New M8 owner, anything I need to know?

[Lss]

Is auto ISO that bad? I set it to tap out at 640 as I read beyond that gets a bit sketchy.

There is nothing bad about auto ISO as a feature, it's a useful tool for many photographers. The Leica implementation is actually very good by providing the essentials: you can limit both ISO and shutter speed. This is not a given with even all much more modern cameras. Whether you want to use auto ISO all the time, sometimes, or never is a completely different thing and depends on your needs and preferences.

My default for auto ISO on the M8 is 1250. For me, the whole point with auto ISO is added flexibility when light levels rapidly change back and forth. Limiting auto ISO to 640 takes away one stop of flexibility without much visible gain. Going up to 2500 gives another stop, but the toll on image quality is already considerable. When I simply want automatic exposure, I will rather use AE with fixed ISO. And when I don't want that either, I use manual with fixed ISO.

While the M8 gives you auto ISO also when you set the shutter speed manually, it does not really allow a huge range of flexibility. This is one thing where the M8 not being an ISO monster shows. It is however convenient to jump between AE and manual when using auto ISO. This gives you an additional shutter speed limit setting in auto ISO (the first one is the AE one buried in the menu). Of course, this means you actually need to consider the light levels and exposure without blindly following the meter (and possibly histogram), but that is basic photography anyway. It's a good tool.

 

[isorgb]

And don't take quickly, do not use click..click..click..click.. , after that you can:
1. strangle buffer and camera will be freeze
2. get banding on second, third, .... picture

And battery indicator could be very innacurate.

Furthermore M8 is very nice camera.

 

[Jim Evidon]

M8 bonus: The M8 makes a pretty good IR camera

M8 bonus: The M8 makes a pretty good IR camera

Huge caveat: I don't own an M8, but I've researched one extensively and one thing that stuck with me was that some users mentioned that for BW work they prefer to leave the UV filters off. The additional UV infrmation supposedly gave them nicer tonality.

I cannot speak from first hand experience but the posted images looked very good.

Then again, I notice you seem to prefer a high contrast look (from your post above), so maybe tonal range is not your cup of tea, in which case it would be more convenient to keep the UV filters on all the time.

The UV/IR filter is best used for color work and is not needed for B&W.
I left mine off of the camera for B&W.

Another feature of the M8 which no one mentioned is that it is a pretty good infrared camera.
It is not as good as a dedicated IR camera. I used an IR filter on my M8 and got typical color rendition of IR film.
In LR, I played with various settings until I got very acceptable IR images.
I then saved the settings as a custom M8 IR filter in LR. Naturally I had different adjustments for IR color and IR B&W.

 

[andrew00]

Yes the slowing down aspect is something that's hard to get used to, almost as if one is so used to taking a quick picture that it feels uncomfortable to take your time.

 

[Lss]

I haven't experienced slowing down with the camera in use that actually matters. You can shoot about 15 frames in about 15 seconds based on a couple of tests I did for information some time ago. IIRC, you then need more than two secs for each consecutive shot as the buffer needs to clear. Once you get into that territory, it obviously can be a pain and you will probably lose shots.

If I started bracketing each shot (where possible), then I would probably hit the limits of this camera once in a while. Otherwise, I won't have issues with the buffer. The continuous drive is simply not fast enough to allow the kind of use where I would fill the buffer.