Leica M8 viewfinder

[BenXiaoHai]

Hi guys, I've recently procured a Leica M8 to use in favour of my epson r-d1. Something that puzzles me is the magnification factor of the camera.

With 1.33x crop factor, all our lenses would be "longer" and thus wouldn't it be more logical if the standard magnification was .85, or at least remained at .72? The only rationale I could come up with was that Leica wanted to conserve the "full frame 35mm" frameline by introducing the 24mm frameline.

Am I missing out anything?

 

[Mike Ip]

I heard somewhere that it VF on the M8 *is* 0.72, however due to the thickness of the body, a negative diopter is actually placed on the VF making it 0.68.

 

[jaapv]

Due to the length of the telescope it is optically not possible to create a larger magnification without enlarging the front window.