Almost Ready for an M10-P purchase...everyone satisfied with theirs?

[boojum]

I guess that is a blind spot to me. I never had an M8, did have an M9, but I have never seen any special magic to their color rendering. Always thought the JPEGs out of either were poor, actually: not very accurate or reflective of what my eyes saw. I switched my M9 to raw capture after testing the JPEG engine and never looked back.

The SL, CL, and M-P 240 all produce better color to my eye, in JPEG capture mode. Regardless, I usually switch all my cameras to raw only and render after the fact anyway.

G

I have a Sony A7M III that is very accurate. The M8.2 fudges a bit as does the M9. That is the magic. The CCD image will be different, JPEG or RAW, from CMOS.

These were not taken at exactly the same time but are still illustrative. The A7 was with the Sony 24 - 240 zoom at 24mm IIRC. The M8 was at the Canon's only length, 28mm. It is personal taste but I do prefer the M8. As always, YMMV.

Sony first, Leica second.

​

 

[35photo]

I have a Sony A7M III that is very accurate. The M8.2 fudges a bit as does the M9. That is the magic. The CCD image will be different, JPEG or RAW, from CMOS.

These were not taken at exactly the same time but are still illustrative. The A7 was with the Sony 24 - 240 zoom at 24mm IIRC. The M8 was at the Canon's only length, 28mm. It is personal taste but I do prefer the M8. As always, YMMV.

Sony first, Leica second.

​

Don’t see any M8.2 magic here at all… not seeing it sorry…

 

[Emile de Leon]

I'd wait until the m11 comes out probably for preorder in Jan 2022.
There seems to be some improvements speculated..
Have to wait and see..
Anyway..some people will be dumping their m10's to get the m11....so thats gonna be cheaper too..
No reason to pay high price for m10 at the end of its cycle..

 

[boojum]

Don’t see any M9 magic here at all… I’ve been shot an M9 for 7+ yrs… not seeing it sorry…

I should hope not. It is an M8.2. Magic? Those are your words, not mine.

Kidding aside, magic is deception. I think I qualified the post with Your Mileage May Vary and "It is personal taste but I do prefer the M8 " which makes this conversation quite pointless. It works for me. I see a difference, prefer the M8.2, and that was my point that there is a preferable difference. We cannot all love the same woman. Have I made myself clear?

 

[Godfrey]

Well, sure.

But for a photograph to have some "magic" there must be something I can see in the images. These are machines, they have to affect my eye. I don't need to look at your examples ... I have thousands of my own made with M9, M-P240, M-D262, SL, CL, and a dozen other cameras. I see nothing special between the M9 (and by extension, the M8) and the other Leica cameras. What I see in JPEGs out of the M9 is a peculiar color palate that doesn't appeal to my eye very much. What I see in raw image files rendered to my liking is pretty much the same amongst all of these cameras ... I don't mean at whatever raw converter's defaults, I mean rendered properly.

We'll differ on this, I'm afraid. I've had the same conversation in a few dozen other threads and it's always the same. Someone gushes over the special look some camera gives, I get one of the cameras and go make photographs, and I don't see anything different in my results. I might like the camera more, or less, for other reasons.

My Hasselblad 907x and my Light L16 are the only two cameras out of all the digital cameras I've owned (gods, I can't even count at this point—the past 20 years has been an insane period of development refreshes, finally slowing down to a sane pace) that actually do produce something quite different ... The Hassy due to it's higher end, larger sensor, I'm sure; the Light, no doubt, due to the very complex algorithm that takes the output of 10 small cameras fired simultaneously and integrates them into a single image file.

Special takes many forms...

Redwood Trees - Santa Clara 2021​

😀

G

 

[boojum]

You assume, and this is your fallacy, that I am taking pictures for you. I am not.

 

[boojum]

I should hope not. It is an M8.2. Magic? Those are your words, not mine.

Kidding aside, magic is deception. I think I qualified the post with Your Mileage May Vary and "It is personal taste but I do prefer the M8 " which makes this conversation quite pointless. It works for me. I see a difference, prefer the M8.2, and that was my point that there is a preferable difference. We cannot all love the same woman. Have I made myself clear?

I misspoke. "Magic" was my word. I used it in an earlier post. I apologize for that. Sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

 

[Godfrey]

You assume, and this is your fallacy, that I am taking pictures for you. I am not.

That's a ridiculous notion. I could care less what goal you have in making your photographs, and I certainly don't imagine you're making them with my benefit in mind.

But if you're going to presume to feel you have to warn everyone to 'consider what is wrong with your old cameras before buying a new camera', well, perhaps that implies that you want us to listen to your caring admonition before making a purchase decision. And if you're going to present examples of what you feel is some kind of special attribute of the camera you like, that implies you want us to look at them and see what that special attribute is that you're so enamored of.

In essence, you either care about how the audience react to your posts, or you are posting for no reason that is obvious other than to waste time.

G

 

[35photo]

I should hope not. It is an M8.2. Magic? Those are your words, not mine.

Kidding aside, magic is deception. I think I qualified the post with Your Mileage May Vary and "It is personal taste but I do prefer the M8 " which makes this conversation quite pointless. It works for me. I see a difference, prefer the M8.2, and that was my point that there is a preferable difference. We cannot all love the same woman. Have I made myself clear?

By bad M8.2 magic not there...lol Sorry... Got anything better?

 

[ptpdprinter]

Special takes many forms...

What do you see that is special in the photograph of the redwood trees? Is it the image itself or certain aspects of the image attributable to the camera?

 

[Godfrey]

What do you see that is special in the photograph of the redwood trees?

It is subtle, the camera captured the various colors and details of the light, the bark, the foliage in an exquisite way that matched closely to my eye's perception and the reason I brought the camera to bear on the scene. It was a casual shot on a walk, not even a tripod mounted photo as I would normally do for such subject matter, and the capture was both full of what I was looking for and easy to render to my intent.

That's fairly special in my book, but special in the context of this discussion is a judgement call, an evaluation/opinion, not an objectively measurable thing that can be quantified in numbers, charts, and graphs. I would be curious to hear how you define "special".

G

 

[ptpdprinter]

I would be curious to hear how you define "special".

It was the word you used, so I was interested in what you meant by it in relation to the photograph. For me, the word "special" can mean many things, and would therefore be context specific.

 

[Godfrey]

It was the word you used, so I was interested in what you meant by it in relation to the photograph. For me, the word "special" can mean many things, and would therefore be context specific.

Well, in the context of the conversation from which you are quoting, "special" I take to mean something about the quality of a particular camera's rendering that is pleasing to the photographer and different from other cameras. I used the word and showed a photo to emphasize that notion ... which the example photograph shows nicely, and the characteristics of the camera supported beautifully.

G

 

[Dogman]

Well, sure.

But for a photograph to have some "magic" there must be something I can see in the images. These are machines, they have to affect my eye. I don't need to look at your examples ... I have thousands of my own made with M9, M-P240, M-D262, SL, CL, and a dozen other cameras. I see nothing special between the M9 (and by extension, the M8) and the other Leica cameras. What I see in JPEGs out of the M9 is a peculiar color palate that doesn't appeal to my eye very much. What I see in raw image files rendered to my liking is pretty much the same amongst all of these cameras ... I don't mean at whatever raw converter's defaults, I mean rendered properly.

We'll differ on this, I'm afraid. I've had the same conversation in a few dozen other threads and it's always the same. Someone gushes over the special look some camera gives, I get one of the cameras and go make photographs, and I don't see anything different in my results. I might like the camera more, or less, for other reasons.

My Hasselblad 907x and my Light L16 are the only two cameras out of all the digital cameras I've owned (gods, I can't even count at this point—the past 20 years has been an insane period of development refreshes, finally slowing down to a sane pace) that actually do produce something quite different ... The Hassy due to it's higher end, larger sensor, I'm sure; the Light, no doubt, due to the very complex algorithm that takes the output of 10 small cameras fired simultaneously and integrates them into a single image file.

Special takes many forms...

Redwood Trees - Santa Clara 2021​

😀

G

I can see a depth here that others may not see. Like a diorama. Very sweet effect.

Lens? Camera? Light? Dunno. Just like it.

 

[willie_901]

I would have to see a side-by-side picture comparison of the M10-R against the M8.2, M9 and M240 before I would endorse "personal preference is futile."

Rendered images are tainted by subjectivity. Entirely different results can be obtained by using different demosaicking mathematical models and rendering parameters. For these reasons discussing personal preferences are futile.

The graphs and all that are nice but "show me the beef."

These data are the beef because they are objective, empirical results. . Electronics engineers use a widely accepted mathematical model to estimate analog dynamic range. In those plots the results are from un-rendered raw file data. The author describes how here. What's "nice" are rendered images optimized to satisfy the different individuals perception of image quality.

... If the M8.2 would die I might be hard pressed to choose between another M8.2 and the M10-R. If the M10-R does not have that M8.2 CCD magic it would be a hard decision.

There is no CCD magic. There is an authentic, M9/M9, rendered-image aesthetic some perceive to be unique and desirable. It's odd that no one sees magic in other old cameras with CCD sensors such as the Nikon D70, D100 and D200 bodies which one can can buy for $40 to $100 (10-20 times less than M8 bodies).

 

[ptpdprinter]

Well, in the context of the conversation from which you are quoting, "special" I take to mean something about the quality of a particular camera's rendering that is pleasing to the photographer and different from other cameras. I used the word and showed a photo to emphasize that notion ... which the example photograph shows nicely, and the characteristics of the camera supported beautifully.

The reason I asked was that it was not immediately apparent to me from looking at the image what was special about "the quality of a particular camera's rendering that is pleasing to the photographer and different from other cameras."

You responded:

It is subtle, the camera captured the various colors and details of the light, the bark, the foliage in an exquisite way that matched closely to my eye's perception and the reason I brought the camera to bear on the scene.

Surely a camera's rendering is a matter of personal preference. I think the colors look off, particularly the greens of the grass and redwood needles. But since I wasn't there, I'll have to take your word that the colors match your eyes' perception. It is entirely possible that if I had been there with you that day and taken an identical photo with my camera, upon comparison with your image, I would prefer the rendering of your image too. Have you edited the image or is this SOOC?

 

[boojum]

I submit: https://flickr.com/photos/sandynoyes/albums/72157716739415061

 

[Godfrey]

The reason I asked was that it was not immediately apparent to me from looking at the image what was special about "the quality of a particular camera's rendering that is pleasing to the photographer and different from other cameras."

You responded:

It is subtle, the camera captured the various colors and details of the light, the bark, the foliage in an exquisite way that matched closely to my eye's perception and the reason I brought the camera to bear on the scene.

Surely a camera's rendering is a matter of personal preference. I think the colors look off, particularly the greens of the grass and redwood needles. But since I wasn't there, I'll have to take your word that the colors match you eyes' perception. It is entirely possible that if I had been there with you that day and taken an identical photo with my camera, upon comparison with your image, I would prefer the rendering of your image too. Have you edited the image or is this SOOC?

Of course color and rendering qualities are all subjective, unless you're doing forensic work like image capture for scientific analysis, or crime scene investigation, or trying to provide exact and reproducible replicas of other folks' originals. What is pleasing to one person is easily "off" to another person, and particularly for color images displayed on who knows what different display devices, configured howsoever, etc etc, and at different sizings. I have no idea how your system is configured, whether it honors the color profiles embedded in the photographs I post, etc, so no statement of absolutes is credible.

Since all my cameras are set to raw capture, all the time, all my photos posted anywhere have some post-camera rendering applied. That said, with this camera, the most typical instance is that if I turn on JPEG+raw capture, don't look at the in-camera's JPEG images, render the raw files, and then compare, the in-camera JPEGs look very very much like my rendered raw captures. That's why I think it's pretty special ... very few to none of my other cameras come close to that.

There is also the fact that a certain amount of lens to lens variation exists as well as camera to camera variation. There really is no absolute in this game unless you have reference standards and control the camera output minutely to match them. The entire system must be calibrated and controlled to say 'this matches'.

But that does not get in the way of saying "I like this camera's rendering more than that one's." Whether you're talking raw or JPEG doesn't matter. It isn't absolute, it's your personal perception and opinion. And that's all it is: that is what seems to be so hard for many to accept.

G

 

[Godfrey]

Another example of special-ness... With the same camera as the redwood trees photo I posted up-thread, about four minutes later, I caught this scene looking directly into the cloudy, overcast sunset after a short rainfall on my walk. The colors and feel are totally different, yet the camera caught the scene just about exactly the way my eye saw it.

Two Trees Against a Cloudy Sunset - Santa Clara 2021​

That kind of 'fidelity to what my eye is seeing' is what I mean when I say a camera is special.

G

 

[boojum]

I am not sure what posting different pictures of different things proves. Other than apples and oranges are different. Until you post a series of the same scene taken at the same time with different cameras you are just showing us what you like. That is interesting but not much help in comparisons. It does not show how one camera is different from another. I kind of assumed you would know this but apparently I am mistaken. You know what we say in data processing, "One test is worth a thousand opinions."

It is nice to see Santa Clara again, CA I assume. Lived there before I moved to Palo Alto. The Peninsula is a lovely area, way better weather than where I now am. ;o)