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BJP's first look


TimF

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As has been mentioned here before, the BJP last week (13/9/06) promised an exclusive look at the work of Simon Wheatley who has been one of those entrusted with the beta M8 camera.

 

My copy of this week's mag has just been delivered, and the plastic cover shredded in seconds to turn to page 12. There are five pictures included, all shot with the M8, and, Jonathan Eastland's comments about the colour palette and noise problems evident from the prototype notwithstanding, they look very good to me (even filtered through the kind of repro quality one expects in a magazine).

 

The last picture in the sequence shows a group of young people standing around the foot of a railway bridge. The bridge has a chain link fence along the side, and I can't see any signs of colour interference here - even against a clear sky - which might be expected from a camera with no low-pass filter. The image detail in all shots appears excellent.

 

Usually BJP's web site is updated about two to three days after the magazine comes out, so I would expect this to appear at http://www.bjp-online.co.uk/ on Friday.

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They don't Mark. The bulk of the piece is about Simon Wheatley's work. The only discussion of the camera is in a side column by Jonathan Eastland of which three quarters is on the handling and design.

 

Jonathan's final para reads (in part) "My gripes aside, there is no denying the quality of the beast or that, once Leica has sorted the colour palette and image noise problems evident from files taken with prototypes, it will not become the future standard tool for reportage."

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Just had a look at the BJP article. The images are largely the same as the ones in the latest M system brochure and are, frankly, as disappointing in magazine print as they are in PDF format. Very 'digital' looking (by that I mean the images show that rather harsh rendition of middle and far distance detail that, in my opinion, you get from mid-range digital cameras). Colours look rather muddy and generally unnatural looking (though some of the shots are taken indoors with lots of strip lighting, etc.) It's a bit early to draw any conclusions from a handful of shots taken with a pre-production camera but I suspect that, image-wise, this camera is not really going to live up to the rather ridiculous expectations that some have for it. None of this makes me want to cancel my existing order - the M8 will have an important role to play within my photographic arsenal - but I'm quite sure I won't be selling my M7's anytime soon.

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