Some Portraits and M8 First Impressions

[SimonUK]

Recently picked up my first Leica and first Rangefinder, and as it happens, was spending the weekend in Paris with a few friends, so had the opportunity to test it out. I've missed focus on some of these a little, but i think i'm happy with how some of them have come out.

Impressions wise of the camera, its a very different beast to anything i've shot before, the most similar being an ETRS i used to have, but very different to the X100 i currently have, and the 6D i also own.

For me, its 100% a day-time camera, only. ISO above 640 (to me) is noisy as hell, maybe good B&W conversion would work, but not for colour, i tried to keep this at ISO 160.

All shot with the M8 and 35mm 1.4 Nokton.

I like it, but its left me wondering weather the rangefinder is really for me, maybe i should keep it for a while longer.

I would quite like to give a film M a try ( M4 maybe? )

Comments welcome!

Simon

 

[nlubis]

Keep it for a while.
And yes add a film M, any of them will do.

 

[rbelyell]

if you are and/or feel you must shoot your nokton wide open most/all of the time, then a rf camera probably is not something that is going to yield results pleasing to you. as an example, the DOF you get from your x100 wide open equals to shooting your 35mm nokton at 2.8 on your m8. that will yield many more in focus shots vs losing 2 stops in DOF shooting your nokton wide open.

also, in no way knocking the m8 experience, but there are other digital rf cameras that you can shoot at iso 1600 with very nice results. the m9 and epson rd1 are two that accomplish this.

 

[Nick R.]

Clicking on your photos lead me to a link that froze my browser trying to add "adsoftbold" spamware to my browser.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Yep, OP needs better place for images. M8 files are good for local Gallery 🙂

I'm in opposite.
I have to upgrade my 5D to 6D to get higher ISO and weather sealed body to match 50L.
Very practical upgrade to make...
But the joy and simplicity of using my M4-2 is pushing me to very irrational purchase of archaic and limited M8 as the only digital Leica RF I could afford. Because DSLRs are just tools for me, X fancy series are too complicated and EVF cameras are not my thing at all.