Question for M8 Folks

[sgy1962]

Let me apologise beforehand if these issues have already been discussed. But here's some questions for those folks going in the M8 direction.

1. For those folks who are going to an M8 from a film rangefinder, do you still anticipate shooting film or do you think this will be a total jump to digital?

2. Are most of the people interested in an M8 already using some form of digital camera?

3. Do you anticipate getting any new lenses with the M8 in light of this crop factor or are you just going to see how the whole things shakes out with your existing lineup?

4. Are you going to put together any type of digital darkroom?

 

[jaapv]

1. Yes I will shoot film as well plus 645 film
2. yes I use and have used several digital camera's
3. Yes I have adapted my stable of lenses in anticipation of the M8 in buying a 24 asph and 35 çron asph. (both not bad for film either...)
4. yes I have a complete digital darkroom and have been on a learning curve for three years now.

I think 75% of prospective Leica M8 owners will give you identical answers.

 

[Andy Aitken]

1. I'll still use film but probably a lot less.
2. Yep, I'm using a Canon G5 and a Canon GR-d. DSLRs don't light my fire.
3. You're joking - with the price of the M8 who could afford new lenses too!
4. Have digital darkroom but I mostly keep the light on.

I think 77% of prospective Leica M8 owners will give you identical answers.

 

[Ben Z]

1. The only way I could justify the expense of the M8 would be to switch completely to it, so that the savings on film and processing would offset the cost and inevitable depreciation.

2. Yes, I bought a "refurbished" Canon 20D some months back. I really haven't shot any film to speak of since then. That is mainly because I haven't done any major travelling lately, since the 20D and its lenses are much too voluminous to suit me for travelling.

3. I'm not fully decided on an M8 so I have not done any revamping of my lens lineup per se. I'm not on any waiting list for an M8 so even if I want one it will probably be months before I can get one. I did pick up a Voitlander 12mm some time ago, which I have no desire to use with film, but strictly as a replacement for my oft-used 15mm should I eventually buy an M8. Otherwise I have 21, 28, 35, 50, 90 and 135 and all would be put to use on the M8. I actually would look forward to using the 135 because the one thing I miss when travelling with my Leicas is the 180-200mm length. The only "gap" is 75mm which is the "new 90" on an M8. Perhaps a Voitlander is in my future, but certainly neither of the Leica 75s due to their extreme cost.

4. I already have a digital darkroom but mostly concentrating on making DVDs from my existing slides and from digital files to be screened on a plasma TV. I always preferred projection to prints as a means of viewing/displaying my photos, and the HDTV route looks much better and is more cost-effective for me than digital projection. One reason why I'm less interested than some folks in where the M8 stands in the megapixel race, I'm not likely to make nearly as many theoretical 20x30 prints as they are 😀

 

[johnbuckley]

Let me apologise beforehand if these issues have already been discussed. But here's some questions for those folks going in the M8 direction.

1. For those folks who are going to an M8 from a film rangefinder, do you still anticipate shooting film or do you think this will be a total jump to digital?

2. Are most of the people interested in an M8 already using some form of digital camera?

3. Do you anticipate getting any new lenses with the M8 in light of this crop factor or are you just going to see how the whole things shakes out with your existing lineup?

4. Are you going to put together any type of digital darkroom?

Yes to all of the above. I will still use my M7, in many cases along with my M8. I have just traded my 28 Elmarit for a 24. I use a Digilux 2, and before that had a Cannon digital. And yes, I will likely upgrade my Mac in order to upgrade from Photoshop Elements to CS2, plus C1LE. The biggest change I anticipate is the need to understand how to process RAW images, and I will admit to being intimidated by that transition.

 

[Ben Z]

John, don't be intimidated by RAW. It's a lot easier to process them than to try un-doing processing that the camera arbitrarily has applied to jpegs :bang:

 

[jlw]

I guess I can't say I'm really a prospective M8 buyer unless I sell one of my cars (which I'm seriously considering!) Then again, given that some observers are predicting a one-year backlog, I may have been able to save up enough money by the time they're readily available at retail!

However, I'd like to answer based on the experience I've already gone through when I got my R-D 1:

1) I had fully expected to continue to shoot film. I liked my film cameras, I had all the equipment I needed to work with film, I enjoyed the process of developing and printing, and I knew from experience that for hang-on-the-wall prints, it was easier for me to get the subtleties I wanted with a wet print than with an inkjet print.

And yet... the fact is that during the past year and a half I have shot a total of two rolls of film, and one of them was just to test a camera I was going to put up for sale on eBay. I still feel something is missing from my photography because I don't use film. In fact, I feel like a traitor for not using more film. But the fact is that the results I get with the R-D 1 fufill all my needs (and the needs of people for whom I take pictures.)

And I learned that no matter how good my intentions, there just didn't seem to be enough time to do a good job of being a film photographer and of being a digital photographer. I'm still not quite sure how this happened, but it did. My theory is that any given person has a certain level of commitment to photography: ignoring the issue of what it is or how to measure it, let's just call it X.

For any given commitment level X, you'll need to invest a certain amount of time, money, energy and effort. What I've learned is that X is exactly the same whether you're photographing digitally or conventionally.

If you wanted to be equally committed to conventional and digital photography, your commitment level would have to jump to 2X, and for me there just wasn't enough spare time, money, energy and effort to make that possible.

2) Yes, I'm already using the R-D 1, a Nikon D100 (probably to be replaced sometime with a D80), and a Canon D60 and a Fuji GX680 with digital back at work.

I started out with various Olympus digital point-and-shoots (which surprised me with how well they worked even for fairly serious snapshots) and then got the D100 (which works well, but which I dislike basically because it's an SLR and I hate using SLRs.) It wasn't until I got the R-D 1 that I was able to really buy into the idea of digital photography, but now I'm convinced that I can do good work that way.

3) The 1.5x "crop factor" of the D100 and later the R-D 1 made me think at first that I'd need to rethink my lens choices. But I discovered that wasn't the case. After I got used to it, I just didn't worry about it at all. In general, I tend to use a 50mm lens in the same types of situations for which I'd have used a 50mm lens on a film camera; ditto a 35; ditto a 28, etc. (I did buy a 21mm lens to use on the R-D 1, but very seldom use it. I'm not a super-wide-angle kind of guy.)

This was counterintuitive and surprised me a bit. But I realized that since I had always done my own developing and printing with film, I was used to shooting a bit "loose" (to accommodate fast-action situations) and then cropping the negs down to my desired composition in the darkroom. Shooting digital just meant I was shooting a bit "tighter," so it really wasn't that big an adjustment.

4) I'm already 'way deep into digital stuff, including image management and printing. I've got an Epson R800 pigment printer and keep thinking I should buy a larger printer so I can make more hang-on-the-wall prints.

But again, the surprise is that I don't really have a need or demand to make a lot of prints. When I take pictures for other people, I edit them, put them on my web server, and let them view or download them from there. I usually post 1800x1200-pixel images so they could upload them to Walgreen's or whatever and get good 4x6 prints... but surprisingly, people tell me they almost never do. Lots of people, especially younger people, are perfectly happy viewing pictures solely on their computers.

For those who don't, there's another option: Fairly recently I've gotten involved in using a piece of software called Photo to Movie to turn my picture collections from performances, concerts, events, etc. into motion-graphic "slide shows," with titles and effects etc., which I then burn onto DVDs with my Mac. The DVDs play in any TV-type DVD player, and the images look great on a TV. Most everybody I know has a DVD player, and they just love these DVDs. And they're so cheap to make that I can just give them away to anybody who wants one (although I suppose I should start selling them if I want to raise enough money to buy an M8!)

So, this answer has run a bit longer than probably you wanted or than I had intended. But I wanted to point out to digital newcomers who may be brought in by the M8 that "going digital" may change a lot more than just what type of camera you use! You may find that you still take pictures almost exactly the same way you did with film, but that you now edit, store, manage, view and distribute them differently.

I'm still ambivalent about that -- sometimes I look at the Agfa Portriga-Rapid prints I have on my walls and feel, "Well, I'll never be able to do anything like that again." But I wouldn't be able to anyway, since Portriga-Rapid has been discontinued for years, and so now I'm just trying to go with the flow of what seems to work in my photo-life...

 

[Desmond]

JIW, that just about sums up my feelings too. My collection of film rangefinders has just about been reduced to the role of nice ornaments to look at and occasionally click a shutter.
I didn't anticipate this either when I bought an Olympus E-10 a few years ago (since replaced by a Canon Pro-shot 1) but it happened.
Interchangeable lenses have also become a habit of the past. The quality of the Canon Ultrasonic 28-200 and even the little Ricoh Caplio 28-200 that stays in my pocket seem pretty adequate for the stuff I do now and will make reasonable A3 prints when needed.
But I'd really love an M8!

 

[boilerdoc2]

Ditto to Jaap, almost to the letter including the 645 film! The PC, CS2, Adobe Raw, and a 2400 are armwd up and ready to roll. In fact are rolling with film scans and D2X and R-D1s images.
To johnbuckley: try it you'll like it!
Steve

 

[JohnL]

Let me apologise beforehand if these issues have already been discussed. But here's some questions for those folks going in the M8 direction.

1. For those folks who are going to an M8 from a film rangefinder, do you still anticipate shooting film or do you think this will be a total jump to digital?

If it's any indication, I use my film SLR very little these days. I use the old Nikonos when I expect to get wet.

2. Are most of the people interested in an M8 already using some form of digital camera?

Well I am, I don;t know about most.

3. Do you anticipate getting any new lenses with the M8 in light of this crop factor or are you just going to see how the whole things shakes out with your existing lineup?

I'll probably get a CV 21/4 and a CV 35/2.5. I already have a CV 28/3.5, and those three will probably account for >90% of M8 use (still assuming I can (a) get my hands on one and (b) justify the outlay.

4. Are you going to put together any type of digital darkroom?

Well, I suppose I already have one: computer, film scanner, ink-jet printer, quite a bit of editing software ...

 

[Grober]

1. I anticipate being 95% diigtal if my M8 pans out as expected. Reason: poor quality of available photofinishing. One film body, a Bessa, will be kept; all the Leica bodies are now gone pending the arrival of the M8.
2. We bought a US$400 Sony point 'n shoot to use as a learning tool and consider it a good investment.
3. Having broken the bank to buy the M8, we'll need to be quiet for a while but, given the cash, I'd upgrade my existing, older 28mm lens to the new Elmarit in a heartbeat. (Also need to change the mount on my Zeiss 25mm Biogon when someone has a reliable conversion to make it invoke the 24mm frame on the M8. Hopefully Zeiss itself will provide this needed service.)
4. We've had a dedicated PhotoShop (alas, it's Windows and not a Mac) machine and Nikon scanner for four years already. Just finished buying more hard disk for the beast so it'll be ready for heavier use.

-g