M8 + Nocti Pics :)

[Artichoke]

hardly ywenz

hardly ywenz

Looks just like any other Digicam.

I seriously doubt another dgicam would rendered these in the same fashion
you might not see the difference, but it seems quite evident to my eye
I hope B&H gets a good quota of them in, because I want mine ASAP
I may even have to re-think getting the Noctilux
does this lens obscure the framing a great deal???

 

[jaapv]

jaapv : D200 with Nikon 58mm f/1.2 noct?
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=nikon f/1.2&w=all

😱 But that is DIGITAL!!!😱 😱 😱

Actually, that is a pretty nice combo, but hardly compact....

 

[Nachkebia]

I agree M8 is the most compact and most desireble digital camera ever created 😀 I would love to have it as a present 😀

 

[MarcoS]

Vladimir,

I just visited your blog.
Outstanding images from India !
While I'm digital-addicted I understand why you still prefer film... 🙂
Impressive depth both in b&w and color.

What scanner do you use ?
I bought a relatively cheap Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III just to scan some (hundreds..) of my old good slides, but I'm not very happy with the quality, slowness apart...

Thanks,

Marco

 

[Toby]

Just for comparison here's a shot I took last month with an Eos 20d + ef 50 1.4 @ 1.4, it's not a brilliant comparison because I'm focusing much closer so it's a more vigorous test of the lens, but to my eyes, in this picture, the bokeh seems to "vibrate" slightly compared to the nocti, obviously the M8 plus nocti is 5 times more expensive but I thought it would be useful to have some kind of yardstick to make things a little more objective. Although I like this picture in its own right I think you can see clear differences in quality. Whether these differences are worth £3500 is another issue

 

[Toby]

and here's another slightly better shot in black and white

 

[ywenz]

Which digicam has this bokeh? I want to order one NOW!

Jaapv, you've always been the outspoken critique of Canon DSLRs and their "plasticky" all too smooth digital images - which I totally agree. Images straight out of the DSLRs look very "digital" and sterile. I belive it's all in how you post process it. You can make it look organic and film like with appropriate post processing skills.

From these samples, I simply made the observation that the M8 images out of the camera look very "digital" and sterile as well. All the bad plasticky smoothness and narrow DR is there. I'm sure the same post processing tricks can be applied to the M8 DNG files to make them film-like. This brings us back to the real point that the Leica red dot by no means will make this camera magical. It's simply a modern digicam in a RF body.

btw, these bokeh look no better than the ones from the Canon 85mm EF 1.2L (not my image)
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=48088890&size=m&context=set-72157594294635238

 

[Nachkebia]

Thank you Marco, I used Nikon coolscan 5000, but please lets stop talking about film here, or maniacs will go mad 😀

 

[dgray]

We usually reserve the word "digicam" for the small sensor point and shoot digital cameras and use "DSLR" for, well, digital SLRs like the D200. Getting selective focus like these shots is near to impossible with a "digicam," although a DSLR can of course. There is no comparison between the M8 and a real digicam. But when we start comparing to DSLRs, we enter a whole new world of differences which include the image but extend into the ergonomics of rangefinder vs. SLR as well, which we all know so well from our choices of film cameras. Those arguments remain the same, regardless of whether we are talking film or digital, so there is no point rehashing them over again. A digital rangefinder is different than a digital SLR the same way a film rangefinder is different from a film SLR, and we have all made those decisions before. The image quality of a digital rangefinder doesn't have to be "better" than a DSLR to make it worthwhile. Rangefinders are n ot all about image quality. It is important for many of us, no doubt, but if it was the whole point of rangefinders we wouldn't be shooting Zorkis, Jupiters, FEDs, Voigtlanders, and Bessas.

 

[jaapv]

Jaapv, you've always been the outspoken critique of Canon DSLRs and their "plasticky" all too smooth digital images - which I totally agree. Images straight out of the DSLRs look very "digital" and sterile. I belive it's all in how you post process it. You can make it look organic and film like with appropriate post processing skills.

From these samples, I simply made the observation that the M8 images out of the camera look very "digital" and sterile as well. All the bad plasticky smoothness and narrow DR is there. I'm sure the same post processing tricks can be applied to the M8 DNG files to make them film-like. This brings us back to the real point that the Leica red dot by no means will make this camera magical. It's simply a modern digicam in a RF body.

btw, these bokeh look no better than the ones from the Canon 85mm EF 1.2L

We agree totally here and I'm with you that these examples mainly show that the quality of the Noctilux shines through on the M8, but are not a particularly good example of the alleged "superioriy"of the M8. This the poster freely admits, stating that these are just quick snaps.
It is indeed far more interesting to see what Sean Reid (who dubs the M8 "much closer to film"if I may summarize and hopefully shortly more widely available reviews by reputable writers will say. So no quarrel there. In the end the real point is, that we can be happy that the M8 is able to compete with the top-end DSLR's out there, as the RD1 is with the prosumer-level camera's btw and that Leica seems to have paid special attention to the artistic quality of the photographic results, as this camera is the only one of its kind, so we have no choice.

Ps. My M6TTL and stock of Kodachrome are NOT for sale.....
But I can hardly wait to be able to play with the M8 🙂

 

[usccharles]

i'm very happy with the pictures. i'm not as experienced as some of you, and plus i started out digital, 5d and rd-1 currently, and then regressed (if thats the right word) back to film, using R6.2 and M6TTL mostly these days, and for me, i can't really tell if something looks film or somethings looks digital... they both look good to me if the picture is taken well.

i'm just really excited about the nocti and m8 pair because i was never happy with the rd-1's 1.5crop and nocti combo. it made composition difficult for me when i wanted lots of bokeh and little spots of sharpness. it always felt like most of the bokeh was chopped off with the 1.5 crop. but with the 1.3 crop of the m8, even with my tiny 2 minute experience today, composing the shot to include lots of bokeh felt very comfortable and nice.

and even though i love my M6TTL to death, my only irk was i couldn't get instant feedback using my Nocti, to see if i was taking the picture right, composition, sharpness, exposure, etc, because it was on film and i don't get to see the results until later. but with the M8, the feedback is right away, the histogram is right there (i think its there), and i hope it will allow me to be a better user of this very difficult and expensive! lens. i can't wait to own one

my 2 cent 🙂

 

[ywenz]

Not to be a pixel peeper.. Okay.. this is pixel peeping, but it is a quite obvious observation.. Is that purple fringing right there in the middle of the shot? Between the white cup and the black strap? So it's either bad lens or bad sensor... ewww.. kinda disheartening for the fringing to be so noticeable even in a shrunken web-res image.

 

[Nachkebia]

There is no doubt, M8 is great digital camera! I tell you more! it is fantastic! I might sell all my nikon stuff and get M8! but! don`t tell me you can photoshop files from M8 to make it look like Tri-x, because you can`t! you cane make it and it will look cheap and fake, but not really!

 

[neelin]

went to the camera shop with my nocti and SD card and shot some nocti shots. all shots are wide open, iso 160, raw files converted on CS2.

thanks, great to see more. as full DNG or extremely large files are a problem, if you had time could you crop a small section & upload the resulting crop at 100% quality jpg.

This plebe hasn't seen the extreme yet. thanks again.

robert

 

[jaapv]

Come to that, Vladimer, why should one want to make a M8 file look like Tri-X? Much easier to take a roll of Tri-X imo. I reserve my judgement on what the M8 can really do until I see real prints. And I think that it will produce beautiful photographs that look like they were taken with a M8.

 

[Nachkebia]

jaapv : Sean was claming in his review, thats why it stuck in my sticky brain 😀
There is only one solution for you to get rid of me! send email to leica with subject title "send M8 to Nachkebia" 😀 😀

 

[usccharles]

thanks, great to see more. as full DNG or extremely large files are a problem, if you had time could you crop a small section & upload the resulting crop at 100% quality jpg.

This plebe hasn't seen the extreme yet. thanks again.

robert

here you go~ please note and consider that i took these very quickly with trembling hands 🙂

 

[jaapv]

There is indeed an impressive purple edge. From what I seem to remember form my Canon days this could be lens-related. Or classic sensor-blooming. Was this Noctilux coded? But no aliasing on the Vuiton bag.

 

[Peter G1G2]

Peter : You also think digital camera makes bokeh? great 🙂

Nope 🙂

But I do think one can register bokeh digitally, and the M8 does a better job (together with the Noctilux) than most other digital camera's I have seen...

Cheers,

Peter

 

[J. Borger]

Nope 🙂

But I do ... and the M8 does a better job (together with the Noctilux) than most other digital camera's I have seen...

Cheers,

Peter

I hope this wisdom is not exclusively based on the few pictures in this post. Unfortunately i have not seen any other pictures of M8 with Noctilux.
If i missed those please give me the link .....