. Competent exposure and white balance should be a given in a professional level digital camera like the M8 and anything else is a work around. Whether or not a shooter choses to use auto anything should not preclude it being available and right. The devil is always in the details.)

 

We ALL need to step back and open our minds to the rest of the world. Leica needs a butt kicking for the QC of the M8, one need look no further than this forum to know that. I love the M8 and I don't have any illusions about it. It is a work around until the M9 or M10 show up.

 

That said I think I will send a very nasty note to Nick Devlin for comparing a G9 to an M8, what was he thinking?

 

Best Regards. Terry

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Slightly off topic but I thought of it seeing the lens hood on the Canon G9. Has anyone tried the lens hood for the GX100. How does it work, as you seem to get a tube and a tulip hood as well. The lens of the GX100 is not very shaded and I thought for the Caribbean over the next few weeks, a lens hood might not come amiss but this looks a slightly peculiar arrangement.

 

Wilson

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Also, a Nikon D200, which can run rings around the M8 save for four things: image quality is not as good (M8 has a bigger sensor and no AA filter), D200 + zoom lens is HUGE and HEAVY, my Leica lens is better than my Nikon zoom, and I can focus more accurately (albeit more slowly) using the Leica than I can either automatically or manually with the Nikon.

 

 

Must be pretty small rings that D200 is running. Seems to me image quality is right up at the top of the list of what most people look for in a camera. Lens quality, focusing accuracy and size/weight are not far behind.

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Thinking about the exposure comment, I realised that rangefinders have a severe inherent design disadvantage compared to both SLRs and P&S cameras when it comes to exposure and WB. With an SLR, the partially reflective mirror allows siphoning off a representative sample of the image (over 1000 places with the Nikon's matrix mode, I believe), and with the P&S, the sensor sees the whole image directly, all the time.

 

With the rangefinder however, there is no mirror, no partial reflectivity, and the sensor is only available during the actual exposure. The WB setting could be done afterwards, but the camera is so busy writing the image to the card (and the image header, where the WB lives, comes first, I presume), that there is little time for an intensive image analysis, such as the one which is probably taking place in an SLR or a P&S, while the image is still being composed...

 

Two possible solutions:

 

- *all* lenses are coded, and there is a secondary sensor, like the blue dot, but more capable and with a view corresponding to the widest possible lens, ie. 12mm, which analyses the picture before it is taken, taking into account the focal length, etc. This could fix both exposure and WB.

 

- put in a much faster and more powerful processor which is capable of analysing the picture as it is being read off the sensor. This could only fix WB. The image data is not available while being taken, btw.

 

The current solutions remain for the photographer to be much better at using the existing meter to determine exposure, and for the WB to be set during raw processing. Given these two choices, there is no drawback to the current design, other than the higher effort.

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I have it from a good source that firmware 1.2 will allow the user to implant the M8 in your head therefore doing away with the peskiness of having to carry a camera at all.

 

I havent read the article and dont know a thing about the writer or his reasons for being in Japan but I find it a bit sad that he would leave the M8 in the room. Why bring it in the first place? As a photographer wouldn't one , on a possible once in a lifetime trip, want to take the best iq photos one can? Sounds like yet another case of more money than sense. Lots of that going around these days.....

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Thinking about the exposure comment, I realised that rangefinders have a severe inherent design disadvantage compared to both SLRs and P&S cameras when it comes to exposure and WB. With an SLR, the partially reflective mirror allows siphoning off a representative sample of the image (over 1000 places with the Nikon's matrix mode, I believe), and with the P&S, the sensor sees the whole image directly, all the time.

 

With the rangefinder however, there is no mirror, no partial reflectivity, and the sensor is only available during the actual exposure. The WB setting could be done afterwards, but the camera is so busy writing the image to the card (and the image header, where the WB lives, comes first, I presume), that there is little time for an intensive image analysis, such as the one which is probably taking place in an SLR or a P&S, while the image is still being composed...

 

 

 

In theory, this is true. In practice, I've not found it to be the case over many years of using M cameras alongside SLRs. From the time I got my first M6 back in the early 1990s, I immediately noticed that when shooting Nikon SLRs and the M6 in the same situation, if there were metering discrepencies the M6 ended up being the camera that got it right. I always shot chromes, so exposure accuracy was very easy to discern. This has never made sense to me because the Nikons had multi-pattern metering that should have gotten better exposure information by virtue of reading more areas of the intended photo subject. I now use Canon DSLRs (when I have to) and find the M8 metering to be at least as accurate as the Canons. The only exceptions are when I get into situations where spot metering becomes necessary.

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I must be one of the few reviewers/photographers who has mixed feelings/limited enthusiasm about the G9. But...every photographer has his or her own set of priorities and I can see how one might *prefer* the G9 to the M8. After all, technical differences are only techical differences and no one camera suits all.

 

I've been testing a G9 since December and I, personally, wouldn't ever prefer it to the M8. Among pocket small sensor camera, I strongly prefer the GR2 to the G9 (and the Ricoh outperforms the G9 in several, demonstrable, technical aspects). But personal preferences are just that.

 

Some of Nick's points:

 

1) He likes pocket cameras that can be with him always. Fair enough and I do to.

 

2) The camera felt good in his hands - fair enough.

 

3) The camera focuses faster than he can focus an RF camera. That's not my experience but his experience may be otherwise.

 

4) The G9 meters better than the M8. It may but I've never had a problems with the M8's meter.

 

5) The Canon had better auto WB. This should hardly be news to us.

 

6) The ISO dial is wonderful. I agree.

 

7) The G9's optical finder is not great. That's true.

 

8) IS is useful. Yes, it can be.

 

9) He liked the file quality. Fair enough, it is quite decent.

 

10) The camera has various weaknesses and annoyances. Yes, it does, including some he doesn't mention.

 

Essentially, Nick wrote an article about how a given camera fit into his daily life while travelling. That's a very personal thing and also interesting to read. I'll read the article one more time but I don't see any important problems with it at all. He just happened to find a camera that works well for him - nothing wrong with that.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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The last sentence is the most telling: "the cutting edge of technology is capable of more ultimate artistic satisfaction than the M8 can deliver." I really don't want to come down too hard on the writer, but this sentence alone tells me the most important thing I need to know about the author - he is, plain and simple, obviously an amateur photographer. He wants, as do the majority of people who buy a P&S, the camera to make all the decisions for him. Perhaps he gets his artistic satisfaction from his computer? So, the answer is a resounding "YES", you need to ditch your M8 and move on down the road. There was absolutely no reason to trash the M8 in the article. He admits he never shot with it :eek: Nice comparison, huh?

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The last sentence is the most telling: "the cutting edge of technology is capable of more ultimate artistic satisfaction than the M8 can deliver."

 

Yes, I'm not quite sure what he means by that. It's a confusing sentence. He can't mean that the G9 is the cutting edge of technology so I'm not sure what he means exactly.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Okay now I've read it. Yeah each to his own. What I find objectionable is his comparison to the M8 and the G9 doing things that the M8 can't. They are different beasts and it can work both ways If he had bothered to bring an f2 or f1.4 lens for the Leica things might have been different. But that would have involved changing a lens.... Anyway if he' a happy with his pics that's what's important. They dont do anything for me no matter what camera they were taken with.

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{snip}

 

Essentially, Nick wrote an article about how a given camera fit into his daily life while travelling. That's a very personal thing and also interesting to read. I'll read the article one more time but I don't see any important problems with it at all. He just happened to find a camera that works well for him - nothing wrong with that.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Absolutely. The whole tenor of the article was that he found that the G9, for him, was more pocketable and usable while travelling that an M8 with f/4 TE. Let's face it, the M8 isn't a great high ISO camera unless you want to convert to B&W and having f/4 as your minimum aperture isn't going to help in many of the shooting situations that Nick demonstrated in the article. I'm sure that if there were such a thing as an f1.4 or f/2 TE then things might have been different.

 

I'd also point out that Nick Devlin's G9 was hot-rodded too - see the grip and lens hood updates and you'll see the ergonomics of the standard G9 brick were significantly upgraded.

 

I love my M8 but there are plenty of times and places where even it falls into the category of a big & bulky camera. (not that the G9 is exactly small btw).

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