Why would an M7 user get an M8?

[stunsworth]

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Will the M8 -- or any digital camera for that matter -- necessitate long hours in front of the the computer?

Compared to when I use film and scan it I spend far less time on the PC/Mac when I shoot digitally. I don't have a wet darkroom, that might change things for people who do.

[Guest Seb V]

Having read the posts and thought about it some more there is one thing about the M8 that really annoys me: that the sensor isn't upgradable.

Why take the time to build an M-quality body, brass and all and put in technology that in 5 years would be seriously dated? (I didn't write 1 year because I realise that resolution etc.is more important than megapixels)

They could make a fortune selling licensed upgraded sensors for 500 pounds a pop every 3 years and M8 sales would go through the roof because Leica would have ahieved the Holy Grail - Leica longevity with state-of-the-art technology.

To quote my favourite tv show: "For that reason...I'm out."

[KevinA]

The M8.2, the M9 that brings the full-frame sensor to the M-range, first seen in the R10, will be the one for me.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

I think the full frame in the M will be a longway off, if ever. Plus this full frame thing is only a state of mind, if lenses are developed for any size sensor then it is full frame. Is a 645 compared to 6x7 not a full frame camera?

I think there will be a very long waiting list for the M8 in a very short time.

 

Kevin.

[Confusion Circle]

Crazy rather than good ;-). I guess I'm a bit of a horder. I'm always afraid that something I don't like now will provide interest later.

You and I are two peas in a pod.

[leicapfile]

Kevin,

 

"...FF a long way off."

 

Depends upon how you define a "long way off".

 

My guess, 4 or 5 years. That could be a long time as far as digital is concerned, but kind of quick in the Leica world.

 

As I understand the M8, the crop factor is the result of the problems that surround current sensor design which result in vignetted images. Leicas solution for the time being was to 'bend' the outer pixels towards the light path, then 'optimize' the image via lens coding, which in turn allows the current soft/firmware to do its thing to the level Leica will accept. That to retain their history of excellent lens imaging to a point acceptable to them.

 

Nothing stands still and I doubt Leica will. Using an extension of that sensor design, in concert with more powerful soft/firmware, I beleive those are logical steps. I further suspect they are working on it now. If not, they should be.

 

Best,

 

Jerry

[xjr]

Here's a question for all you more digital-literate people out there. I am very intersted in the M8 because I think that it will enable me to do exactly what I can do with my M7 except when I come home I just plug it into my Mac and voila - there are all the pictures I just took.

Is it really that simple? I do very little with PS Elements excep resize for web posting and sometimes contrast adjustment but that's it and that's the way I like it.

Will getting the M8 mean I will have to stare at a computer screen meticulously adjusting each shot?

Currently I send my film to a pro-lab who do what they call 'Machine Prints.' These are processed automatically but, I believe, a technician does monotor the results as they get printed. I am really happy with my results.

I guess what I really want to ask is...will plugging the M8 into my computer give me images just like the ones I get from the lab (obviously not printed) or will I have to become involved with PS?

The problem is, when I read about histograms and RGB settings etc. I just get nervous and think it will force me to get into the technical side of things to which I have a huge aversion.

Ideally, I would like to edit with the M8 and Apple and then take the 2 or 3 keepers I usually get per roll and get them printed at the lab. Is that viable?

 

I look forward to comments.

 

Regrds Seb

why not ?

[Ted W]

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Or they could just make some new lenses.

[leicapfile]

Ted W.

 

I'm not sure "...just make some new lenses" is an answer that is possible technologicaly today for their digital M..

 

Even if it were, I'm not certain Leica would entertain that as a solution. They have a long and storied history surrounding compatability betwixt bodies and lenses, in both LTM and M mounts. To their credit.

 

I beleive they would think long and hard before they abandoned that in the future. New avenues will open as technology marches on, and I suspect they'll explore all of them. If you examine their lenses and bodies, I don't think you'll conclude they do things the easy way.

 

Best,

 

Jerry

[Ted W]

I was only being semi-facetious. A new line of lenses -- just a few, even, say a 35, a 50, and a 75 -- optimized for the existing sensor doesn't appear to have been an idea that was ever seriously considered (though I don't know for sure, of course). But it would end the full-frame discussion. I think people both inside and outside of Leica have a hard time accepting the fact that a digital camera is not the same as a film camera, both functionally and philosophically. The result of this hang-up is that you can use your existing glass on the M8, but not at the same FOV. If time really is marching on, why don't we just accept it and get on with life? I'm all for preserving tradition, but it's not 1957 anymore. I would be okay if Leica just decided to preserve the traditions of superior workmanship, ease of use, best-in-class optical performance, etc. Creating a 21st century product that absolutely must interface with products from the mid-20th century has limited the functionality of the new product... if you step back, it really doesn't make any sense.

 

I will be getting one, however...

[gberger]

When you can solve the archival and authentication problems, then digital might make sense.

 

Until then, you are just shooting and producing short-lived images that are suceptible to manipulation and decay/loss as the storage and playback media change.

[mitchell]

All images are subject to manipulation and always have been.

 

It's nice to think the picture you see hasn't have been altered to change it's look or meaning, but there is no way of knowing.

 

I myself am not interested in image manipulation. Part of my photography is saying: yes this was there, and this is really what it looked liked (or close to it.)

 

I have nothing against people manipulating images for effect like a painter. I would just like to be told when it's done, but I'm aware that I can't really know for sure, film or digital.

 

Milan Kundera has a wonderful passage where he talks about out of favor Soviet leaders being airbrushed out of photographs, and history.

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

[albertwang]

Well, if you were on an African safari, there is nowhere you can charge a M8

 

M7 wins here... byebye M8! hahaha

[KevinA]

When you can solve the archival and authentication problems, then digital might make sense.

 

Until then, you are just shooting and producing short-lived images that are suceptible to manipulation and decay/loss as the storage and playback media change.

 

Where does this point of view come from? My digital images are as secure probably more so than my film images. I have at least three identical copies of the original stored in three places, I can store them in many different formats should I choose. When I send a file to the repro house it does not come back bent torn scratched or stained, they do not pick up grit hairs or airborn chemicals. Unless you store your film securly and never get it out to view or print, your film is degrading all the time.

Yes I know how long film can last I have hundreds of glass negatives from the turn of the century, not one without a scratch on.

Kevin.

[Ted W]

I think the problem has been solved, to the degree that it can be... multiple copies in multiple places. I use this at home (and on the road)...

 

http://www.pictureline.com/newsletter/2004/september/hardfilm.html

http://www.digitalfusionstore.com/

 

It's always plugged in, but I can also imagine a scenario where you just put new keeper data on it and leave it on the shelf. And then I back up to the Apple server from my Mac account. Then you have to be good with migrating your work to new drives every several years. Probably no more work-intensive than maintaining (and subsequently restoring) old negatives and slides. You guys who claim that you have good transparencies from decades past don't actually yank out an old Kodachrome, stick it in a machine, and expect an instant perfect print, do you? No, there's plenty of work and expense involved in getting it useable. The issue with digital files is mainly about the long-term fallibility of CDRs.

[Lucklik]

7500-3500/9=444rolls developedREALA for me. Probably over a thousand rolls of APX, my time bulk loading and developing is cheap.

I like the look of film.

I made a similar calculation. I use the D2 when it has to be quick and cheap.

However I always spend too much time in PS to get the pictures OK and don't underestimate the the IT costs for computer, backup and archiving.

I like the M8 very much, but I'm very happy with my a la carte M7 from december last year.

rgs

Luc

[lincoln_m]

Hi,

I sort of agree. As an MP and M6TTL user I actually enjoy the wait for the slides to be developed. It then takes me quite some time to go through the slides and decide which ones to include in a slide show selection and a smaller selection of the slide show for scanning. My M shots then become ~40Mpixel 16bit TIFFs which soon use up disk space.

 

The need for instant review of an image on a small uncalibrated, low dynamic range LCD display is not relevant. If in doubt I take another shot just in case.

 

The zoom factor of even a low 1.33x is a little anoying because we really need a 24mm lens to get the 35mm equivalent (32mm) which I do not have now. My 0.72x does not have a frame for 24mm so the extra viewfinder is needed. So to get an M8 with an ~35mm would also cost me a 24mm with 6bit coding (~£5000). But if I want I have a ~40Mpixel image using my Minolta Elite 5400 now, although there is no continued support for these scanners from Minolta unfortunately.

 

A high quality film scanner from Leica would actually be more interesting to me if it could handle the full dynamic range of Velvia 50 and Kodachrome 64 but cost less than the Hassy scanners. The LFI reports suggested the Minolta was a better scanner than the Nikon ones on several specs.

 

It would be interesting to compare the M8 digital image with a Velvia slide. I think they did this for the DMR and Velvia 100 and the result was very similar although the image was a studio shot rather than an outside landscape shot.

 

Of course it is quite cheap to project a slide but a 10Mpixel LCD projector does not currently exist.

 

The M8 is a very nice piece of engineering we will have to see if the pros take to it or not.

 

The digital sensor is effectively like using only one film type (may be 2 if you switch to B/W) unless you can change the colour balance and saturation as "user saved settings" for different image effects. But then again I'm tending towards using the new Velvia 100DL as my main film and TMAX 100 as my B/W.

 

The M8 has a wider ISO range than just 100 so it might be good for low light we'll have to wait for the reviews in LFI to compare TMAX 3200 with the M8 in low light photography.

 

I'll wait and see how the M8 concept evolves.

 

Regards, Lincoln

[abrewer]

It starts with someone suggesting you shoot RAW....

 

Then there's an upgrade to a new computer to handle the larger files, and the latest and greatest Photoshop, and a big monitor....pretty soon you've got five grand or more invested in hardware/software to get the best out of your digital rig. And that doesn't include the value of your time in learning how to operate these pieces, or the opportunities lost while doing so.

 

It seems with digital there's just no end to it.

 

For this amateur at least, it doesn't hardly seem worth the money and trouble to chase the "digital dream".

 

For now I'm happy with my film images scanned to a CD by the lab and the few Photoshop tricks I know and comfortably live with on Elements 3 with the PhotoKit plug-in.

 

Thanks.

 

Allan

[Sandokan]

Your apprehension surrounding getting your system calibrated is understandable if you haven't done it before, but once you get the basics down you'll be wondering what the big deal was. I use a Spyder 2, which takes all of ten minutes to use, and when used in conjuction with good paper profiles yields very good results.

...

 

The hardest part (and it's not all that hard) is getting a good work pattern to use with digital capture. Once that's in place, the technical aspect is very easy.

 

Hi Matthew,

 

I have just sent a film for developing and printing (B&W) to a pro lab - US$50 is what it will set me back! At this rate I can pay for the DMR & Spyder 2 with just 100 films. For that I am very tempted to learn a workflow and do the calibrations.

[albertwang]

Yoowzers... film isn't too bad if you don't shoot all that much I guess.

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[ken_tanaka]

My M7 is the only film camera that I use, having otherwise moved to digital quite some time ago. I greatly enjoy using the M7 and have a rather substantial investment in three (Leica) lenses for it.

 

But processing, scanning, and storing film is a time-consuming, space-consuming and increasingly costly proposition that offers, for me, a PGR (pain-to-gain ratio) in excess of 2.0. I enjoy working with film imaging occasionally but would very much like to have the option of using my Leica lenses with a digital body precisely like the M8 promises to be (identical in basic form to the M7). I plan to keep my M7 but the M8 will likely become my main M.

 

I have spent recent years becoming adept with digital photography. It's my home medium. I am not really a photographic romanticist, although I do enjoy cameras of yore. But for me the only point of photography is the image, regardless of the tool used to record it. Some cameras are better for certain jobs than others and the M bodies and lenses excel for low profile imaging that does not require technical precision. That's the type of mission for which my M7 is best deployed and I expect my future M8 will fill the same role.

 

That's my answer.