Another view on the M8

[redfalo]

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Yes, this entire thread has been constructive. Give me a break. As for your comment I was replying to Mr. Long not you.

 

No where, I repeat no where did I insult him, although if you read closely he certainly took the opportunity to insult me.

 

Mr. Long was hardly constructive (destructive is more like it) in his review of the M8 which is why this thread is here. You might try lecturing some one else and hopefully after you get the facts straight.

 

Best Regards. Terry.

 

I just sent you a private message, Terry.

[Guest rweisz]

The M8, like all of the M's, has an excellent meter but you have to learn how to use it.

 

I agree in theory but in practice I find the meter of the M6-7 much more user-friendly because it covers a circle in the center. The M8's meter reads along a horizontal band with decreasing sensitivity towards the sides and I find it harder to isolate a single tone to meter. I don't know why they couldn't have put the same white spot in the middle of the blades instead of just making one blade a different color. Maybe because it's a generic outsourced shutter and further modification would've increased the wholesale cost.

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[Guest rweisz]

I had a feeling that posting this review was a little like running cartoons of Mohammed, but I figured it was worth the risk.

 

Yeah but showing up here was like walking into a taliban mosque while eating a ham sandwich.

[SJP]

Yeah but showing up here was like walking into a taliban mosque while eating a ham sandwich.

 

The complaining should be left exclusively to the original provider of the ham. Being born in the Chinese year of the Pig (ok Wild Boar sounds better) I feel strongly about this.

 

Having said I agree it takes some guts to dive into the snakepit and Ben has my repect.

 

Maybe I am biased but I cannot recall any camera before the M8 that provided so much pleasure in photography and I do still enjoy shooting film and using my M2 and FM2. But the combination of Leica M and digital is something special. The steep learning curve is a bonus despite the drawbacks.

[jaapv]

Just one of my horrible noisy ISO 1250 shots... An old favorite of mine from December 2006, so you may have seen it before.. This camera is fine - if used correctly...

Oh yes, it is a pre-update shot. It has unacceptable banding....

 

[pascal_meheut]

Every Nikon, Canon, and Sigma lens engineer I've ever spoken to has stated that lenses that are shorter, and narrower are easier to design. This is one of the great advantages of a rangefinder system and, yes, also an advantage on a point-and-shoot camera. As such, many point-and-shoot cameras have excellent optics.

Similarly, many lenses engineered specifically for cropped sensor SLRs have excellent optics at a substantially lower-price than their full-framed brethren.

 

This is another excellent one: confusion between the size of the image circle and the size of the lens.

 

Designing a lens for a smaller sensor is indeed easier. But designing smaller lenses for a 24x36 frame while retaining the highest possible quality is difficult.

 

 

The M8 consistently scored poorly on noise levels (especially against the 5D, not so much against the G9) exposure and white balance.

So, it took you a test, 3 months of practice and a jury to discover what we knew the first days the M8 came out: AWB was poor before last firmware update and the Canon 5D is one of the best performers for high-iso noise ?

I'll put exposition aside as the M8 has a different philosophy and asks more of the photographer.

 

BTW, did you compare noise at 160 and 320 ISO to see which camera is cleaner in the shadows and then allow to extract more details of them ?

Because the M8 CCD is better than the Canon CMOS here.

 

About the top plate:

This design was not originally created because it was the best way, but because it was what was possible. Why keep it?

Wrong again. This design was created because it was the best way to create a solid body. It was possible even then to do it differently.

 

However, if you are going to critique my review, (technical glitches aside, as I've already covered those) then I would ask you to critique it on its own terms. In the very first paragraph I state that the review is being written for the SLR user who has $5000-7000 to spend on a camera and is wondering what the M8 is all about. So before you trash the review for having the perspective of an SLR shooter, pay attention to the fact that it says, outright, that it's specifically from an SLR perspective and targeted at people who have an SLR shooting practice.

First, we criticize because it contains several incredible factual errors and this undermine your credibility, whatever your audience may be (except Fox News viewers maybe)

 

2nd, many of us are indeed also SLR shooters and have spent a lot of bucks, 5000$ or more in a SLR system too.

So we are your audience and we find that your review is even more flawed that the M8.

 

And once again, we do not believe that this camera is flawless. We are quite aware of its defaults as many of us are the one who found them and reported them. Problem is, you pointed the wrong ones (AWB, now fixed...) and missed some real ones (need of IR filters, creating flare at night, no SDHC cards, battery life, jpeg quality).

 

I can continue for some time but at the end of the day, the truth is you wrote a bad review with many mistakes whatever excuses you may be looking for.

[plasticman]

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Just one of my horrible noisy ISO 1250 shots... An old favorite of mine from December 2006, so you may have seen it before.. This camera is fine - if used correctly...

Oh yes, it is a pre-update shot. It has unacceptable banding....

 

Jaap - with all due respect, such a small web representation of an image says practically nothing about sensor noise.

I am consistently amazed at this behavior - I believe someone recently bought an M8 on the basis of recommendations on this forum which consisted almost entirely of web images not much larger then this one. Extraordinary

 

Incidentally, the image you posted does look rather noisy to me - but I actually like noise if it's of the 'right' type - so it's not a problem for me.

[Guest stnami]

Pascal is back to his idiotic only he knows everything posts again, how dare someone disagree with him that's a attack against all things decent in life. aaaaaahhh the shame of it all

[stunsworth]

Actually I think Pascal accurately outlines some of the issues with the review. The basic factual errors made by the author undermine any credibility regarding the rest of the review.

[Guest stnami]

naaah he won't see the post anyway so he never gets all the facts ...remember I am on his ignore list amid others!!! :D :D

[rosuna]

Pascal's arguments are correct and very precise.

 

I would add focus accuracy and noise at high ISOs as problems.

 

Leica has corrected another problem, shutter noise, but they must find a way for incorporating the quiter shutter to all new cameras.

[Guest stnami]

Pascal's arguments are correct and very precise.

naah totally disagree here!!! ....they are bias as he is bias

[jaapv]

Jaap - with all due respect, such a small web representation of an image says practically nothing about sensor noise.

 

That's unfortunately true. The only thing that counts for me is the final print....

[Speenth]

Just one of my horrible noisy ISO 1250 shots... An old favorite of mine from December 2006, so you may have seen it before.. This camera is fine - if used correctly...

Oh yes, it is a pre-update shot. It has unacceptable banding....

 

 

Hi' Jaap,

 

I am concerned. At ISO 1250 I cannot recreate the technical quality of your posted image, no matter how I manipulate my camera in terms of aperture, speed or EV. I find that noise and general loss of definition is so severe that, in similar lighting situations, I just don't use my M8 above ISO 640.

 

Would you be kind enough to provide the full technical details for this image? Not just the camera settings, but the 'how you did it' bit, both the shot and the pp. Either I'm misunderstanding something or my camera cannot perform technically as well as yours. If it is the latter (which I doubt), then its on its way to Solms very soon!

 

Steve'

[plasticman]

That's unfortunately true. The only thing that counts for me is the final print....

 

Jaap - these discussions are so circular. One person says the camera is noisy at high ISOs, another disputes it (often with one of these tiny images), and then when this in turn is questioned, it comes down to 'the print' - which has 'more 3-dimensionality' than a DSLR print.

 

In essence, even though the review obviously fell rather short of erm 'perfect objectivity' shall we say, it nevertheless made some interesting points (many of which have been discussed here in the past).

[rosuna]

And there is of course the question that it may be preferable to have noise reduction applied by the user afterwards, instead of by the camera. Make no mistake, the lack of noise on Canon and other DSLRs is not by accident, it is by agressive noise-reducing software both on the sensor (in case of CMos chips) and in the camera.

 

I am not sure about that. Canon CMOS sensors incorporate several transistors per pixel for noise handling. Add to that other improvements like A/D converters per row, in the sensor circuity, and other design advances in last generation units. CMOS technology was more noisy, or potentially are more noisy, but in practice that isn't true. Moreover, you can apply "software" treatment to the signal before the RAW is recorded, but this is only an additional step.

 

Signal is lower in CMOS (compared to CCDs), due to the lower fill factor. This explains the better image quality of CCDs at low ISOs, but the better image quality of CMOS at higher ISO values.

[Jamie Roberts]

Jaap - these discussions are so circular. One person says the camera is noisy at high ISOs, another disputes it (often with one of these tiny images), and then when this in turn is questioned, it comes down to 'the print' - which has 'more 3-dimensionality' than a DSLR print.

 

In essence, even though the review obviously fell rather short of erm 'perfect objectivity' shall we say, it nevertheless made some interesting points (many of which have been discussed here in the past).

 

Mani--Like I said, I just saw glorious m8 shots printed to 20 * 30 inches shot at ISO 1250 (I believe it was Dale Labs who printed them). That's not "Canon high ISO" these days but it ain't low ISO either.

 

@ Steve--you must expose your shots "to the right of the histogram" to get acceptible higher ISO with any digicam short of the new Nikons or Canons. If the sensor is starved for light, then it will be messy. If it's a bit overexposed (look at the lights in Jaap's shot) then it's easy to make things darker (and you can see the black point is relatively high too); you only have exactly a stop of leeway in the shadows if you don't push the exposure a little bit.

 

So properly exposed, ISO 1250--even before the recent firmware--works quite well, though I do think Leica has been slowly and steadily making minor improvments over time.

 

Then there is post-process noise reduction techniques; I still use Noise Ninja when I mess up the exposure...

[jaapv]

That is exactly it, Jamie. Only I prefer Neat Image when I miss exposure.( not for this shot, that did not need it) . I might add that I find C1 copes better with noise than ACR, at the default level as well if one adjusts the amount of noise reduction in either converter.

Also one can lasso some areas and apply local strong noise reduction, or pick the colour channel with the higest noise level and apply blur there, etc. Many postprocessing techniques out there. Another one, when sharpening do luminosity sharpening, to avoid enhancing colour noise.., etc..

But best is perfect exposure....

 

It is highly unlikely that there is a difference in cameras or camera fault in this respect.

[sdai]

...because smaller lenses are generally easier to engineer, Leica lenses have a reputation for extremely good quality.

 

This thread is so freaking funny ... does anybody want a smoke?

 

 

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[FastFashnReloaded]

Pascal's arguments are correct and very precise.

 

I would add focus accuracy and noise at high ISOs as problems.

 

Leica has corrected another problem, shutter noise, but they must find a way for incorporating the quiter shutter to all new cameras.

 

They MUST find a way to incorporate a quieter shutter? That is awfully general. Maybe some of us like higher shutter speeds, or we would like to make the M8 output a click whirr mirror and motor drive noise sampled from a Nikon F (insert fav Nikon camera here).

 

Must?

 

"You are out of order!" - Q