M8 at Samy's Los Angeles

[michael.panoff]

I got a chance to mess with the demo model at Samy's yesterday. They even had a Leica representative to demo the features. Unfortunately there is only so much detail you can see in the LCD, but first impressions are very positive.

Anyway.. the informal list of 1st impressions:
- build quality is great, what you would expect from leica
- little fatter than the M7
- menu navigation and button labels a little confusing, but nothing I couldn't eventually get comfortable with
- shutter wasn't that loud
- very responsive
- i believe the viewfinder is very similar to the M7

I completely bonked on messing with high ISO settings. Price: $47xx - somewhere around there... personally, I'd pay around $3k for it, around 5d price.

My original intentions were to find a nice used M6.. and I ended up walking out with a mint M6 TTL, great price too.

mike

 

[ghost]

whoa, you got a good deal at samy's?

 

[egpj]

Nice to hear that it actually exists. I am sure that the sightings will increase now.

 

[lifevicarious]

I saw Ebi, the rep at Samy's OC the day it was released. I did mess with the ISO, and as you said there is only so much you can determine with the small LCD. But the camera was originally set to 640, and a 100% zoom on a shot was very nice. Noise, but barely noticeable. I bumped to 2500 and zoomed, and there was definitely noise. It was certainly usable, but it was noisey none the less.

My guess would be that it is comprabable to the noise on the 5D but not quite as good. Although keep in mind that this was a pre 1.0 firmware being used and they still have work to do on that.

 

[Way]

Noise would be a concern for me. I always think of my MP as a low light camera. Hope the high iso noise looks more like grain and not that splotchy, water color effect that the current Panasonics seem to have.

 

[lifevicarious]

Noise would be a concern for me. I always think of my MP as a low light camera. Hope the high iso noise looks more like grain and not that splotchy, water color effect that the current Panasonics seem to have.

What ISO do you shoot at now?

 

[J. Borger]

Noise can not be evaluated by zooming in on an lcd or pixelpeeping...... print is the testcase!

 

[peter_n]

My original intentions were to find a nice used M6.. and I ended up walking out with a mint M6 TTL, great price too.

Nice Mike! 🙂

 

[michael.panoff]

whoa, you got a good deal at samy's?

Ya I think so.. well, better than what KEH and the rest of the used on-line camera guys sell for.. this baby is in seriously mint condition. Thing about Samy's, always haggle with them, they'll usually budge a little on price.

 

[michael.panoff]

dunno if you guys have seen the dpreview preview.. but it mentions that one of the reason for the 6-bit lens coding is so the camera can determine how much processing it needs to apply to correct for light fall-off at the edge of the sensor. It also mentions that with RAW output you can skip this processing... I don't think the camera I messed with was setup to shot RAW... I wonder how significant this fall-off is, how much impact it has on image quality (post-processing), and how tedious it could become to manually correct for it.

 

[Ted Witcher]

Went to Samy's as well. I second everything mentioned. Impossible to tell PQ on that little LCD -- in fact, I doubt that it would read anything less than seriously out-of-focus, which leaves its usefulness to histograms and menu options. Thus, and to nitpick, it would've been nice to have some sort of snap-in or flip-up cover to protect/hide it, as I greased up the screen a bit (I use my left eye). Nevertheless, a great little camera from an ergonomic standpoint. The covering feels a little slick, but okay. Shutter is louder but not what you would call loud. Still quieter than the Bessa. Lag is minimal/non-factor. Weight is about 500g less than an M7. I thought about trying to slip a card in and walk with some images, but the Leica guy was hawking me pretty good.

I definitely want one.

 

[Whorehay]

Do you know how long the Leica rep will be at Samy's?? Hmm.. I wonder if there are any at Pasadena Samy's...

 

[michael.panoff]

Do you know how long the Leica rep will be at Samy's?? Hmm.. I wonder if there are any at Pasadena Samy's...

Doubt it on the Pasadena Samy's.. I'm in there every couple weeks, they're pretty weak in the Leica department.. usually defer me to the Fairfax store for in-depth information.

 

[Bob Ross]

Noise would be a concern for me. I always think of my MP as a low light camera. Hope the high iso noise looks more like grain and not that splotchy, water color effect that the current Panasonics seem to have.

The splotchy water color effects from Panasonic and others are on sensors that are about the size of the buttons on the back of the M8 and are a result of noise reduction. I doubt seriously that you will see that sort of thing from the Kodak sensor, even at high ISO. Digital noise at high ISO is usually better than film of the same speed. What is different is that digital noise starts in the shadows and film grain starts in the highlights. The good part about NR is to get rid of the shadow noise, you don't have to worry about smearing detail that you can't see anyway.
Bob

 

[Way]

The splotchy water color effects from Panasonic and others are on sensors that are about the size of the buttons on the back of the M8 and are a result of noise reduction. I doubt seriously that you will see that sort of thing from the Kodak sensor, even at high ISO. Digital noise at high ISO is usually better than film of the same speed. What is different is that digital noise starts in the shadows and film grain starts in the highlights. The good part about NR is to get rid of the shadow noise, you don't have to worry about smearing detail that you can't see anyway.
Bob

Thanks for the info. I'm going to Samy's on Monday so I hope they still have the demo M8 there for me to try.

Way

 

[Ted Witcher]

And btw, that Digilux3 is a beast. That's the smallest they could make it?

 

[RJames]

Digilux 3

Digilux 3

And btw, that Digilux3 is a beast. That's the smallest they could make it?

You can't make it to small and still take the "R" Lenses...
Mit dem Leica Adapter...