andrewrossphotographs Posted October 14, 2006 Share #1 Posted October 14, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) Hi Go visit HK LFC, click on "Photo Postings" and then click on "M8 Brief Report and Sample Photos" to see some sample pictures taken with the Leica M8 at different ISO speeds -- Unfortunatly it seems the images posted have been resized. The firmware version from the M8 camera that was shown here in Hong Kong was 1.05 -- I presume this is the version used in these samples shown. Cheers Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted October 14, 2006 Posted October 14, 2006 Hi andrewrossphotographs, Take a look here Leica M8 test sample pictures available!. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
billh Posted October 14, 2006 Share #2 Posted October 14, 2006 The higher ISO shots are great - no noise is visible. The lower ISO shots show hints of a shaky hand (slow shutter speed). If these are representative of the camera at high ISOs, I cannot understand why Leica has refused to release any RAW M8 files. It would be interesting to understand the thinking behind the behavior of the photo companies when they release a new camera. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 14, 2006 Share #3 Posted October 14, 2006 Yes the ISO's look good but would like to see production version firmware and better images. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marknorton Posted October 14, 2006 Share #4 Posted October 14, 2006 I agree. If that is really the noise result from 2500, this will a great camera for available light though it will be interesting to see how the WB measurement works in absolute low light levels. They got their fingers burned of course by the delays in the DMR and I think they were determined not to repeat the experience - all credit to them. If they really have 2000 cameras blocking the aisles in Solms nearly ready to go, that's good news. Many of us will have our cameras to work with over the Christmas/New Year holiday and Andy might even get his for his cruise. Oh, and Leica will start getting healthy cash flow. This product is likely to be the one which rescues Leica from oblivion. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 14, 2006 Share #5 Posted October 14, 2006 I just wish my one gig that i have to shoot coming up was a week or two later , may have had this by then. It starts Oct.29 no way in the world it would come. so leica send me a demo and i will shoot some REAL pictures. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewrossphotographs Posted October 14, 2006 Author Share #6 Posted October 14, 2006 Hi Guy/Mark WB and Shipping date The latest news from here (HK) is that there is a slight delay on delivery as the firmware still needs some white balance modifications and a few language menu changes too, but it is essentially 90% ready. Expected shipping date is to be the begining of December...... From what I saw with the noise at high ISO; it was very very well controlled upto 2500 ISO (compared with the earlier firmware versions). 2500 was in my mind usable and the overall pictures looked very film like and had a nice "feel" considering the light conditions with (Auto WB) of the room. Leica also had an A4 print from the Leica M8 shot by a Magnum snapper ISO 640 @ 1/15. the image showed no visible grain and WB was good and sharpness was fantastic, they also had an A4 print from the M7, which side by side, looked very similar in terms of sharpness and overall picture "quality" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 14, 2006 Share #7 Posted October 14, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) Thanks Andrew . i have been expecting ISO 1250 to be about perfect and it sounds true at this point that is almsot 2 stops over the DMR and exactly what i expectd leica to go after. The WB issue well that I could live with honestly , but jpeg shooters will have there issues. Just a FYI on the DMR it runs about 200 Kelvin to the warm side , which frankly i like a lot. So if they could make it like that and than leave it alone 99 percent of us would love it. I hope sooner on delivery and just a week ago or so I heard they are ahead of schedule so hopefully they can get that resolved quickly. Maybe we will hear some info in the next coming days Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
imported_clicker Posted October 14, 2006 Share #8 Posted October 14, 2006 Can someone tell be what the lens/viewfinder on the M7 pictured pictured in this series is? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lct Posted October 14, 2006 Share #9 Posted October 14, 2006 Can someone tell be what the lens/viewfinder on the M7 pictured pictured in this series is? Elmarit 21/2.8 asph: http://www.leica-camera.us/photography/m_system/lenses/460.html Viewfinder for 21/24/28mm lenses: http://www.leica-camera.us/photography/m_system/accessories/viewfinder_accessories/489.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
graham_mitchell Posted October 15, 2006 Share #10 Posted October 15, 2006 Thanks for posting. Looks promising after the weird images from Denmark posted recently. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewrossphotographs Posted October 15, 2006 Author Share #11 Posted October 15, 2006 Hello Guy Hopefully they will move quicker with the firmware and revise the shipping date again, as they gave the impression the major issues have all been sorted. One thing I noticed about shooting at 2500 ISO on the M8 is that you can very clearly see the noise on the back of the M8's screen without zooming in to see detail, which to say the least is unusual compared to shooting other digital cameras, but the prints from them looked very clean and as the original links examples show. Perhaps the M8 screens display is more representative of image detail than others camera screens, as often lens flare isn't visible on many camera digital cameras screens. Also quite interesting was the fact the M8 could shoot an image without a card and it could be reviewed on the back of the camera; also switching the camera off with a SD card inside still allowed images to be written to the card as opposed to clearing the buffer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewrossphotographs Posted October 15, 2006 Author Share #12 Posted October 15, 2006 Please note the link given in my original post now shows images at different ISO speeds with 100% crops M8 Brief Report and Sample Photos - HK LFC Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted October 15, 2006 Share #13 Posted October 15, 2006 "... I cannot understand why Leica has refused to release any RAW M8 files." I expect (from the shots I made myself with a beta-M8, and these samples) that Leica is still working on the color calibration (RGB hue and saturation), and perhaps also the WB. Since the M8 uses .dng for RAW, Leica has to embed a profile to accurately profile the colors, so that any raw developer can interpret them correctly. (That's basically what Camera RAW does with each new edition - 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 etc. - provide additional calibrations, as done by Adobe, for newly introduced cameras). The same profile is also used to produce accurate color in in-camera jpegs, of course. My beta shots auto white-balanced daylight as 3800K, tint -28 (which is very cyan/blue - 4800K to 5200K, with zero tint correction would be 'normal'), and had a red or magenta cast in the shadows. I'm sure a good calibration is exactly what is needed to clean this up for the production cameras, and no doubt what Leica is saving to do last, once all the other settings and image parameters are stabilized. Uncalibrated color can make the camera look horrible, even though it is easily correctible (one can do one's own camera calibration with a MacBeth ColorChecker, CameraRAW, and RGB values available on the web). If the review cameras are really on their way, I'd expect Leica will have "proof images" on the M8 web page within a week or so. Glad to know the noise looks good to those with experience to judge it - I haven't shot with enough big-sensor cameras to make a comparison, myself. "...you can very clearly see the noise on the back of the M8's screen without zooming in to see detail..." Yep - another bug in the firmware. If one DOES zoom in, there is less noise visible in the actual pixels than in the small version shown "full-frame" - something not yet right in the preview resampling method. Same thing happens with high-ISO images in camera RAW - the effect of the CR noise reduction settings only seem to become displayed once one zooms in a lot. I assume the production firmware will have fixed this. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sean_reid Posted October 15, 2006 Share #14 Posted October 15, 2006 I've mentioned this in other thread but I again want to remind people that the noise that seems visible in high ISO files on the M8 LCD (preproduction cameras) is not indicative of the actual file noise. I say this to underscore Andy's comment above. Cheers, Sean Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewrossphotographs Posted October 15, 2006 Author Share #15 Posted October 15, 2006 Hi Sean Fair point about the screen on pre production models, we should all be focusing on the final output of the images anyhow. Thanks for pointing that out! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted October 15, 2006 Share #16 Posted October 15, 2006 Andy i agree the DMR firmware when you zoom it is pretty accurate on what you will see with either jpeg or Raw and when i played with the M8 the LCD was off considerable and I had some really old firmware. But that certainly will not be the case with final firmware it should look really good when you zoom in. In reality i thought it would have been worse given the version of the firmware. Folks don't understand what really is going on under the hood when they develop these. Plus given the fact that leica engineers are fanatics about quality, i would be amazed if it every will leave the factory door. LOL just kidding on the last part Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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