Sailor Ted said:
Actually the screws coming loose are not from the camera. For that we're talking about a few OP's whose sole intent is to portray this camera as having issues it does not- that's the "screw loose" IMO. In fact not only do such detractors have a screw loose, they also project a motivation that mystifies most Digital M users. After all we have the camera, we like or love it, and yet we are met with a kind of fanatical denunciation as if to say “your crazy if you like that POS, don’t you know it’s not a good camera?” This attitude seems mostly to come from people who have never used an M8 and who are in turn basing their information on hearsay or a friend of a friend who touched one at B&H. It’s all very odd to those of us who own this camera and know the truth- yes it needs IR cut filters but we obviously don’t care or are working around it due to what the M8 is, a world class DRF.
Several years ago I bought an Olympus 5050. For about a week I used it on the street. Suddenly, one morning as I set out to shoot I discovered that the LCD display on the top of the camera was scrambled. I took it back to the camera shop about a block from my office, handed it back, and got a new replacement. I took the new camera back to my office and started setting it up to my default specs. About half way through that process it locked up. Wouldn't respond and wouldn't turn off. I took it back to the shop, got my money back, and switched to a Nikon.
Yes, new digital cameras can have teething problems, but that was a $600 "consumer" camera. Eventually it settled down and, from what I've read, was quite satisfactory within its class. On the other hand, I've had several "professional" digital cameras: An Olympus E-20, a Nikon D100, and a D2X. I bought each one practically on the day it came out. I've never had any kind of problem with any of those cameras. I use the D100 and D2X daily, and now, years later, I've still never run into a problem with either of them.
All my life, and that's quite a while, Leica has been considered the most reliable camera manufacturer in the world, or at least close to it. My beef with the M8 isn't that I think screws will keep falling out of it, or that I think shutters will keep locking in burst mode, or that the camera always will be unable to write to certain flash cards, or that there'll always be green blobs and banding, or even that I think the M8 or its successor always will require IR filters on its lenses. If Leica survives, all of these problems will be solved.
But the fact that Leica released a supposedly professional camera without enough beta testing to catch these easy to catch problems leaves me with a sinking feeling about Leica's ability to produce a satisfactory digital camera. Clearly, it isn't satisfactory at the moment, and just saying "Don't say that!" doesn't change that fact. I'm just as eager to go shooting with a real "professional" M8 as any defensive M8 owner, but I'm willing to face the fact that I'll have to wait to do that. As someone once said, "Facts are stubborn things." Turning away from them doesn't make them go away.
