One by one, they're moving over

[Edward Felcher]

I rest my case.

I don't find it's a lemon at all, and I don't need to justify my purchase. I buy lots of things, and sell lots of things.

Look at the words used to describe the occasional minor glitch: "Horrible, nightmarish, horrible again". Wild exaggerations.

As I said before, it's a first production run, these things will work themselves out.

The photos are far from horrible, I see more and more beautiful stuff from the camera, such as on the Japanese website I posted a few days ago. I have not had a lockup. I will upgrade my firmware as it comes out, no problem. 99% of my photos are flawless.

Best of all, I have over 50 Leica screw and M-mount lenses, from years of collecting. I have lenses that can be adapted to the camera.

Each one has a fingerprint and signature. You can get instant feedback from the camera, with even more clarity than the R-D1, and it's a huge pleasure to use them on a digital camera and enjoy bringing 30 or 50 year old glass back to life. I would be VERY unhappy if the vitriolic critics wrecked the sales of this camera and Leica ceased production.

If this camera bothers you or you feel you can't live with it, then it's obviously not meant for you.

The original Leicas were not meant for everyone. Classic sports cars are not for everyone.

The Canon Rebel XT IS meant for everyone, and therefore, you should rejoice that one has been specced for your criteria.

Edward,

Flaws include (not a complete list):

1) Numerous streaks and artifacts which might take hours to clean.
2) Horrible compatibility with various SD cards
3) lockups
4) Nightmarish color balance and color shift all over the place.
5) Horrible noise at iso above 640.
6) Week and weeks to get anything fixed.

I have no agenda to hurt Leica or support them, just do not try to insult the critics of the Leica M8 because you have some internal need to vindicate your purchase of a $5,000 lemon.

 

[HAnkg]

Edward,

You fail to mention the technical flaws in the M8 are huge and in many circumstances prevent even simple photography without hours of trouble shooting. Everyone wants a succesful M8, but sitting around and praising and excusing every flaw is not helpful at all.

... just do not try to insult the critics of the Leica M8 because you have some internal need to vindicate your purchase of a $5,000 lemon.

I haven't experienced anything with my M8 that "prevent even simple photography" or any technical flaws huge or otherwise. So far the camera works and does what I expect it to do. Nothing to vindicate or justify. It's a camera. My experience has been it delivers what it's supposed to. I can only speak from my experience. You don't like it don't buy it.

I expect we will now hear the same back and forth that every thread on the M8 degenerates to. Why not just go reread the last 100 threads over and over. How about a sticky thread "The M8 is a POS and Leica sucks"? That way anyone who cares to can read the same rant ad naseum.

 

[Ben Z]

At this point one would think that M8 threads would attract M8 users . Just as film M threads are populated by people interested in using film not by people looking to trash film users. Time to move on, get on with your photographic lives. Yes I know Canon users don't have to use IR filters, etc., etc., etc....

Forget the basic objection to the IR filters, we still don't have 1.10 and we still don't have a word from Leica as to the solution for the list of weird hiccups, lockups, and newfound banding. Right now the hot topic--among M8 owners, not would-be buyers like myself--is whether or not the latest glitch means a trip to Solms and several months without their $5000 purchase. If not for that I would have bought one of the M8's from B&H yesterday, I still think the IR filters is a stupid, stupid blunder but it's not what's stopping me from buying anymore.

 

[Edward Felcher]

Damn those Solms idiots. 1.15 is not here yet. And 1.16 should be hurried up. I want my money back.

 

[x-ray]

X-ray,
By your deffinition, no digital camera will ever be cutting edge. All digital cameras use non-proprietary, generally available sensors. It's like saying a computer isn't cutting edge because all it does is use an off-the-shelf chip from Intel. Duh! That's what it's supposed to do! That's not what makes a computer or camera cutting edge. The chip/sensor is a commodity. It's all the rest of the "stuff" that matters.

T.

Edit: Actually, I take it back. The M8 uses a highly modified kodak chip with micro-lenses that reduce vignetting from the short back-focus distance of the M-mount lesnes. No other digital camera uses that chip, I believe. You may not like the crop-factor; you may not like any number of other trade-offs that using that chip required. But it certainly is innovative, cutting edge, and even unique (in the true sense of that term - the one and only).

And fortunately, customers are voting with their pocket books and wallets to buy it and use it, rather than waiting to hear what a bunch of GAS bags (in the traditional sense of that term, too!) have to say about it to determine its fate. 😉

Sorry to differ with you and if you own a M8 I'm glad you're happy with it. No I don't want to see leica go down any more than you but the should have been honest with their customers and R&D the camera a little better before launching it on the market a la Kodak.

I don't know what your level of photography and it doesn't sound like you've had much experience outside consumer digital. The M8 is two generations back in specs and performance. There's no magic now in making a working digicam. Even pentax and every other company on the block have excellent performing DSLR's. If the technology can be put in an slr body it can be put in a RF body. No magic here. Leica simply dropped the ball hoping their amateur following would buy them strictly on the name. I expected technical issues in the early days of digital but digital isn't new anymore. Face it there ar a number of folks and a few I can name on this forum that should be working for leica because they think anything Leica comes out with is the best that can be made no matter what. Leica can do no wrong in their mind. Sorry but I don't feel that way. I have nothing personal against leica and bought 2 MP's and a number of new lenses last year. I've shot M's for nearly 4 decades profesionally and still do. I'm also in touch with reality. Leica has failed to keep their pro customers and set on their tails living of wealthy amateurs that think they look cool with a Leica around their neck. Leica has failed in developement, QC and customer service. I've been fully digital in my studio for over 7 years and shot digital two years prior to that. I know where the industry came from and where it is now and leica is 2 generations back. When the M8 was announced i was eager to pick one up but hesitant to invest my money untill the camer was proven. No longer do I have to be the first on the block and beta test with my money. When the M8 specs came out i deceided it wasn't up to my needs. After the M8 came out I've never been happier that I didn't buy on name alone. The M8 will not be a camera in my future but if Leica comes out with a truly procamera with 18-22 MP full frame sensor and they get all the bugs out then most likely it will be a camera I will buy. Face it Leica fell very short of the pro mark and if they don't get their act together quickly they're going to be a name in history.

 

[Edward Felcher]

Your photos are very good, x-ray. As a matter of fact, better than good, excellent.

 

[x-ray]

Thanks Edward. I've been very active shooting new images recently and need to post some new ones.

This brings up a point of why i shoot only film on my documentary work. Archival digital printing isn't up to traditional silver gelatin darkroom prints yet. It's getting close but still not quite there. Large prints are an issue with digital. There's only so much information in a digital file and no more info can be added that doesn't exist. Probably not a problem for most but it is for me. In the past years I ran to the digital arena like most but when the magic wore off and reality set in I started to look at the plusses and negatives of both film and digital. It was an easy decision to go back to film for my documantary work but stay digital for my commercial clients. There's a place for both in this world and I think I've finally hit the proper balance. I look at digital as disposable relative to equipemnt and images. I shoot only raw and feel things havent shaken out yet on standards. My early digital dslr work was nikon D1 cameras. I shot raw and now the only conversion software that will handle them is Nikon Capture. There might be others but I haven't found them. Every time Nikon, Canon and others come out with a new camera there has to be updates for conversion software. Where will be be in 50 years. Will these files be usable or will all the images be lost. In my studio I have nearly 4,500 CD's and DVD's of raw files. It's not practical to conver everything to tiff. Film on the other hand is easy to store and in one way or another we will be able to print in the darkroom or scan and print digitall all of my negs fifty years from now. I have negs now that are 53 years old that I shot as a kid but historically they are important. I grew up in Oak Ridge Tennessee if that means anything, the city where the atomic bomb was made. My images are now of historic importance. If digital existed then and I had shot digital would I even be able to read the disc or would there be a software to convert the files to something usable? I have two museum shows of roughly 70 prints each that will tour the US. This is what made me start thinking about where digital is in the scheme of archival and historic work. As to the M8, even if it worked perfectly it would be short of horse power for this application. In the 70's I started directing TV commercials and producing them too. Everyone ran to the video tape arena and abandon film, except for a few of us. Now a half dozen tape fromats later those commercials recorded on 2inch tape can't even be played. For one there are almost no 2 inch machines working if any and second the tape has deteriorated to a point it will not play. Starting in the 70's TV news went from film to 3/4 inch tape. Virtually everything from that era is lost, all the historic footage unless it was dubbed to another format. Twenty years down the road where will the DV and mini DV tapes be? See my point? Digital is disposable in my book.

 

[jaapv]

I haven't experienced anything with my M8 that "prevent even simple photography" or any technical flaws huge or otherwise. So far the camera works and does what I expect it to do. Nothing to vindicate or justify. It's a camera. My experience has been it delivers what it's supposed to. I can only speak from my experience. You don't like it don't buy it.

I expect we will now hear the same back and forth that every thread on the M8 degenerates to. Why not just go reread the last 100 threads over and over. How about a sticky thread "The M8 is a POS and Leica sucks"? That way anyone who cares to can read the same rant ad naseum.

I fail to see what " simple photography" should be, Hank. Maybe we should start calling ourselves brilliant photographers that stand out from the crowd, as we are able to produce decent images from this horrible, flawed paperweight. Why sometimes I even have a photograph without ANY streak or magenta! Sometimes I even manage to switch my camera on without driving to Solms first! We must be geniuses compared to those poor lost souls that dropped 5000 $ into the Atlantic.....

 

[Edward Felcher]

Adobe Raw will convert all the Nikon D1 RAW files. It's a free add-on plug-in for Photoshop.

There are numerous others.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

If you want to save them for archival purposes, use a batch converter and save them as DNG files, which probably will outlive NEF format.

 

[HAnkg]

The M8 will not be a camera in my future but if Leica comes out with a truly procamera with 18-22 MP full frame sensor and they get all the bugs out then most likely it will be a camera I will buy.

I've shot ad campaigns and catalogs with my 11MP Canon 1Ds and clients where super happy with the results. Plenty of pros are using 12MP Nikons and 11MP 1Ds. The MKII Canon tops out at 16MP not even close to 22MP. Melvin Sokolsky has been shooting the 11MP 1Ds, (http://www.sokolsky.com) he prefers it to the medium format backs and he can shoot whatever the hell he wants. James Russell (http://www.russelljames.com/) also used the 1Ds as his only digital rig and now the 12MP Nikon D2X along with medium format backs. Some pros prefer the 11MP 1Ds for fleshtone/fashion to the 16MP 1Ds MKII. So the 10MP Leica is not coming out of left field resolution wise and the output from the M8 is for my money better then the results from the 1Ds.

Slap a halftone screen on it, run it through a high speed web press with the typical low gamut CMYK ink on the paper most magazines print on and in a blind test of properly produced and processed images no one will be able to tell the 22MP image from the 10MP one.

RF cameras will never again be the mainstream choice but I think if Leica continues on the digital path they will be a viable alternative for certain types of pro work. As far as how 'easy' it is to produce a digital RF you should offer your superior engineering expertise to Leica, Zeiss or Cosina as they haven't been able to figure it out.

 

[Richard Marks]

Dear X ray
I share all of your film sentiments, and really did not want to like this camera. (Other cameras Leica MP, 5x4 large format and precious rolleiflex 3.5 planar and I still have a dark room in the garage), One afternoon with this camera and I was hooked. You owe it to Leica to give it a thorough objective evaluation and report back. Im not suggesting this camera will replace film but in its own right it produces very impressive images.
Best wishes
Richard Marks

 

[washy21]

Too many naysayers about this camera for me, and oddly a lot of them are slagging it without ever owning one. It's simple - if you think it's a pile of crap then don't buy it.

I've seen loads of stunning pictures from this camera ,enough to satisfy me that when it is attached to a brain that can use it, it somehow manages to produce wonderful images.

Who cares how many bloody pixels it has. Pros use all sorts of gear. I've got a Canon 1ds and loads of L lenses, but I still love my old D60.

Horses for Courses.

Why can't we just accept that this Leicas first RF and when we are all dead in 50 years time there will no doubt be something else.

Anyway, I'm going to get one and if it doesn't work out then so what. I'll try something else. It's a learning curve.

 

[x-ray]

Slap a halftone screen on it, run it through a high speed web press with the typical low gamut CMYK ink on the paper most magazines print on and in a blind test of properly produced and processed images no one will be able to tell the 22MP image from the 10MP one.

I shot 1D and 1Ds for two years before getting the 1DsII bodies. No question they're top notch cameras.

Not every job goes to web. Most of my work is higher quality printing in annual reports and brochures in shorter runs. I have a couple of architectual firms that I shoot a great deal for and use the 24TSE and a major international manufacturer that I do all of their product work with the 90 tse. The architects work goes in very high quality brochures and large prints. I just delivered yeaterday 19 24x36 prints. Even as good as the 1DsII is I still shoot some of the architectual work on 4x5 and scan to high res files. Some of my work goes to tripple page spreads. Also you know how AD's love to crop. I've had specs for jobs with a minimum of 12MP.

Regarding converting 4,500 CD's and DVD's to DNG, NO WAY! Think about the expense of hiring a person just to do this and the cost of another computer and materials and time. Who even knows if DNG will become a universal standard. At this point I only know of two companies that have adopted it.

 

[x-ray]

Dear X ray
I share all of your film sentiments, and really did not want to like this camera. (Other cameras Leica MP, 5x4 large format and precious rolleiflex 3.5 planar and I still have a dark room in the garage), One afternoon with this camera and I was hooked. You owe it to Leica to give it a thorough objective evaluation and report back. Im not suggesting this camera will replace film but in its own right it produces very impressive images.
Best wishes
Richard Marks

I really feel the M8 has potential if and when Leica gets it right. I certainly can and has produced great images and I wouldlove to try one for a week. But, it's just not right for what I'm doing and falls short of what I feel would make it a workable camera for me. There's no doubt that I could produce fine images with it, I did even with the D1 Nikon at 2.75 MP. I really think the camera will suit many peoples needs if they get things straight. I just hope they do and don't dump their customers like they have on the DMR.

 

[HAnkg]

I shot 1D and 1Ds for two years before getting the 1DsII bodies. No question they're top notch cameras.

Not every job goes to web. Most of my work is higher quality printing in annual reports and brochures in shorter runs.

There's all kinds of pro work and lots of different photographers with different approaches and that's why there are all kinds of solutions. My point is there are plenty of instances where I would not hesitate to use an M8 and I would include in that mix a lot of work that was destined for 175/200 line sheetfed press on gloss stock. There is a vast chasm between what the best offset printing press can reproduce and what you can get on screen or from a transparency. There is no system that can be the best solution for everything. 4x5 has its uses in certain circumstances as does the M8. The M8 is certainly not a replacement for a Canon with 90TSE (great lens I used extensively).

The M8 is no threat to Canon or Phase One, but it was not intended to be and doesn't need to be to be successful. In its current state I can see it finding professional users that have not used Leicas for quite some time and hopefully that (+ it's amateur base) will keep Leica going so it can produce an MKII and III. Maybe by then they will have something that will satisfy your requirements. In the mean time I'm loving my M8.

 

[washy21]

X-RAY:

In the main I tend to agree with your posts on this topic. That said, you are really only stating the obvious.

It's obvious that the Leica M8 is not for you in any way shape or form, and I can fully understand why. But I refuse to accept that this camera in the right hands is not capable of producing world class images.

The naysayers are trying to make out that the camera is virtually worthless. I've never owned a Leica, and so in some respects I have the distinct advantage of not being emotionaly tied to the red dot.

But the day will come when someone takes a world class image with the M8, and then, as if by magic everyone will want one.

It's a tool - nothing more - nothing less. It is probably only good for certain areas of photography. No one has mentioned the complete lack of Macro functions with RF and to me that is a big deal breaker for thousands who might want to try this camera without understanding technical issues.

The Leica as I see it champions itself on the street and other similar applications. It will be crap in the studio for product shots etc.

 

[steamer]

In reply to X-RAY:

But I refuse to accept that this camera in the right hands is not capable of producing world class images.

Doesn't this go for an oatmeal box with a pin hole in it as well? Has anyone said the M8 is complete shiite?


But the day will come when someone takes a world class image with the M8, and then, as if by magic everyone will want one.

Have a look at Khanosu's gallery, plenty of world class M8 images there.

 

[jaapv]

Has anyone said the M8 is complete shiite?
.

Yes some have- and that is exactly what I and some others are protesting against. There are plenty of reasonable critics. I may disagree, but I respect them. Benz springs to mind, there are plenty of others. But mindless, malicious bashing? It gets my hackles up.

 

[Sailor Ted]

Forget the basic objection to the IR filters, we still don't have 1.10 and we still don't have a word from Leica as to the solution for the list of weird hiccups, lockups, and newfound banding. Right now the hot topic--among M8 owners, not would-be buyers like myself--is whether or not the latest glitch means a trip to Solms and several months without their $5000 purchase. If not for that I would have bought one of the M8's from B&H yesterday, I still think the IR filters is a stupid, stupid blunder but it's not what's stopping me from buying anymore.

1.10 is an issue as I pointed out some time ago and we shall see if Leica steps up as they told Barjohn they would. As for the weird "hiccups, lockups, and newfound banding." I say "me thinks he protests too much." I find it pathetic that a few people can find so much time to debase a camera they do not own to the point that the majority of people who do own the camera want to stay away or cannot post their feelings or look for advise without some *** **** chiming in and pissing on the parade.

Cameras are for photography and photographers work with their cameras to the best of their cameras abilities while hobbyists and toy freaks lament every imperfection and make excuses for the laughable state of their galleries.

 

[jaapv]

There's all kinds of pro work and lots of different photographers with different approaches and that's why there are all kinds of solutions. My point is there are plenty of instances where I would not hesitate to use an M8 and I would include in that mix a lot of work that was destined for 175/200 line sheetfed press on gloss stock. There is a vast chasm between what the best offset printing press can reproduce and what you can get on screen or from a transparency. There is no system that can be the best solution for everything. 4x5 has its uses in certain circumstances as does the M8. The M8 is certainly not a replacement for a Canon with 90TSE (great lens I used extensively).

The M8 is no threat to Canon or Phase One, but it was not intended to be and doesn't need to be to be successful. In its current state I can see it finding professional users that have not used Leicas for quite some time and hopefully that (+ it's amateur base) will keep Leica going so it can produce an MKII and III. Maybe by then they will have something that will satisfy your requirements. In the mean time I'm loving my M8.

And another thing: there are a million amateur photographers to every single professional. Only a giant like Canon can afford to cater to that niche solely.
I still fail to get the definition of "professional camera" It seems to be used on this forum as: "camera that is (can be??) used by professionals" That describes about every camera in the market. And another thing.(this is no personal attack on anybody, I'm discussing the use of a word!), the fact that one is able to make money by pressing a shutter does not automatically make one a better or more more sensible person than somebody who makes a living by sweeping the street or doing heart surgery. I do not see the words "professional photographer" as some kind of accolade. Now the the galleries of the professionals on this site are something else. As are those of a high proportion of the amateurs.....