Fantastic Expectations Unrealized

[jaapv]

You mean those who have no plan to ever buy one in the first place?

No-he means those that condemn or even troll those that plan or want to buy one.
Those that have reasons not to buy one happily join in the discussion with mutual respect.

 

[Toby]

The problem is for Leica that they are a small company and not in a brilliant financial situation, so like it or not the M8 has been most likely been made on a comparatively small budget compared to a nikon, sony or canon DSLR. I always had a horrible feeling that early adopters may end up being unpaid beta testers. The real issue is how quickly Leica can fix any problems as they arise.

 

[AShearer]

You mean those who have no plan to ever buy one in the first place?

I'm sure they fall in all categories, buyers, non-buyers, pretenders, trolls. I'm certainly not being crticial of anyone who doesn't buy an M8, but comments on the product. As long as that comment is based in fact and grounded in reality.

 

[jaapv]

The problem is for Leica that they are a small company and not in a brilliant financial situation, so like it or not the M8 has been most likely been made on a comparatively small budget compared to a nikon, sony or canon DSLR. I always had a horrible feeling that early adopters may end up being unpaid beta testers. The real issue is how quickly Leica can fix any problems as they arise.

If you go to the German Leica Forum you'll find, apart from the usual snappishness, feedback from posters who simply called the factory and asked. The solution is sure and close. Just imagine calling Canon, asking and getting a polite AND meaningful answer. The advantages of a small company.

 

[mani]

Dammit - i'm getting really angry now!

I've LONG been in the queue to buy the M8, and i must say that i'm reading the many threads on the banding/streaking problem with a great deal of anxiety.
I STRONGLY object to the blind Leica fanatics making this issue into a question of 'loyalty' to the company.

Let's stick to the facts, shall we? And hope that there's a genuine solution to the problem.

 

[Mark Norton]

I'm more concerned about the green ghosts than I am about the banding. IMHO, they are separate problems and it's not clear to me they are both fixable in firmware.

 

[ywenz]

The solution is sure and close. Just imagine calling Canon, asking and getting a polite AND meaningful answer. The advantages of a small company.

It'd be nice if the small company were not so small with a larger operating budget and these product flaws had never occured in the first place. Let's wait and see how this will be resolved. I'd love to own a used (and fixed) M8 some day.

 

[Toby]

If you go to the German Leica Forum you'll find, apart from the usual snappishness, feedback from posters who simply called the factory and asked. The solution is sure and close. Just imagine calling Canon, asking and getting a polite AND meaningful answer. The advantages of a small company.

I believe that Canon is run by a giant brain orbiting in space. But in all seriousness, I've spent far more money on canon equipment than other cameras but I've never really felt any great emotional attachment to them or their products. I could sell canon gear without missing a beat not so my RF gear. That is Leicas one asset - an almost illogical brand loyalty amongst its acolytes. However, they still need to win over younger photographers and I can't really see the M8 doing that. The digilux 3 may yet prove to be the more important product because it provides an entry into the world of leica although it too is about a third too expensive to give Leica market penetration.

 

[Sparrow]

Being a bit of a late adopter, technophobe might sum it up, it will be some time before I take to digital capture so I don’t really have an axe to grind at the moment, having said that it would be nice to have some idea what the present state of the art is.

As we stand with the Leica cheer-leaders on the one side and cynics on the other competing for attention it’s difficult to get an idea of the scale of the problem.

Now I don’t recall any of the reviews mentioning major ghosting or banding and they were presumably using identical firmware and sensors so is it just an extreme phenomenon that people have simply become alert to or is it in a big proportion of pictures? Is every camera effected, anybody not experiencing the problems?

 

[willie_901]

Mark,

The green ghosts are fascinating. They are always symmetrical and they have a phase (or frequency) shift as well. They have been observed with other digital sensors where the circuity is divided into two halves to double the data stream speed.

They could be due to yet another kind of aliasing.

It is more likely that the green ghosts arise from inadequate electronic isolation between the circuits for each side of the sensor. If the light intensity generates a signal voltage that exceeds the signal-suppression specification for isolation between the two circuits, then some information will leak from sensor half with the signal to the sensor half without the signal.

Some suppose the green ghosts are due to optical reflections. This might be true, but in this case I don't understand how the ghosts are green.

willie

 

[georgl]

"Now I don’t recall any of the reviews mentioning major ghosting or banding and they were presumably using identical firmware and sensors so is it just an extreme phenomenon that people have simply become alert to or is it in a big proportion of pictures?"

Leica-customers are perfectionists, they don't accept a quality standard that is accepted by customers of a D200, 5D or MarkII. All of them had flaws that were solved by firmware-updates - none of them was perfect from the beginning.
But that's exactly what Leica-customers expect.
I think Leica knew about the banding problem and stays in close contact to Kodak ISS, who makes the sensor and therefore the banding-problem. Maybe Kodak promised to solve that problem directly before introduction - but they didn't.

So Leica had to make a decision:
1. DMR-way, Waiting until even the firmware is near-perfect (I've handled perfectly working DMRs in September 2004, 8 months before they've reached the customer!)
2. Selling the M8 now and come up later with a firmware-update (like Canon or Nikon always did) while 99% of the photographers can enjoy the M8 the way it is now.

You can buy the M8 right now and you get a nice camera with one flaw that appears in extreme situations above 640ASA. Some people get into these situations quite often, they will get a quick and good solution from Leica.

 

[mani]

You can buy the M8 right now and you get a nice camera with one flaw that appears in extreme situations above 640ASA.

Hope the person that posted this image doesn't mind me linking to it here (wouldn't surprise me if it gets taken down in the near future), but this sort of result would be unacceptable in a $100 P&S - under any circumstances:

http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/69805095

Something is badly wrong with this sensor (and incidentally i say this with my order still in place).

 

[rvaubel]

Hope the person that posted this image doesn't mind me linking to it here (wouldn't surprise me if it gets taken down in the near future), but this sort of result would be unacceptable in a $100 P&S - under any circumstances:

http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/image/69805095

Something is badly wrong with this sensor (and incidentally i say this with my order still in place).

Mani

Something IS wrong. Thats the first picture anything like that. Most of her other shots looked pretty good, but the ISO 2500 looked pretty groody. Most of the other 2500 ISO that I have seen looked a lot better. Could be a bad sample?

Rex

 

[ywenz]

I think Tina might up turned up the levels in order to illustrate the banding better. Regardless, I've said it before and I'll say it again, skin tones in the M8 pics all have way much magenta tendencies, as you can see in this one.

 

[JohnL]

Just to summarize (IMHO):
The banding is a serious issue. I am sure that Leica is working on it like crazy and fairly confident they'll fix it one way or another fairly soon. I'd be surprised if it doesn't reduce the initial rate of sales quite a bit, however. I'd really like one of these cameras, but I'm not going to spring for $5K until I'm sure it's resolved.
The excessive saturation (for some) is a non-issue. It can be fixed in PP workflow without sweat.
The skin tones issue should also be pretty easy to fix in PP without much effort.
The 8-bit DNG controversy is something I'd like to hear an authoritative response to, but judging from some of the images I've already seen, it's not a big worry. I'd like to know to what extent (if any) it limits PP flexibility, such as when fixing curves in shots with a high contrast range.

 

[georgl]

@mani
This picture is nothing but a bad joke. I don't shoot people very often, but some I did for testing and skin tones were fine, the only thing that needed correction was WB.

This little shot was made at 800ASA with manual WB-correction (mixture of candle-light and sunlight from the window) and the skin in reality looked EXACTLY like that!

 

[AShearer]

Well my M8 arrives tomorrow according to UPS. So, I will see for myelf. It does certainly appear that there are some issues with image anomolies. I hope that either, it's limited to a few cameras or Leica comes out quickly with a fix. I will not shoot around it, if it's exhibited in my camera and no fix is forthcoming, It will go back. OTOH, I am not unimpressed by many of the shots I've seen so far, as some have said they were. I think they look as expected, (banding shots excepted of course). There have not been many really good photographs, but certainly some.

I am not blindly loyal to any company. I expect Leica to handle this correctly, as did other companies when it happened to them. I have no reason to think they won't so I am remaining calm about it for now.

Perhaps, I'll kill this thread, which has had more views than any other up currently. But, I will reiterate my belief that many people have held out expectations for this camera that were just not justifiable. Enough said.

 

[Plasmat]

This is following the same pattern as the Nikon D200 "banding" issue.

First of all, it doesn't look like "banding". My feeling is that it has something to do with light reflections on rear lens surfaces and the anti-alias filter (or lack of it).

In any case, some early D200 adopters went into panic mode and thousands upon thousands of obsessive posts were made over it, with some people crazily shooting light bulbs and pinpoint light sources to try to duplicate it.

The problem was fixed, and if it wasn't for the "internet effect" that multiplied the tiny problem into something of epic proportions, I seriously doubt that 99% of users would ever have noticed the "problem".

This is something that will in all liklihood be quickly fixed by Leica in the coming months. It's not a deal killer. You shouldn't kill the golden goose by obsessing over it and blowing up something that shows up in a small number of shots into an accusation of a gigantic design flaw.

I think everyone should be thrilled that Leica has developed such a camera. It will infuse money into the company and provide improved models in the future.

I love my Epson R-D1 with all it's faults. I love placing a 1950's lens on a modern digital camera and taking astonishingly good pictures.

I hope Zeiss and other companies jump on the bandwagon and make more M-mount digitals.

 

[x-ray]

If I had found this banding thing with my $800 used Canon 20D (which I didn't, it's got no bugs) I would have instantly sent it back for a refund. I can't imagine myself accepting a $5000 Leica and waiting in faith for them to maybe come up with a fix. I would whisk it back to the dealer for a refund ASAP, and then when and if the bugs are fixed, take the plunge again. Warranties are good for random malfunctions.

Every DSLR that I've owned from Nikon and Canon have had BUGS that required fixes if they were fixed at all. My first D1 Nikon had a common error in the first run of cameras. It would revert back frol English to Japanese menues. Also Color was red in skin tones, very red and was never fixed. The camera had to go back to Nikon for firmware updates. My D1X had a firmware bug and the fix had a bug and had to be sent back the same week it was returned from the first fix. Now I use Canon and the firmware can be loaded in the field. I think my 1Ds, 1DsII and 20D have all had multiple firmware fixes for various problems. If I remember correctly my 1D never had a fix during the time I owned one.

Fixes have ranged from banding to color fixes and compatibility with various cards. In the early days of the 1DsII images would be lost on the card at random due to a firmware issue between cards and camera.

Don't get out of sorts about a $5000 camera having bugs, even my $25,000 Fuji scanner has had firmware fixes. It's just a fact of life that you better get used to.

Oh yes, don't forget that lovely Kodak FF DSLR the 14N. It went through many many firmware updates and then Kodak deceided it could not be fixed so they introduced another camera that was suposed to be fixed but had another set of problems in itself. Finally Kodak junked the entire camera along with their MF back. They left all their customers hanging with a real piece of junk with no fix. So don't feel bad about the MINOR issues with the M8.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

That's what much of this M8 debate seems to me.

Dialogues with one really loud voice usually offer only one point of view. But that's the illusion. Or is it?