New M8 owner

[nitrox1]

Well the wait is finally over. My new M8 arrived yesterday. Charged the battery and slipped in a 2 gig sandisk ultra. All systems go. So far so good. Everything working 100%. Mine has the latest firmware, sn range is 3110xx, about 65 shutter clicks on it from the factory (per the unique file ID hexadecimal). Will probably wait a week or so to register it and send in the card in case something comes up with it then hopefully I can just exchange it.

Preliminary results are very nice. I am familiar with M photography and focusing, however I'm going to have a lot to learn about dng raw. I used to shoot nikon raw (nef) but my favorite photo editing software won't open leica dng. I played a little with c1, but I really like nikon capture editor a lot more.

I have photoshop CS, probably time to upgrade to cs3. Will cs3 open up dng files directly, or do I need a raw converter first? CS would open nikon raw files directly.

What's your favorite raw converter?

Thanks to all the members here for all the info I've been reading this past year. I am completely thrilled with my purchase.

John

p.s. Sin of sins I know but I'll probably shoot in jpeg fine for a while till I get the raw converter situation figured out.

 

[cmogi10]

CS3 comes with Adobe Bridge which is a powerful converter.
Another option with Adobe is to get Lightroom, which is my personal favorite for global adjustments and organizing my pictures.

And congrats on the M8, my love affair with the M8 isn't even close to over, I couldn't care less what the future of Leica digital M's, the M8 still takes better pictures then I can.

 

[sirius]

I'm happy for you! Congratulations! I hope it bring much joy... 😀

 

[BigSteveG]

QUESTION: Does Lightroom work w/ the Leica raw file?

 

[cmogi10]

Never had a problem with it. It's a DNG capture raw file which in a perfect world would be the norm.
Regardless, it works.

 

[etrigan63]

Plus Lightroom is also available on the Mac. Now all they need to do is improve the photo import routines. I wonder if you can do that with LUA?

 

[nitrox1]

Ok, just downloaded picasa. Seems pretty easy to use. I think this will keep me busy for a while.

So far the only quirks I've had is the mad scroll on the menue. Stopped after a second or two.

Man I'm going to love this thing. The silly shots around my house are already better than anything I've ever seen before.


John

 

[Tuolumne]

Stick with Picassa. It won't do everything but it does work with most RAW files and is the most underappreciated image editing software among the cognoscenti. I use it most of the time, then occassionally use CS3 when I want to do something that Picassa doesn't support. It's pretty seamless with <right-click> Open with --> CS3, then <save> filename.format_of_your_choce. (I usually save to Tiff format, which Picassa also can read.)

/T

 

[Olsen]

Nitrox1 (what a name!),

Congratulations with you new camera. Why bother buying another RAW converter than the one that comes with the camera? - With the exception that it could be smart to up-grade your CS one day (but is it really neccessary?). The M8 produces some amazing DNG files. To convert them to TIFF or jpg is streight forward in Capture One that comes included in the M8 deal. to me; there is no such thing as a 'favorite RAW converter'. They are just a bloddy neccessity. Buy some glass in stead.

What kind of glas do you have with it?

 

[nitrox1]

Nitrox1 (what a name!),

Congratulations with you new camera. Why bother buying another RAW converter than the one that comes with the camera? - With the exception that it could be smart to up-grade your CS one day (but is it really neccessary?). The M8 produces some amazing DNG files. To convert them to TIFF or jpg is streight forward in Capture One that comes included in the M8 deal. to me; there is no such thing as a 'favorite RAW converter'. They are just a bloddy neccessity. Buy some glass in stead.

What kind of glas do you have with it?

Thank you all. Olsen, capture just didn't seem super user friendly to me right away, but I will keep trying it. I was so use to nikon capture and it is super easy. Picassa is very intuitive for me so far.

As for glass, I currently have a 28 f2.8 asph, a 35 f2 asph, a 50 f2 cron, and a 90 2.8. All are 6 bit except the 50.

I switched over to leica film a while ago so luckily I've got a decent stable of lenses for now. Maybe something wider in the future, but I have enough to keep me busy for some time.

I really appreciate the feedback so far guys.

John

 

[Doug]

Congratulations on the new M8, John... and that should be quite a useful stable of lenses, possibly excepting the 90.

Adobe DNG seems a familiar format on the Mac, with even the basic "Preview" graphic viewer that comes with the OS able to open Leica DNGs. Happily, my favorite graphics editor, the shareware GraphicConverter can open and edit them.

 

[farnz]

M8 DNG convertor

M8 DNG convertor

John,

You might like to look at IrfanView for viewing and batch-converting DNGs. If your not familiar with it, ItfanView is exceptionally good freeware that will view and convert a very large range of format and has some rudimentary processing tools.

I normally use LightRoom (and then CS3 if dodging, burning cloning etc are needed) but I use IrfanView's Thumbnails app for searching though the reams of digital images that have 'magically' accrued 🙄 - it saves importing into LR and it's quicker to start up than CS3 or Bridge.

After all IrfanView is free, takes up a tiny chunk of space on your drive and in RAM is very fast and is very well supported. (Uh-oh I'm starting to sound like a salesman 😀 - I have no connection to Irfanview tho. )

http://www.irfanview.com/

Pete.

 

[farnz]

Congratulations on the new M8, John... and that should be quite a useful stable of lenses, possibly excepting the 90...

How so, Doug?

I've extensively used a 90 Elmarit and 90 Summicron AA on my M8 without problems and which produce excellent images. If focussing becomes a problem the a magnifier will help.

I was particularly surprised at how sharp the 90 Elmarit is; must be one of the best value Leica lenses of them all.

Pete.

 

[Doug]

Just personal preference, Pete... I almost never use my fat TE on my M2, so I expect I'd not find use for its narrower angle of view on an M8. 50mm seems a little on the long side for me... 🙂

 

[Avotius]

Plus Lightroom is also available on the Mac. Now all they need to do is improve the photo import routines. I wonder if you can do that with LUA?

Yeah, not kidding, who was asleep at adobe when they made that import photo thing? What crap!

 

[jarski]

I use Picasa to preview and select my RAW files, perhaps convert some quikies also. but final JPG proecss before conversion is done with CS3.
Picasa is good because its light, but when they finally could add exif support also for RAW files I dont get ???

 

[pizzahut88]

Hi, nice choice . . .

Hi, nice choice . . .

Welcome . . . and I know you will be very pleased with the M8.
Some simply rules:
(i) Always shoot DNG
(ii) Get a UV/IR filter for each lens
(iii) Learn to use Lightroom well, or Capture One.

Now use it just like any other RF.


I look forward to seeing some nice images from you . . .

Cheers, Manfred.
My blog: http://viking-manfred.blogspot.com/

 

[Ben Z]

Congratulations on your aquisition! I've had mine 6 months and enjoy it very much, although I still use my 20D a lot and still find that with the proper postprocessing, the results are very comparable. I gave up on Capture One LE a while back because I find that Photoshop's RAW converter does a much better job. It lets me turn sharpening completely off, and plus it has a wider exposure compensator (I always shoot ISO 160, then "push process" if necessary, which I find gives less noise than turning the M8's ISO up). I'm useing CS2, and feel no need or desire to upgrade to CS3.

 

[nitrox1]

Thanks again for all the great info.

I was able to get my photoshop CS working correctly by updating my camera raw plugin with version 2.4. Now I can just select a dng file, right click open with, photoshop cs. The adjustment tools for WB and exp are very easy to use.

Appreciate all the feedback so far. The M8 is super easy to set up compared to my old dslr. Probably the only digicam I could actually use without reading the manual. (I did anyway)


John