A reality check with the Leica M8

A positive comment:

A positive comment:

Ok. Several points to make:

1: I own the M8 and actually took out a massive bank loan to get it. I am a semi-professional photographer, mainly doing steet and doco work for little or no return. I have had a photographic book published and contributed to several group shows and books. I am also relatively fresh out of art school and live on the bones of my ass. The reality for me is that I love photography, but more to the point, I love photographs. As someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, it shouldn't matter to a true "believer" what medium a photo was taken on if it is a good, powerful or provocative photo. I love the look of film, especially Astia100, and this look has its place as part of a language I use to communicate ideas and thoughts to an audience. Digital capture, the aesthetics of it, are also part of the same language. I am half Dutch (I live in New Zealand, though,) but can not understand half of the kids in Amsterdam when I holiday there. They speak some kind of African, Dutch, English fusion that is beyond me. Some people moan that this is just not right, that the national language is being killed by lazy people or, worse still, *******ised, degraded and diluted. I would argue that this is not the case. I love my Dutch heritage, culture and language, but times change and things evolve. The way people employ words evolves the same as the human body - we no longer require an apendix. My long winded point is this: Good photographers, artists or documentarians will move with the times. They will employ new tools (because that's all they are, tools,) in new ways to achieve well thought out results. This does not mean they will forget the past, quite the opposite. You wouldn't use a philips head screwdriver to drive a nail into a wall. Put simply, some people will get on with the job and others will stick to DPreview and Putts.

2: My M8 made me smile. I like smiling.

Tim

PS. This response in NOT aimed at anyone.
 
Nachkebia said:
I can not be bothered to read but reality is also very subjective, for me reality is very different, I think digital photography is not ready to be a reality 😀
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You need to start your own religion.
 
Vinyl industry strategy

Vinyl industry strategy

I think Leica would be well inspired to have the same strategy that the high quality turntables producers adopted, keep on investing in the field where they are very good : film...
See how much you will pay for a very good turntable or records now, wow... I stick to buying vinyl when I want music and I use digital only to have music on travel .

I t does not mean that Leica can not go digital but only in join venture with their old friends Zeiss. They cannot have the finance to go digital by themselves. Why M8 has some problems ? It is not Leica speciality, that is it ...
I'd prefer them to be successful but imagine Canon would launch the new 5D with the problems you all mentionned for the M8, what would be the comments ??

Now I am waiting for my new M5, I am gonna use it with the old 50 mm 1.5 zeiss and make pictures....:angel: :angel: :angel:
 
LOOP said:
...........but imagine Canon would launch the new 5D with the problems you all mentionned for the M8, what would be the comments ................
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Stop that foolish comparison .. the 5D is 6th generation DSLR for Canon ......... Their earlier models had similar issues but never attracted the bashing Leica attracts from two different corners: filmshooters and dslr shooters ............ both are irrelevant criticasters flooding the Leica forums with their critique without having any intention to ever buy or try one ....... why i do not know ?
Digital RF is different technology and a new game in town.

Here are some facts about the earlier Canon cameras i used to own.............

Canon D30 had awfull white balance and ugly colors (especially horrible neon greens) all of his life... no filters to fix it ... Fred Miranda;s very first PS action he wrote was one to eleminate the blue color cast from D30 images

Canon 1D ......... suffered from severe banding that never got fixed + frontfocussing issues

Canon 1DS Mark I was critisized to death because of it's "unacceptable" high iso noise ... at that time of technology a trade-off to get the first full frame camera.......... people at the forums (also non-owners mostly) called it a camera "only suited for studiowork with controlled light at iso 100" and a "dustmagnet" ....... Pixelpeeping to the extreme was first introduced and practiced for months at the forums in relation to this camera .....

Needles to say: great real life pictures were in the mean time created all over the world with all 3 cameras!
 
Time for a stream of consciousness:

Give this camera a year to see where it goes

I have a feeling that there will be at least a few Magnum Photo Essays produced by the M8

The M8 gallery will grow with some extraordinary images (of course the majority will probably be Jorge's)

I think with the fixes coming up, the firmware updates that are inevitable, and potentially a price reduction (dependent on overall sales)... the M8 will take its place in the world of elite photography

All cameras have their issues, even the D50 which has had no firmware updates, (only a brief issue with viewfinder alignment), and has now been taken off the line in favor of the D40. Yet the D50 also has over 4,000,000 users on Flickr alone ...

The despite its short comings the D40 has already in 2 weeks managed to get quite a following, due to its small size and ease of use (not to mention excellent image quality). It already has 22 flickr users (the M8 has 8 users)... there is something to be said for a camera that absolutely begs to be used

imagine what kind of digital rangefinder Leica could produce with those kind of sales and that kind of popularity

I say it once and I'll say it again... it would do Leica a great bit of good to produce a digital equivalent of the CL and boost their sales in order to work out the kinks on their M models
 
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I've really come to love RF cameras in the last few months. I've also come to appreciate what can be done with film (and some of the characteristics of film ) even when scanned for subsequent digital processing, which is how I currently use it.

However, I also have some discontents with film as opposed to direct digital capture. I think there's a place for both. And I doubt that much will happen in new RF development if there is no digital option. I imagine, for example, that professionals working to deadlines of various sorts and needing to be competitive on quality and costs might find that lack of a digital option keeps them away from RF systems, even where they're the most appropriate tool for the task. I also expect that many amateurs who might otherwise be interested may stay away from cameras seen to be purely for those with an "old fashioned" special interest.

Even though I have no immediate interest in a digital RF I have a long-term interest in having the option available, and RF cameras being seen as a viable, if small, market. None of that will happen, I think, if the M8 fails (maybe taking Leica with it) - and most especially if this is seen to be due to an overwrought and unjustified reaction to early bugs (which will be fixed) and technical difficulty (which has to be accepted as involving trade-offs).

None of this means that the M8 is without problems, that Leica has not made errors or that justifiable criticism should be avoided . But it does mean that accurate information should be provided without hysterics - for example, something more like "IR cut filters are needed for colour accuracy, but are unsuitable for my photography due to reflections", rather than "the camera is s**t, Leica means liar and anyone who buys an M8 is an idiot".

We'd all be better off that way - those who will get an M8 and those who won't.

...Mike
 
The digital world is not kind to low volume, niche players. Witness Leaf, their 4th or is it 5th generation $30,000. digital back has a serious flaw which seems impossible to fix.

Its a bit like the auto industry which today is as much about electronics as mechanics. It takes huge economies of scale to amortize the cost of research, software and tooling. You can still make a small volume vehicle, but if it's not a one off, assembled from parts from your mass market vehicles, it will have to command a huge premium and is likely to be less not more reliable then a Toyota Corolla despite it's astronomical price tag. Unfortunately for Leica they couldn't just lift the electronics from an DSLR because the requirements of a DRF are very different if you want to be able to use existing lenses.

It is both a curse and a blessing. The bar is much higher for the capabilities of mass produced products. Using cars again as an analogy, computer controlled anti-lock brakes and stability control systems allow incompetent drivers to perform way above their skill level. Lexus even has a model that will parellel park the car for you. But the trade off is a much more homogeneous market with much less room for quirky products with a unique character. Leica has made the digital product it needed to make to survive but they did not do it from a clean sheet of paper, they did it from a film-centric perspective. Preserving the legacy of a lens line designed for film. I hope they are successful, it will be pretty boring in a Canon/Sony only world.
 
jaapv said:
Out of several dozens of M8 sold in our country, the number returned was zero. You are a minority, and an overly vocal one at that.
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In our country, USA, the situation is very different. The store manager where I shop in my city which is the third largest major metropolitan area after NYC and LA told me they received 30 of them in the first shipment, six were refused at the buyers' doors and 21 were returned, and 90% of their remaining 150+ orders were cancelled by phone or e-mail. That's just one dealer, and I'm inclined to believe this guy because a)he's a salaried manager not the owner or a commissioned sales clerk, and b)I've known him for 20 years and he's never pulled my leg. Things are not going well for the M8 or Leica, and the most alarming thing is that most of the cancellations came after Leica announced the fix would be the IR filters. He also told me the Leica rep said it's similar at other dealers in his territory and among the other reps as well there has been hollering from dealers to get Leica to put in a different sensor.
 
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So how come every US dealer including B+H and Adorama is back-ordered? If hundereds of cameras have been returned why aren't they having a fire sale right now instead of a waiting list at every store? M8's are commanding a premium over retail on eBay right now.

No doubt, many people who were on waiting lists may have bailed, but Leica seems to be selling everything it can produce right now.
 
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HAnkg said:
So how come every US dealer including B+H and Adorama is back-ordered?

/QUOTE]

They could be back-ordered because

o there is a shortage of M8s without the first-generation defect.


o Leica is busy trying to repair the defective cameras already shipped


o Leica is reluctant to ship second-generation M8s until they are certain they are defect free


o Leica does not have enough IR lens filters to ship new cameras
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o production has not stopped
o the repairs are being done in a seperate department, not by the production line.
o it may be they are reluctant, but I cannot see a company not shipping a product they claim is upgraded.
o the camera is shipped without IR filter; the filters are shipped individually to customer requirement, date predicted is the beginning of Februari.

I think Ben's report is either an isolated incident or a cultural difference in customer behaviour between (his part of) the USA and the rest of the world or a combination of the two.

There are virtually no M8's to be had for money or good words and waiting lists are longer than they were before.
And where are all those demo camera's that dealers got stuck with? I am sure they went to alleviate part of the backlog, at least if the original customer did not break the seal.The rest seems to have vanished into thin air.
 
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Ben Z,

I find those numbers very hard to believe. Especially since every returned M8 to Tony Rose has been sold as is without any questions. People are still lined up to but these cameras with and without the upgrade. Search the interner and you will see people asking who has them in stock. So I think your dealer is just giving you a load of stinky stuff.
 
HAnkg said:
No doubt, many people who were on waiting lists may have bailed, but Leica seems to be selling everything it can produce right now.
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Which evidently is very little, since they do not have the capacity to produce a second batch and repair the first batch at the same time.
 
Jorge Torralba said:
Ben Z,

I find those numbers very hard to believe. Especially since every returned M8 to Tony Rose has been sold as is without any questions. People are still lined up to but these cameras with and without the upgrade. Search the interner and you will see people asking who has them in stock. So I think your dealer is just giving you a load of stinky stuff.
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My dealer showed me the order log, with "returned" and "cancelled" beside them. We counted them together. So what are you saying, he knew I would just happen to walk in that day and had stayed up all night falsifying his boss's records just to....to what? Sell me another kind of camera? He knows I am not interested in another DSLR. I was drooling for an M8, why would he want to scare me out of buying one?
 
Ben Z said:
Which evidently is very little, since they do not have the capacity to produce a second batch and repair the first batch at the same time.
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Where did you read that? they set up a separate department for the recall, which is why it took a while. There was a post by somebody who visited the factory not long ago on one of the forums. There is no production staff or capacity involved in the refurbishing reported anywhere.
 
jaapv said:
There are virtually no M8's to be had for money or good words and waiting lists are longer than they were before.
And where are all those demo camera's that dealers got stuck with? I am sure they went to alleviate part of the backlog, at least if the original customer did not break the seal.The rest seems to have vanished into thin air.
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Jaap, you do know the entire first batch was only 2000 cameras, right? And of tha 500 of them were still in Solms by the time they decided to recall the first batch? So that's 1500 cameras for the entire world, of which some unknown portion were actually delivered to customers and the rest sent back to Leica for revamping. You speak as if there were thousands of these things out there to be accounted for. The demand might be down to almost nothing and still outstrip the supply at this point. I don't pretend to know how many M8s Leica needs to sell to keep the wolves away from the door. I suspect it's a little early in pronouncing it a success or a failure, that will become apparent by this time next year.
 
jaapv said:
Where did you read that? they set up a separate department for the recall...There is no production staff or capacity involved in the refurbishing
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Ah, that might explain why there are reports of "refurbished" M8s exhibiting a new set of glitches 🙁
 
Ben Z said:
My dealer showed me the order log, with "returned" and "cancelled" beside them. We counted them together. So what are you saying, he knew I would just happen to walk in that day and had stayed up all night falsifying his boss's records just to....to what? Sell me another kind of camera? He knows I am not interested in another DSLR. I was drooling for an M8, why would he want to scare me out of buying one?
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So where did those camera's go, Ben? Your dealer must have done something with them. Even if he sent them back to Solms, surely you are not suggesting that there is a little shed in the back yard of the factory, full of abandodned M8's? 😉.
I find it very hard to wrap my mind about so high a proportion of customers stampeding to cancel or return on basis of just an internet hype. Of course there are some that found the situation unacceptable and excercized their right to return, but even here and on other internet places, which are far more volatile than the real world, the numbers are relatively small.
 
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Take into account the following:

- current financial situation of Leica
- the mere size of the company
- cost involved (unforeseen) M8 service
- very open ended solution for the M8 problems, however big or small they just keep on coming up
- the vision of the new CEO

I think Leica will/is harming itself and will soon become part of a larger organization, not by personal choice I might add,

It will become something like Contax is/was.... They are traveling a very risky path at the moment and their independence is currently at stake..... they are clearly gambling with all their power they have left.....

.....
 
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