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M8.2 now £2955/€3380/$4327 at Robert White


marknorton

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Are you sure?I'm on holiday in Italy at the moment. When I tried to book for next year I could just get what I wanted. The owner had 50% all-season rentals for 2009-2010. It sets the customer back at least 10.000 Euros... The people that had money before still seem to have it, at least in Europe.- and more. All four- and five - star hotels are booked solid for 2010- that has never happened before. We are talking 200 to 500 Euro a person a day here:eek: The venues that are feeling the pinch are the cheaper ones. I haver a feeling the higher price bracket is the one to be in in these times.

 

An article in Sweden's most serious paper Dagens Nyheter a couple of weeks ago contradicted your anecdotal evidence (for Swedish speakers):

 

Hotellgäster ratar lyx

 

or a google translation:

 

Translated version of http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=878879

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Lots of confusion seems to be creeping into this thread. Robert White are a good dealership but I've not noticed that they are 'consistently cheaper than other dealers in the UK'. It's also worth bearing in mind that the prices shown on their website are exclusive of VAT, whereas most UK dealers display VAT inclusive prices (the norm for retailers, as opposed to B2B, in this country).

The £2995 + VAT price also seems to be for ex demo stock.

 

Slightly off topic, but relevant to the £ v € debate, I was at a London Nikon dealership a short while ago, looking for a new lens. They said that they didn't have the lens that I wanted but I spotted one in what looked like a pile of newly delivered stock. When I pointed it out they said that the two large boxes full of new Nikkor lenses hadn't just come in, but were going out......£15000 worth to a buyer in France!! Good business for the dealer and his French customer, but not so good news for UK customers looking to buy.

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Lots of confusion seems to be creeping into this thread. Robert White are a good dealership but I've not noticed that they are 'consistently cheaper than other dealers in the UK'. It's also worth bearing in mind that the prices shown on their website are exclusive of VAT, whereas most UK dealers display VAT inclusive prices (the norm for retailers, as opposed to B2B, in this country).

The £2995 + VAT price also seems to be for ex demo stock.

 

snip

 

The confusion is due to the fact that Robert White changed the listings and prices today. Previously they were showing M8.2 stock at £2955, there was no mention that the units being offered were demos. And Robert White does usually specify when a unit is a demo. Also previously, the 2 listings with a price of 3455 ex vat were not there.

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Are you sure?I'm on holiday in Italy at the moment. When I tried to book for next year I could just get what I wanted. The owner had 50% all-season rentals for 2009-2010. It sets the customer back at least 10.000 Euros... The people that had money before still seem to have it, at least in Europe.- and more. All four- and five - star hotels are booked solid for 2010- that has never happened before. We are talking 200 to 500 Euro a person a day here:eek: The venues that are feeling the pinch are the cheaper ones. I haver a feeling the higher price bracket is the one to be in in these times.

 

What are you trying to get across here:

 

- The economical downfall is a Hoax

- I am wealthy enough to stay in 220-500 euro hotels whenever I like, despite the economy

- Everybody booking into the hotels I visit will buy M8's

- I only choose 4 or 5 star hotels for my vacation

- The Italian hotel business is Booming

- Crisis what crisis?

- cheap venues are Passé

- I don't know the hell what you people are talking about, let me just interrupt by mentioning some facts from the Italian tourist industry

- The wealthy never had it better

- Don't invest in Leica anymore, get into Italian tourism

- Capitalism rules

- Expensive Hotels are difficult to book

- Cheaper venues will hit hard times

- Don't worry be happy, just get into the higher price brackets and all will be fine

- Other

 

I have no idea where you are this moment in time, but sincerely hope you're having a great time, but I can tell that even Italian hotels, expensive or not are going through hard times. Perhaps not where you are, but the other 99,99999% certainly are....

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Red Dot Cameras in the UK now state on their website (as of today) that the upcoming announcement scheduled for 20th February from Leica concerns new products.

 

also heard from a leica dealer that M9 with full frame 1.6 million sensor will be announced later this month, possibly together with R9. there will be an upgrade option for existing M8 users.

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Red Dot Cameras in the UK now state on their website (as of today) that the upcoming announcement scheduled for 20th February from Leica concerns new products.

 

This was first posted (by Spylaw4, thanks Brian) and discussed earlier yesterday in the 'Panasonic to buy Leica...' thread on the customer forum.

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One thing just occurred to me yesterday after reading an article on testing the G1's 14-45mm kit lens. The article went on to talk about how when they first tested the kit lens using ACR & SilkyPix that the lens appeared nearly flawless, then they realized that lens correction information is included in the RAW files and only by using RAW Therapee could they see the actual lens performance which had substantial barrel distortion and heavy vignetting, especially at the wide end with up to -2.32 EV loss in the corners. There is absolutely nothing preventing a FF M9 except Leica's lack of software engineering capability. I doubt if the light fall off is much greater the -2.32 EV by going from 1.33 to FF, especially with the higher quality of Leica glass. Panasonic can solve that issue because they have the software engineering know how that Leica lacks. They wouldn't have to deal with anywhere near the barrel distortion since Leica's are prime lenses. Link to article: Panasonic Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH OIS - Review / Test Report

 

Maybe Leica has now figured out that it is possible after all, having seen Panny do it. One can debate whether having micro lenses is a better approach that post processing in software, but I would argue that it is the results that count. Since CA, barrel distortion and vignetting is virtually invisible in processed G1 files, and only by comparing to a non processed file can one discern the difference it would be more than good enough for all but the psyco purist and they don't control a market.

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John, I'm sure if it was possible Leica would do it. I'm certain that they realise that a full frame digital M would be most people's preferred option.

 

Remember that if you boost the corners to combat several stops of vignetting, you're also going to increase digital noise. They may well be some additional processing with the Panasonic to reduce this effect. Leica already do something similar when using coded lenses on the M8. Whether or not they (or you and I) would be happy with the results if the same processing was boosting corner vignetting by 2-3 stops or more is a moot point.

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Steve,

 

I'm not. I haven't been very impressed with Leica's software capability. However, Panasonic clearly has the know how. At 100% I cannot see any real difference in noise in the corners versus other parts of the image. If there is any that would be visible at over 100% it would not be visible when printed. Maybe you are right and Leica lacks the ability or they would have done it, but I think it takes a combination of sensor technology and software that can take advantage of it. They in camera process it for JPEG but provide the information for external processing in the RAW file. Since the RAW processing is done outside of the camera and done in the digital domain it should not add any noise that is not in the original image.

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Since the RAW processing is done outside of the camera and done in the digital domain it should not add any noise that is not in the original image.

 

I'm not sure it's that simple. If you take an area of shadow in a normal image and boost it by 2-3 stops the resulting image will have tend to have more _visible_ noise than the original - or at least that's been my experience.

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Steve,

Amplifying what is already there is not the same as adding to what is there. I have looked at the image enlarged to 200% and 300% and what is present is more visible but it did not increase the noise. There is some noise in every image. When the amplification occurs in the analog domain it is easy to introduce more noise because the amplifier itself is not perfectly linear and it adds its own noise to the signal. In the digital world the amplitude is represented as a binary value. So if a particular sample point has a binary value of two and you double it to a value of four you have increased the output value for that sample point. If the sample point was noise it too was doubled, but no new noise was added.

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I'm not sure it's that simple. If you take an area of shadow in a normal image and boost it by 2-3 stops the resulting image will have tend to have more _visible_ noise than the original - or at least that's been my experience.

Yes hard to imagine how any camera could do better than us with P'shop or same. Adjusting vignetting is easy but creates noise. Also a lot of details are lost in the corners and there is no way to recover them after the pic is taken. The only way to avoid that is to use better microlenses on the sensor. AFAIK of course.

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So if a particular sample point has a binary value of two and you double it to a value of four you have increased the output value for that sample point. If the sample point was noise it too was doubled, but no new noise was added.

 

I agree with the maths, but perhaps a point worth noting is that in the original image the 'noise' may be there but not seen as it's so dark.

 

So to take an exagerated example, if there were two pixels next to one another, one had a value of 1 and the other had a value of 8, they would both appear as black, even though one had 8 times the value of the other they would both _appear_ to be the same. Multiply them a little - say 4 stops - and the original may have a value of say 16 and the other 128. The first may still appear to be black - even though it isn't perfectly black from a numerical point of view - but the second one may not be as it had a value that could now be seen as not being black. So where as in the original the two pixels appeared to both be the same, multiply things up a little and it becomes obvious that they're not.

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Ignoring the possibility of an error on their site, Robert White in the UK are now listing the M8.2 as shown, significantly down from before. Price excludes UK VAT.

 

By comparison, Leica Berlin are showing it at €4197 + tax, B&H $5995 + tax...

 

Robert White - Specialist Camera and Photographic Suppliers of Nikon, Canon, Leica, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Zeiss Ikon, Voigtlander, Quantum etc.

 

I'm not sure if this is Leica Berlin, but it shows €4995:

 

MEISTERCAMERA Berlin: Leica M System[backPID]=58&tx_ttproducts_pi1[product]=3774

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Amplifying what is already there is not the same as adding to what is there.

 

That's true, but the issue is actually the "signal to noise ratio", in technical speak.

 

E.g, if your sensor/amplifier package adds say 2 counts of noise, in the center you have 2 counts of noise in say 128 counts of actual image. But in the corner, if you have 4 stops of vignetting, you have the same 2 counts of noise in 16 counts of actual image. And that's visible. And BTW, the example is easily possible with a FF M9 using an M8 generation sensor.

 

Sandy

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The problem with what both of you are saying is that it assumes a very stupid algorithm is being used. In fact, it clearly uses a very intelligent algorithm that treats dark areas differently than light ones. I was looking at sky when I was examing the G1 image I was using in my discussion which varied from light to darker blue. No part of the image was near black. I think most image programmers know that dark areas tend to have more noise than light ones and would thus process the dark areas differently and take advantage of human percveption limitations.

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John,

 

Yes, you could do more noise reduction in the corners, which I think is what you're saying. And that would make the image look a lot better, and overall would give a better image than just running a single noise reduction algorithm over the whole image. But there's still no free lunch - if you have high levels of noise in the sensor and run an noise reduction algorithm in the corners, you're still sacrificing resolution in the corners.

 

 

Regards,

 

Sandy

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Sandy,

Never claimed a free lunch. However, what I am seeing with my eyes of a -2.3 EV fall off in the corners corrected in software with the G1, even at 100% would be acceptable to 99% of users as it is all but invisible and in print would probably be completely invisible almost all of the time. Hence, back to my original proposition that a FF M9 would be possible using the same techniques.

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