M8 gossip

[Matthew]

I have a hard time believing that the 1.33 crop factor alone would prevent anyone from buying the M8. The difference in depth of field between that and 24x36 is slight. The difference between full frame and 1.5 or 1.6 makes more of a difference.

Just for some perspective, the sensor size on a 1.5 crop digital camera is approximately the same size as a piece of 35mm motion picture film and no one in cinema complains about not having enough ability to achieve selective focus with it. In fact you fight to shoot with it over a smaller format if it is at all in the budget.

Re: Magnum, although they haven't been many in number, the members of Magnum that I've spent any time with have been very nice approchable people--not everyone there is as testy as Henri Cartier-Bresson was...

 

[KM-25]

Hello! i'm new in this forum.
(he was a Leica user for years and with the ending of the Kodachrome in Europe he changes for a digital camera).

That is an ironic thing for him to do. He could always do a stint for a year or two here since Dwayne's is going strong and will be for at least a couple of years.

Funny thing is, Kodachrome is the very reason I purchased my first M6 last week. I have some 200 rolls of 25 and the other 600 are 64 and 200 speeds for a long term tribute to the incredible film. As good as digital is, everything that is not Kodachrome simply falls short.

Send me a personal message of who he is, I would love to look him up on Magnum and see what he has done with Leitz and Kodachrome. I know David Alan Harvey, he practically made Kodachrome famous.

As much as I would love the M8, the crop factor for me is a no-go. I have zero tolerance for brilliant glass being cropped. That is why I had to switch to Canon for digital. I know some don't understand this no crop camera thing, but for some of us, it is simply not what we want and there are some good options now.

I hope the M8 does well for Leica. We all need them to remain profitable and one day, they will make a great digital RF that will not crop their legendary glass.

 

[AndyPiper]

jlw:

While on the whole I can deal with the M's cropped sensor, I can see a whole range of reasons why some other people can't:

1. I buy a $3200 35mm f/1.4 lens - because I want a very fast WIDE-ANGLE lens. On a cropped sensor it becomes a psychotically-priced NORMAL lens. A 50 f/1.4 for $2500 is bad enough - but $3200?!

2. I still want a 35mm-EQUIVALENT f/1.4 lens for low-light photojournalism. Oops - Leica does not make a 24 or 28 f/1.4 lens to use for that aperture and FoV on the M8.

3. My most important money-making lens is a 21 f/2.8. Again - oops - there is no 15mm f/2.8 lens from Leica (even now) to give me that framing and that speed on the M8. Just a big, f/4 Tri-Elmar thingy or a compact f/4.5 Cosina thingy.

Not being able to see that these would problems for some people implies a certain lack of a) imagination, or b) empathy.

 

[rvaubel]

jlw:

While on the whole I can deal with the M's cropped sensor, I can see a whole range of reasons why some other people can't:
.

Andy
Your reasons are legitamite but it really comes down to a lack of fast, wide angle lenses. But before the advent of the 1.33 sensor there was no need for faster, wider angle lenses. Now there is.

The situation with regards crop sensor DSLRs was exactly the same. But after a few years, the void was filled in. My 10-22mm EFS does a wonderful job on the short end and the 17-44 F2.8 is a great midrange zoom. I know there not primes but this is DSLR-land.

Of course, some will say,"no fair, those aren't full frame lenses". That's right and whadda think is gonna happen to the M lenses over time. Yes Folks, get ready for the reduced format "M" lens! LET THE FLAME WAR BEGIN🙂

Rex, troublemaker
Berkeley, Ca

 

[jaapv]

You're kidding, right? You have no idea about 35mm lenses and their circle of coverage, in which the 24x36 area fits? The whole perspective thing? You are kidding, right?

Who's kidding who? We all know you well enough to know that you are fully aware that perspective is dependent on the distance of camera to subject, not on focal length and of the quality falloff towards the corners 😉

 

[jaapv]

he was a Leica user for years and with the ending of the Kodachrome in Europe he changes for a digital camera
QUOTE]

That is a strange thing to do. I just bought twelve rolls of Kodachrome 64 in Rotterdam and already hd three of them developed through the central collection post in Germany.....
That patently untrue remark plus that a professional photographer would:
a: know that the DOF changes just half a stop
b: has sense enough to change his 50 mm lens for a 35 and take the same picture with the same perspective from the same spot.
c: with an investment of between 15.000 and 150.000 Euro in professional tools be fazed over 3500 versus 4300 Euro for a high -end body, when professional DSLR's set him back between 5000 and 10.000.

makes me feel that the whole anecdote has but a tenuous connection to reality, to put it mildly.

That a digital RF body would not fit into the DSLR workflow of a pro, on the other hand, is totally understandable.
And, as mentioned by other posters, professionals are not Leica's main target group anyway, however to see some M8's in well-known hands would be nice for the marketing department.

 

[J. Borger]

Andy
That's right and whadda think is gonna happen to the M lenses over time. Yes Folks, get ready for the reduced format "M" lens! LET THE FLAME WAR BEGIN🙂

Rex, troublemaker
Berkeley, Ca

Yes Rex ...... this will happen .... and it's about time Leica jumps the digital bandwagon and starts making some money.
I also think they have to upgrade the sensor every two year to sell new cameras ..... (2mp at a time at the most and some minor other improvements) ..why? Because that's the way the camera industry works these days .
It's the Canon strategy .....feed the crowds in small doses .... i am just afraid Leica çan't get away with it!

The reduced format lenst might happen ... i personaly would never buy one .. and go for the full frame alternative ... just to keep options open.

But lens sales is where the money for Leica has to come from.
That's also the main reason they went the lenscoding path.

 

[rxmd]

Hi Andy,

in general, what you're describing is a problem shared by people who use primes in the DSLR world, as there isn't even a lens that delivers the same images as the common 50/1.4 in terms of depth of field.

However, if the M8 were full-frame, people would complain about bad performance in the corners. In the long run, this would be a lot worse for Leica in terms of reputation, since the company defines its product as one that delivers superior performance. It's easier for Leica to make people buy new lenses than to work against the image of a bad product.

3. My most important money-making lens is a 21 f/2.8. Again - oops - there is no 15mm f/2.8 lens from Leica (even now) to give me that framing and that speed on the M8. Just a big, f/4 Tri-Elmar thingy or a compact f/4.5 Cosina thingy.

You are aware of the 15 f/2.8 from Zeiss?

Philipp

 

[Mark Norton]

Leica talked about "some interesting wide angle solutions" and it looks like their initial response is a 28mm Elmarit ASPH to provide a lower cost wide angle solution plus the Tri-Elmar where their priority seems to be equivalent coverage, even if there is a speed penalty. Their logic might be that you can turn up the ISO to compensate if you need to go beyond wide-open but it remains to be seen how good the noise performance is. Also, going faster seems to be more expensive than going wider.

While I understand the ideal of keeping all lenses FF compatible, I would have liked there to be a series of lens - even 1 or 2 - for cropped use only which would allow the lenses to be (presumably) wider, faster, smaller, lighter and (a little) less expensive., If an FF camera appears in the future, these lenses could be still be used by having a cropped exposure mode, a bit like the High Speed Crop on a D2x.

 

[jaapv]

Yes Rex ...... this will happen .... and it's about time Leica jumps the digital bandwagon and starts making some money.
I also think they have to upgrade the sensor every two year to sell new cameras ..... (2mp at a time at the most and some minor other improvements) ..why? Because that's the .

I think Canon and Nikon are not upping the pixel count any more. That war seems to be over. It wouldn't make sense anyway. Where the improvements lie now is dynamic range, noise and colour diffrentiation.

 

[rxmd]

You have no idea about 35mm lenses and their circle of coverage, in which the 24x36 area fits?

What do you mean by 35mm? If you mean 35mm the film format, it's kind of a non-statement that the film area of a given picture format fits in the circle of coverage of lenses designed for this particular format. Do you mean 35mm as in 35mm the focal length? Are you somehow implying that lenses of a given focal length have an intrinsic circle of coverage? Unfortunately this isn't so, as any 6x6 or LF photographer can tell you after a long, sad glance in their wallets 🙂

The whole perspective thing? You are kidding, right?

I don't know. In effect you choose a focal length that produces the kind of perspective you want on the film/sensor format you have. I've been taking portraits with a 80mm f/2.8 medium format normal lens on a Canon FD body, and I didn't feel the least bothered by the "different" perspective. (Different from what, anyway?) Those people adapting cine lenses to 1.5x crop sensors are doing the same thing. All we have to do is stop thinking that focal length determines perspective; it's the combination of focal length and medium size that determines it. I guess it helps shooting other formats than 35mm for a while.

Some luxury possibly might have to go, as there is no Noctilux equivalent and lenses tend to be expensive. OK, then this is the reality of digital photography as of now, and as photographers we have to live with it or continue to use film for the present. (When I started doing medium format, I was very much bothered that all lenses were slower; eventually I started taking pictures instead, accepting it as one of the realities of the new format, and suddenly it wasn't that much of a problem.)

The alternative would have been a body with a 24x36 sensor that produces vignetting and mediocre corner sharpness with the wideangles that RF photographers are especially concerned with, due to constraints of physics, and that would have been a lot less acceptable.

Philipp

 

[Nachkebia]

He knew what he was talking about, well ofcourse bird shooters will love crop factor 😀

 

[jaapv]

He knew what he was talking about, well ofcourse bird shooters will love crop factor 😀

Why the grin? That is the gospel truth! One of my photographic things is wildlife photography and if you ever lugged a film SLR with a 800 mm lens and motordrive around, and found how difficult it is even lift the stuff let alone to handhold that kind of combo, an APS sized camera with a converter and a 300 or 100-400 is a blessing . Plus the increased DOF.Plus the ability to bump up the ISO to get decent shutterspeeds when needed. I am working to get my Visoflex- Noflexar 400 and TEX converter together to get a managable set up to 1000 mm equivalent together 🙂🙂:angel:

 

[AndyPiper]

Just remember that in my previous post I said I PERSONALLY can deal with the M8's crop - I have lenses that SHOULD work to take the pictures I want even with the crop. 15/21/28/50/75/90 - plus a 135 that I expect will work rather nicely (even though Leica doesn't). And I know from working with a demo DMR that a 50 f/2 makes a be-U-tiful "70mm" portrait telephoto (and in the case of the M8, a tiny one as well) on a 1.3--x crop.

I was just pointing why the crop may be a real problem for some other photographers.

it will be interesting to see which way Leica jumps regarding the format of future digital Ms. One bit of handwriting on the wall is that they are not even offering zebra-coding for the ungoggled 135s. Which to me indicates they NEVER expect 135s to work well on any digital M. I just have a strong feeling that Leica doesn't see full-frame 24 x 36 in an M body anytime soon (the R10 may be a different matter).

That's just MHO, of course.

16 days....

 

[Nachkebia]

jaapv : Excactly, but we are in rangefinder forum 😀 Mainly using wide angles with 50mm 🙂 now everybody has to buy Summilux 35mm to get 47mm, and my future sonnar f/1.5 will be 65mm.. what the heck 65mm is? 😀

 

[jaapv]

jaapv : Excactly, but we are in rangefinder forum 😀 Mainly using wide angles with 50mm 🙂 now everybody has to buy Summilux 35mm to get 47mm, and my future sonnar f/1.5 will be 65mm.. what the heck 65mm is? 😀

Interesting question: Does the use of a Visoflex stop the M camera's being rangefinders??

 

[jaapv]

Just remember that in my previous post I said I PERSONALLY can deal with the M8's crop - I have lenses that SHOULD work to take the pictures I want even with the crop. 15/21/28/50/75/90 - plus a 135 that I expect will work rather nicely (even though Leica doesn't). And I know from working with a demo DMR that a 50 f/2 makes a be-U-tiful "70mm" portrait telephoto (and in the case of the M8, a tiny one as well) on a 1.3--x crop.

I was just pointing why the crop may be a real problem for some other photographers.

it will be interesting to see which way Leica jumps regarding the format of future digital Ms. One bit of handwriting on the wall is that they are not even offering zebra-coding for the ungoggled 135s. Which to me indicates they NEVER expect 135s to work well on any digital M. I just have a strong feeling that Leica doesn't see full-frame 24 x 36 in an M body anytime soon (the R10 may be a different matter).

That's just MHO, of course.

16 days....

Let's start a new rumour!!😎 :

Leica will introduce a Visoflex 4 with electronic coupling to project all info into the Viso's viewfinder and a range of adapted R lenses!!!:angel: :angel:

 

[Nachkebia]

Just don`t forget 35mm lux is much bigger, havier than 50 lux, and just don`t forget there is no way you can have 35mm f/1.4 on crop because there is no 28mm f/1.4 and even if it was it would be freakin huge.
So no doubt it is a huge compromise, why would an artist like that guy compromise? for what? just because he could see images when he gets in hotel? well I doubt it.....

 

[jaapv]

That indeed is the only really valid argument : It doesn't fit the style of shooting. Spot-on!

 

[Nemo]

I think Canon and Nikon are not upping the pixel count any more. That war seems to be over. It wouldn't make sense anyway. Where the improvements lie now is dynamic range, noise and colour diffrentiation.

I don't think so.

An A3 print at 240ppp (5lp/mm) needs 10MP and a A3 print at 300ppp (6lp/mm) needs 16MP. That range of 10 to 16MP is a confortable range.

Additional image size is convenient for crops, bigger prints or better sharpness in the prints. APS sensors have problems going beyond of 10MP, but 35mm full frame sensors can easily reach 22MP or even more. The range 16-22MP is a very interesting range and Canon will be established there very soon. APS sensors have reached its limits, but 35mm full frame sensors have at least one more step.

It is rumoured a new camera from Hasselblad with a sensor of 37x37mm and new specific lenses, to be announced at Photokina. Besides, if Nikon goes full frame the resolution range for professional applications will be consolidated over 16MP.