Sailor Ted said:
rsl,
I agree with you it would be nice if the M8 did not have the IR issue however as it stands now it definitely "acts like an M" of this I can assure you based on personal experience. If you can wait that too I understand as I feel Leica will probably have a solution by Summer or next Christmas. For me the wait and the photo opportunities I have between now and then outweigh the down side of the cameras issues. Also the camera as it now stands delivers performance far and away beyond the R-D1 and print quality that is unlike anything else. Lastly I could not risk being in either China or the South Pacific with an out of alignment RF on my R-D1 which are a common, almost every month occurrence for the way I use my R-D1. Again for me life and time are too precious and a more important commodity then the money I would have saved by waiting. When the M9 or M8 MkII comes out I'll get that and the M8 will become my back up and I'll sell my R-D1s on the bay.
Ted
Ted, To me the M8 or R-D1 is for a particular kind of photography -- specifically, street photography. For almost anything else I'll use my D2X or D100 or both. I spent many hours today doing street work with the R-D1. The results were fine for street photography, but not quite what I'd expect for, say, the kind of work I did last summer with the D2X on deserted prairie farmhouses and dying prairie towns.
Yes, I wouldn't want to be in China or the South Pacific with a busted camera either, but the M8 can break too. I'd be a lot more likely to trust my well-sealed D2X than the unsealed M8 in those environments.
In my experience Leica print quality has always been exceptional, assuming you did a good job with film processing and printing -- either gelatin-silver or digital. But to say its print quality is unlike anything else may be a bit of an exaggeration. Depends on what else you're talking about. As far as I'm concerned, the huge advantage of a rangefinder camera is the fact that you can zone-focus on the street and shoot with absolutly no delay. In street photography the print quality needs to be as good as you can make it, but it's never going to be the equivalent of fine-grain film in an 11 x 14 view camera, or even what you can get with a 12.4 megapixel DSLR with a fine Nikon lens on a tripod.
I very much want to see Leica recover from their boo-boos. As I said, I had a serious love affair with my M4, and for thirty years I've regretted selling it. But nostalgia for a lost love is no reason to dump five grand into a camera that's almost, but not quite ready for prime time.
I hope you're right and I hope Leica gets it together by summer or next Christmas. If they do I'll sell my R-D1 too and switch. If not, I'll keep hanging on, waiting for my lost love.
