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LEICA ANNOUNCEMENT: New Leica Products - LEICA M8 / M System


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Guest guy_mancuso

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Wow what the heck have i not been looking at. geez i am sorry going from memory on the EV and DMR. i will look into that when i get home to my DMR. all i remember is the warning on the left, might need to start looking right a little. my apologies for bad info there folks and Mitchell thanks for pointing that out. If that is the case than i may have read the M8 wrong on that. i can't imagine they would take that away than. some of the details are still sketchy. sorry folks

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I just read the M8 brochure about the viewfinder display. It is clear there is a warning that Exp. Comp. is on. It's not clear if directon and amount are indicated.

 

However, I would be very surprised if they aren't because the graph is already there for manual exposure, and as they are there for the DMR.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

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Guest guy_mancuso

Thanks Mitchell. i would absolutely think they would carry that over, no reason to dump that. i am racking my brain thinking about this one. i simply can't believe it is escaping my mind that i did not notice it. LOL

 

Okay you got me and a nice steak dinner to boot. LOL

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Guy,

 

I don't think I got it right on the M8 myself. (See below.)

 

But, I'm headed out to Arizona to lasso your steak diner anyway. LOL

 

 

I now realize it looks like they've kept the triangle-dot-triangle scheme that's in the M7 and 6.

 

If they done that, we may see Exp. Comp. direction, but amount only if it's 1/2 stop. The next amount being 1 stop or more than one stop. The same as manual metering. So it's simpler to look at, but not as much info. I like the R9 system better.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

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Since Sean seems to be reading this thread, I am going to ask a question of him, or perhaps anyone who knows the answer.

 

Sean - I was intrigued in your review by the flash options available. You seem less enamored of them in practice than I am in principle -- but maybe that's because I don't fully understand what they're doing. So two questions: 1) it would seem that the Auto Slow Sync would be a great way to use fill flash and still have an outdoor shot seem natural; did it not prove to be the case in practice? 2) I have a two or three year old SF 20 Leica flash; do I need to upgrade to the SF 24d in order to use the full range of effects? JB

 

Hi John,

 

I didn't have a compatible flash handy to test with the preproduction camera so I'll withold final judgement until I can do that. The higher synch speed of 1/250 is great news and it does indeed make the camera more flexible for fill flash (where existing light dominates and flash supplements). The auto slow synch, as I understand it, uses the lens' focal length to control the *lower* limit for shutter speed when one is dragging the shutter (flash lighting dominates and existing light fills). Dragging the shutter is a tricky technique and I don't know of any professionals who do it using aperture priority because the results would be too unpredictable. So, there's nothing wrong with having the feature but I doubt it will be very useful for photographers who know what they're doing with flash. Rule of thumb is that ISO, aperture and flash intensity govern exposure of subjects lit by flash whereas ISO, aperture and shutter speed control the "fill" essentially that's then provided by ambient lighting. One wants to be very precise with the latter so that the blend of the two work well together and so that motion blur is chosen specifically.

 

So the M8's TTL and 1/250 max. synch speed are great, then there's also an optional feature there that may be of limited use to the sorts of photographers who are most likely to drag the shutter.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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John if i may , i do this all the time. basically what leica did is do what i do manually when shooting flash. let's say your at a indoor party for example and shooting at ISO 400 and you have your flash set on A and at 5.6 . The flash will put out enough light to give you 5.6 this is on Auto and not TTL. I will explain that difference in a minute. now what I DO is set my shutter around a 1/30 of a second and that is to cath some of the ambient light in the image , So if there are 3 folks in front of me the background can be seen given the right amount of ambient light. Here is what Leica did they give you 3 settingsand i don't have the exact numbers handy but one I do remember. BTW this is called dragging the shutter. What they did was give you a seeing that goes from 1/250 of a second to 1/30 of a second. the camera sends out a preflash than determines the correct light for your F stop but also determines the ambient light and automatically drags the shutter to the slowest spped of 1/30 of a second. So reality is if you maybe in open shade it may stop at 1/60 of second because it meteerd that value but still gives you the correct 5.6 flash power. this is basically automating a task that i have done for years. now i think the other setting was down to 1 second . This is exactly how i read what they are doing. Now the difference is with TTL it is relating to the Lens coding on the lens. Auto has no idea what focal length is on the camera unless you set it. TTL with the coding does. This is one they had to get from a photographer , great idea

 

I'm on a laptop typing , not a good thing. LOL

 

Hi Guy,

 

That's close but what they seem to be doing with this feature is reading the focal length of the lens (via the code) and then using that to determine the lowest shutter speed AE will allow when dragging the shutter with flash. The longer the lens, the higher that speed will be. It's a clever idea but I'm not sure how useful it will be in practice. I'll know more when I have a production camera and Leica flash in hand to test.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Wow what the heck have i not been looking at. geez i am sorry going from memory on the EV and DMR. i will look into that when i get home to my DMR. all i remember is the warning on the left, might need to start looking right a little. my apologies for bad info there folks and Mitchell thanks for pointing that out. If that is the case than i may have read the M8 wrong on that. i can't imagine they would take that away than. some of the details are still sketchy. sorry folks

 

No sketchiness on this aspect and I spoke with Germany by phone yesterday to confirm what I had in my notes just before publishing. There's a light in the M finder that confirms that some kind of EV correction is set but it does not show what that value is. I discussed this in the review for those of you who have seen it.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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BTW, with respect to the discussion of EV correction controls, display, etc...

 

If one is looking for a conventionally "correct" histogram, it's good to know that the M8 seems to meter very well and I didn't often need to dial in an EV correction in AE to get what I wanted from it.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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sean, did you try any VC lenses (like 50mm nokton etc) with M adapter rings on the M8? if so did they bring up proper frame lines?

 

thanks,

kevin

 

Hi Kevin,

 

No, I didn't. I worked with two different M8s this summer but due to logistics related to my travelling for work (and my equipment travelling as well), I wasn't able to try my CV lenses with it. When I get the production camera to test, I'll check this and many other things.

 

That said, if one uses the correct adapter with an LTM, the frame lines should come up just as they do on an M7.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Thank you. Carl may not have liked .....

 

All I said is that I beleive is should have been cut down a bit. Reading that long a writeup through a keyhole is really tiering.

 

Unlike a lot of people here, I'm not extatic about everything you write, but thats OK - at least from where I'm sitting.

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May I extend my Congradulations to Leica and staff for a Magnificent effort on it's latest

Digital camera (M8) in keeping in it's fine M-Line Heritage.

I am not in the market for one, but I am sure many will be, so good luck to all.

 

Cheers.

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Guest guy_mancuso

Sean thanks for clarifying the shutter and focal length in there , i thought they would just go by coding for focal length and zooming of the flash . in this case it could be not such a great idea because one shot with a certain lens it may go to 1/30 and another longer lens at 1/60 so in the same room you just would not be that consistent looking for the background. still a nice option though. we just have to wait to get all those fine points clarified but the principle is sound

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Sean thanks for clarifying the shutter and focal length in there , i thought they would just go by coding for focal length and zooming of the flash . in this case it could be not such a great idea because one shot with a certain lens it may go to 1/30 and another longer lens at 1/60 so in the same room you just would not be that consistent looking for the background. still a nice option though. we just have to wait to get all those fine points clarified but the principle is sound

 

I'll test it as soon as I get a production camera and Leica flash (right after Photokina). But, yes, the inconsistency could be a problem but then there's the larger issue of being able to blend that continuous (usually much warmer) light precisely and that requires exact shutter speed choices which rule out AE to begin with. Then again, no harm done because the feature is only on if one wants it.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Guest guy_mancuso

Yes exactly , your just handing complete control to the camera with AE and that could be not a very good idea. The manual of doing it like I described ealrlier seems the most effective use of dragging the shutter to get the same look . I agree it is nice to have it but more important to turn it off.

 

One point that i did want to say being a DMR owner and about EV mode that we are concerned about is that in A mode with the DMR this thing is deadly accurate with regards to metering and better than anything i have used. i don't have any idea how they do it but leica's metering is hard to beat. i would assume the M8 would also fall into this so EV may not be as important as our long discussion about it dictates , just don't want to give the impression that leica's metering is not good but the fact is it is really good . but i still contend that the setup is not right the way it was done and maybe they will make a adjustment to the setup.

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