Thanks Leica.

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What an awesome day. Went to New York Photo Festival today, Leica was giving out M9s for people to test drive... up to 4 hours they could be taken out for a shoot. I came early expecting a line of people but there was barely anybody there. A table full of M9s fitted with 35mm/2.5 lenses (bring your own SD card), signed a little form and wooo hooo...

I really enjoyed it! I 've been shooting M2 for a few years and always wanted to try out what this digital M is really like. it really is an M camera. I had no problems adjusting to it. (although I did try winding the film the first few times) In my excitement I didn't think I got anything good out of today's shoot, at least I thought everything might be blurry, but after uploading the files... there are definitely some keepers and the quality is pretty astounding. (at least to me as amateur) The only problem is I really want one now. I guess that was the whole point of them doing this promotion :bang:
 

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"The only problem is that I want one"

Yep that's exactly the point. I've only seen an M8 once, but I do want the M9.
 
I want to go to the photo festival, especially yesterday to see Ed Kashi's lecture. But I've had to work. I'm free after noon but a friend is having a graduation party. I don't want to be the jerk that skips out.
 
To the op, thanks for posting these. I wish I could catch one of these, but I'm not even sure if they have roadshows like this near Amsterdam.
 
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It was just a test drive for a few hours. What do you expect? Now he knows how it handles and fundamentals how to work it.
 
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I got to shoot the M9 at PDN in NY last year. It is a beautiful camera, a real work of art in how it handles and how it feels. I was shooting with the latest 35mm summilux, the images looked incredible. I did not get to bring any home however.
 
I also had the chance to try out an M9 for an afternoon of shooting, along with my M8. The thing I got from my afternoon with the M9 was clear evidence on screen and in print that the image quality is so close to the M8 that I'm perfectly content to wait a year or two or more for a demo M9 at a reasonable price. Nothing like hands-on personal experience to put in perspective what's written on the internet.
 
Smart move from Leica. Bit like a crackdealer handing out free samples in the schoolyard 🙂
 
Ben Z said:
I also had the chance to try out an M9 for an afternoon of shooting, along with my M8. The thing I got from my afternoon with the M9 was clear evidence on screen and in print that the image quality is so close to the M8 that I'm perfectly content to wait a year or two or more for a demo M9 at a reasonable price. Nothing like hands-on personal experience to put in perspective what's written on the internet.
Click to expand...
How did you compare, Ben? If you shoot side by side and use the same shooting distance and lens (i.e. accept the the crop) you are quite right, the difference, if any, is minimal. However, if you step forward with the M9 and use the same FOV, or change lenses to compensate, the difference is rather visible - to the M9 advantage, in my experience.
 
Having used the M9 for a short while now, I am very happy to have purchased it and finally gotten back with my M Leica equipment. I just got a new computer replacing my older Mac with a MacBook Pro i7 and the nice high definition screen. I can now work the M9 raw files and I have to tell you, they are Incredible. My other Mac just wasn't giving me what I needed both in screen quality, color and the speed was horrible to work anything but jpegs. Now I can clear a large back log of shoots and work on some Leica stuff from raw. So far the Mac and the M9 are more than what I expected.
 
jaapv said:
How did you compare, Ben? If you shoot side by side and use the same shooting distance and lens (i.e. accept the the crop) you are quite right, the difference, if any, is minimal. However, if you step forward with the M9 and use the same FOV, or change lenses to compensate, the difference is rather visible - to the M9 advantage, in my experience.
Click to expand...

I did it both ways. Shooting for the same FOV with the same lens by changing position (didn't want to change lenses, that would introduce an added variable) gave me about 1 stop shallower DOF, which is what I would've expected. However I'm usually looking for more DOF, not less, so I wouldn't call it an advantage for me. And at the same time it also gave me another disadvantage, that being the vignetting and aberrations toward the outer areas of the image field that are cropped away with the M8. (My lenses are all non-ASPH).

But those are optical phenomena related to the crop vs fullframe, not what I meant by image quality, that being resolution, noise, moire, color, etc.

The M9's added # of pixels might be an advantage beyond the 20x30 the M8 currently delivers with great detail, but I never print larger than 13x19 anyway, and I couldn't see more detail in the M9 shots at that enlargement. Of course I'd expect the M9 file to allow more cropping, but I rarely do that.

Noise, I'd say the M9 is about 1.5 stops ahead of the M8, but if low-noise high-ISO shooting was crucial, I'd leave both the M8 and M9 at home and take my 5D-I.

Moire, I don't know, I've never seen it with the M8 and didn't see it with the M9 either.

Color, there's a difference, but I didn't find that I like the M9's color any better, it just requires some different tweaking than the M8.

One thing I purposely tested was the infrared sensitivity. To be sure, with filters off of both, the M9 is far less contaminated than the M8. However...and this was a surprise for me...with a UV/IR filter on, the M8 shows noticeably less IR color shifting than the M9! Putting a UV/IR on the M9 cleaned it up fine, but the M9 doesn't have internal correction for the cyan drift, so it has to be done in Cornerfix, an added step. It wouldn't keep me from buying an M9, but I did notice it.

All in all, as I said I'm impressed enough with the M9 to want one...just not enough to buy a new one for $7000.
 
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