Leica M8 - M9 direct ISO comparisons

Nice write up and comparison. The M8 is still a very viable camera, and I wish I'd been able to keep mine.

When I lived in Taiwan, all my friends were musicians, and I used Ms for stage shooting, a lot.

The M8 seems to render a bit more sharply than the M9, but I feel the M9 has better colors.
 
I find the M8 to remain a fine camera, even in comparison to the later digital-M models. I occasionally contemplate replacing it but I really can't justify the cost in terms of improvements. Sure, they'd be there but in my view the increments are really quite modest.

I like low-ISO shooting better than high ISO, but if I want higher than the M8 provides then I can use a different camera.

The M8 with the Voigtlander 35mm f1.2 is a cracking combination, particularly in monochrome - so much so that, for my purposes, a Monochrom is not required.
 
Very nice read!

I used to concerned with high ISO capabilities but then it hit me the only times I shoot in low light is under control conditions in which case I have a tripod with me. So while I original plan was to replace my M8 with a full frame digital M ASAP Thinking I'm just going to stick with it a while and take a few trips and work on my lens kit :)
 
No real surprises here for those of us who have both. Large aperture glass rules. ;)

Thanks for taking the time to do this, though. It is useful information and you presented it well.
 
hepcat said:
No real surprises here for those of us who have both. Large aperture glass rules. ;)

Thanks for taking the time to do this, though. It is useful information and you presented it well.
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Thanks. Yeah, it's no surprise if you have both. But I spent days of research trying to find good comparisons only to find nothing. The problems with forums today is that you end up with so many subjective opinions that in the end no real good comes of it.

I figured since I finally had both I'd do a head to head to make it easier for people to decide for themselves.
 
Very nice! It's also noteworthy how much trouble Lightroom has with getting rid of the chroma noise in the M8 versus the M9. I remember I always had to dial in a lot of NR when editing my M8 files.

With the Sony a7 on the market now, however, for me the answer is pretty clear. I'm not going back to a quirky Leica when I can have an up-to-date sensor and focus peaking to use with all kinds of legacy lenses. Just my two cents, though. And yeah, I'd rather have an M 240 with a proper rf, but that's way out of my financial range ...
 
Interesting that his ISO 640 threshold matches the sensors' signal-to-noise ratio vs. ISO measurements discussed on RFF a while back.
 
efix said:
Very nice! It's also noteworthy how much trouble Lightroom has with getting rid of the chroma noise in the M8 versus the M9. I remember I always had to dial in a lot of NR when editing my M8 files.
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You are right, on high ISO like 1250 it's hard to handle the noise. On the other hand I use 640 on my M8 very often and almost never increase the LR5 standard noise settings there.
 
tom.w.bn said:
You are right, on high ISO like 1250 it's hard to handle the noise. On the other hand I use 640 on my M8 very often and almost never increase the LR5 standard noise settings there.
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I find that sometimes I get decent results on ISO 1250, sometimes not. In a situation like my test setup where theres a full dynamic range, e.g complete range of tone in the histogram the noise shows up more. But I find that I can easily get usable ISO 1250s out of my M8 in low key situations.

8636915704
 
rivercityrocker said:
I find that sometimes I get decent results on ISO 1250, sometimes not. In a situation like my test setup where theres a full dynamic range, e.g complete range of tone in the histogram the noise shows up more. But I find that I can easily get usable ISO 1250s out of my M8 in low key situations.
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I can't see your image.
 
Click on the Share icon (box with arrow), choose Share with HTML/BB code, pick BB code, copy the link provided and paste into your post.
 
j j said:
Click on the Share icon (box with arrow), choose Share with HTML/BB code, pick BB code, copy the link provided and paste into your post.
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I don't see a box with arrow. I click on the "Insert image" tab and type copy in the URL, but nada. Just a broken link icon.
 
The share icon is on Flickr.
Basically all that is needed and that works is to cut and paste the HTML/BB code from the share icon box on Flickr into the body of the message here at RFF.
 
The differing opinions on the M8's high ISO capability comes up all the time.

In my experience, using ISO1250 can be very usable and show very little noise only when there is plenty of light (i.e. when you need a higher shutter speed even in good conditions) - however in low light situations you're always going to get a noisy image.

If I'm shooting low light images and shutter speed doesn't matter - I always go for ISO160, a tripod and shutter release
 
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dsp_custom_photos/8636915704" title="Two Door Cinema Club by _JDT0505, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8381/8636915704_afec1eb523.jpg" width="500" height="336" alt="Two Door Cinema Club"></a>

 
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rivercityrocker said:
I don't see a box with arrow. I click on the "Insert image" tab and type copy in the URL, but nada. Just a broken link icon.
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Which link do you insert? In your browser address bar you will never see a direct link to the image but always a link to a website that displays your image and all that stuff around your image. So if you insert an URL in the IMG tag here that does not end with .jpg, then this just can't work. there were some threads about posting flickr images recently.
 
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