How many of you will buy the M8 or Digital M

How many of you will buy the M8 or Digital M

  • I have my unit pre-ordered already.

    Votes: 122 15.1%

  • Need more cash

    Votes: 141 17.5%

  • Will buy it for sure sooner or later

    Votes: 234 29.0%

  • Not interested or have no plans to get one.

    Votes: 311 38.5%
  • Total voters
    808
Dougg said:
Oddly enough, Rex, the processing labs I'm familiar with print directly from digital files to traditional "wet" color papers for all their prints.
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You are absolutely right. Paper technology(the final output) is completely independent of the method of capture of the image, whether film or digital.
Its color film that is in trouble. Not an easy product to make in your garage.

Rex
 
It will be interesting to see how many of you film warriors change your tune when the M8 is announced and we can see what it can do. Rejecting a state of the art camera because it fails to adhere to some completely arbitrary standard established 80 or more years ago is plainly ridiculous.
 
Mark

It's interesting to see the gradual retreat of the "full frame" or nothing crowd. I think the 1.33X format is actually near the theoriretical sweet spot for a quality image consistant with the compact size required of the rangefinder format.

Rex
 
rvaubel said:
Mark

It's interesting to see the gradual retreat of the "full frame" or nothing crowd. I think the 1.33X format is actually near the theoriretical sweet spot for a quality image consistant with the compact size required of the rangefinder format.

Rex
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I agree and the undoubted attraction of a digital rangefinder camera - which is clear as soon as you pick up an R-D1 - will be all the more evident with the M8.

If Leica had gone for a FF camera, it would likely be too large, too heavy, too power hungry and too expensive. Most important though is that the image quality would not be good enough.
 
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Personally, I would always take a full frame camera over a 1.33x crop camera. I'm not a wide angle shooter (28 is as wide as I would ever want to go, 35 is my usual 'wide' lens of choice), I just prefer to use lenses for the field of view that they were designed for (and what I am used to). The M8 1.33x crop is a compromise which I will learn to live with for those applications where the convenience of digital wins the day.
 
Mark Norton said:
Rejecting a state of the art camera because it fails to adhere to some completely arbitrary standard established 80 or more years ago is plainly ridiculous.
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It may be an arbitrary standard (involving an ugly elongated format - though that's another story) but it's the standard to which all the M lenses have been designed and built. These lenses have a field of view and a 'look' that we are used to.

We know that the M8 will have a 1.33x crop sensor and those of us who will be buying it will have to live with that compromise. I don't see what point there is in turning this (currently unavoidable) compromise solution into a positive attribute of the M8. Given the choice between full frame and cropped frame (assuming all else is equal) I don't think many would choose the cropped version.
 
ian_watts said:
I just prefer to use lenses for the field of view that they were designed for (and what I am used to).
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This is a valid point, but more for SLR use. The way of seeing the world througf a RF viewfinder is essentially different, as the framelines crop the unchanging view. The focal length that is actually on my camera, well, when shooting I tend to forget the actual number. As for design, a 18 mm radius lens for the 35 mm format will show a substantially better quality in the 12 mm circle, which is exactly the coverage of a 1.33 sensor.
 
I think you'll find image quality will also "win the day" more often that you are probably willing to admit. Discussions on the Leica forum suggests very few people go back to film once they have a DMR and I expect the M8 to be no different.
 
Jaap, your Pythagoras is a bit awry, the image circle radius for 35mm is 21.63mm across the diagonal, for 1.33 crop factor, 16.27mm but you are certainly correct the digital sensor misses out the lower quality area into the corners. Just look at the MTF figures for any lens, especially the wide-angles to see how the contrast starts falling off around 15 - 16mm.
 
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jaapv said:
This is a valid point, but more for SLR use. The way of seeing the world througf a RF viewfinder is essentially different, as the framelines crop the unchanging view. The focal length that is actually on my camera, well, when shooting I tend to forget the actual number. As for design, a 18 mm radius lens for the 35 mm format will show a substantially better quality in the 12 mm circle, which is exactly the coverage of a 1.33 sensor.
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The difference between RF and SLR viewing is a good point but it misses really what I mean by being used to the field of view of certain lenses. When I use a 50mm lens (which I use probably 75% of the time) I roughly know what I am trying to achieve with it long before I put the camera to my eye. My objections to the digital crop are that I need to think of the lens in 67mm focal length terms. Not an insurmountable difference but a different one nonetheless. There is also the issue that cropped fields of view mess around somewhat with our expectations regarding depth of field - an issue that is more pertinant to RF use where we don't have a WYSIWYG view.
 
Mark Norton said:
I think you'll find image quality will also "win the day" more often that you are probably willing to admit. Discussions on the Leica forum suggests very few people go back to film once they have a DMR and I expect the M8 to be no different.
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Image quality is not an entirely objective thing. I don't understand why I should be thought to be unwilling to admit to a view that I don't hold? I have used all manner of decent digital cameras for the last five years. There are a number of applications where digital is clearly the superior (and almost always usually the more convenient) option and on those occasions I happily shoot digital. However, for less commercial (and certainly personal) work I usually prefer the look I get from film. Why would I continue to shoot film (when I have the option of high quality 'full frame' digital) if I didn't like it?

(Why do those obsessed with digital capture find it so difficult to accept that some of us simply prefer the different look you get from film?)
 
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ian_watts said:
(Why do those obsessed with digital capture find it so difficult to accept that some of us simply prefer the different look you get from film?)
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I'm not quite sure in to which category you would try and force me to be. I shoot both film and digital in about 50-50 proportions...I'm sure there is nothing wrong with pointing out advantages or preferences of one system of recording light or the other. I see the difference as on the same level as discussing different types of film, less essential than colour versus black and white.
 
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jaapv said:
I'm not quite sure in to which category you would try and force me to be. I shoot both film and digital in about 50-50 proportions...I'm sure there is nothing wrong with pointing out advantages or preferences of one system of recording light or the other. I see the difference as on the same level as discussing different types of film, less essential than colour versus black and white.
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I agree with you Jaap (though I personally see a difference in the 'look' between film and digital capture that goes slightly beyond the differences between various film types). Why would I want to force you into a category? My earlier response was to Mark.
 
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I know what you mean by the "look" but I tend to feel that to be at leastly partly due to the Canon technology. I can photoshop a scan to look pretty digital and my Digilux2 produces pretty much film-like results. But then beauty is in the eye of the beholder 😉
 
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