Hitting a ball with a bat the size of a pencil!

Ray Kilby

Ray Kilby

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I am a great fan of Leica and a very loyal customer. I have over the years purchased an M6 several lenses 28/35/50/90 and a the leicavit rapid wind. I have also purchased a D-Lux and a 35m CM. Recently I purchased the long awaited M8. It does seem to me to be a great camera. But one thing that I am very unhappy with, and that is the Phase 1 software they have provided . It can only be loaded once on one computer. This is not good at all. I can not now load it on my laptop, for when I go on location and I cannot load it on to my studio computer. Therefore the M8 is staying well and truly at home while I take my canon 5D's It's software is multi intalling and is on all three of my computers. I cannot carry a camera that I cant use easily with efficiency. The M8 seems wonderful, but the ability to use it has been hampered by the choice of software that it is bundled with. Even if I want to re-register the "Capture One" on a new computer, it isn't, apparently possible.

It's like being given a ball to bat, but the bat is the size of a pencil. I am very disappointed.

The M8 cost me nearly £3000.00 and I am finding it not as useable as I'd like due to this mean spirited software bundle that Leica have provided. I am so disapointed, and this is a first for me with Leica, that I am almost tempted to either return the camera within the 28 days of purchase or sell it on Ebay as good as brand new and take a small loss and return to using the RD1 whose software is rather good and for all its limitations is not a bad camera. Any comments?
 
I wasn't aware of the one computer limitation. I have been using Capture 1 Pro for years and they permit installation on multiple computers even with different operating systems. You should check with Phase One.

I never even bothered loading the Canon software with my 1Ds, software provided with most cameras is for the most part a joke and I always figure on a 3rd party raw package for whatever camera I'm using.
 
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Gosh I didn't even bother to install that software, I bought Adobe LightRoom tp process my M8 files.

There is nothing so special about the software bundle, in fact I've hardly ever found any software bundled with a camera to be worth much if anything.

Just pony up for a full fledged software DAM and you'll be fine.
 
Same software sometimes has different user limitations and copy restrictions depending on which country it is being sold into.

I agree that the software bundled with most digital cameras is garbage - often a "lite" version of a real package, or worse, someone else's idea of how to download, organize and manipulate images. Often serious bloatware as well. Even if I were to buy a new M8 I would probably use the CD as a coaster or skeet target.

Getting by fine with an old version of PS (6) with RAW plug-ins, NeatImage, and B/W conversion freeware from photo-plugins.com. Bought an EXIF editor from Opanda, and Silverfast Ai for my scanner.

I admit I am tempted by Lightroom - but why is it $200 everywhere but $300 on the Adobe website?

- John
 
Ray Kilby said:
Even if I want to re-register the "Capture One" on a new computer, it isn't, apparently possible.
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It is very possible. I don't know what you're doing, or don't know what you don't know that would allow us to know what you're doing. But it is very very very very very (did I say very?) possible to install and use the same registration on another computer. Very possible. I don't think that this is Leica's or Capture One's fault, but the user's.

Ray Kilby said:
The M8 cost me nearly £3000.00 and I am finding it not as useable as I'd like due to this mean spirited software bundle that Leica have provided.
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Mean spirited software bundle! Mean spirited! Wait 'till you get to the Naughtily Conceived B&W jpg mode. You just won't be able to get any color out of it. It just won't let you retreive the colors; naughty indeed.
 
To all you guys that ignored the bundled software:

Why not send it to Ray so that he can load it on his laptop???

mad_boy
 
Capture One is not just another bundled software...
It's highly aclaimed by professionals as one of the best raw-converters on the market today. So Leica did better than any other marque to bundle this software with the M8.
 
Ok, maybe it's because I am in the US, but I had no problem installing Capture One LE (the one that was bundled with the M8) on both my laptop and desktop. I also registered it on both computers using the same serial number.

and for the record, I agree with Eon...Capture One is by far the best raw converter I have used...that includes Adobe Camera Raw, Flex Color, and the Canon software.
 
I installed the bundled C1 LE on both my XP and Vista partitions on the same machine and didn't have any issues with registration.

I noticed that multi-computer registration was one of the features of C1 Pro, though.

John
 
Capture One LE is by far the best raw converter for M8 DNG files but at the expense of usability compared to Lightroom/ACR and others. It's by no means a nasty cheap bundled version of the software! I'm not a fan of the C1 workflow but it defintely does the best conversion job once you've got the hang ogf using it.

As regards the install issues, as everyone has said, there's no problem installing and activating C1 LE on TWO computers.
 
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