M8?

[stuart_richardson]

There are many characteristics of a lens that are clearly evident in web sized images --

distortion (or lack of it), the presence or absence of flare, the treatment of light sources in

the frame, the character of the out of focus areas, tonal gradation, color fidelity

(assuming you and the poster has a color managed workflow), vignetting and macro-

contrast. Yes, differences will be greater when viewed as well-executed prints, but just

because it is downsized does not mean everything looks the same.

[gwebster]

"Amblyopic" - not "ambliopic"

[vinay_patel]

Thanks for spell-checking my post Gordon. I take it back, you can have a useful function here after all. BTW in every language other than English (that uses the same alphabet), it's spelt "ambliopia". If I ever decide to switch specialities to opthalmology I suppose I will have to be more careful of my spelling since one never knows where one may encounter a pedant.

[bloosqr]

Stuart you are of course right but i do think the variations in contrast and color fidelity are

so subtle between any non-toy lens on something that is of web-resolution that

photoshop can in 2 seconds make the 'appeal' of the images indistinguishable. Flare,

distortion and vignetting are more serious and less trivally fixed, but most of the major

manufacturers have done pretty reasonable jobs in minimizing these issues.

 

I guess what I am saying is I think if I had given you a reasonably fast lens by any

reasonable camera manufacturer along w/ a camera whether it was film (scanned w/ a

decent scanner) or digital (like a small digicam) you would have made a photograph that

will be like 95% of your really nice example...

 

Particularly w/ any camera w/ raw (or equivalently > 8 bit scanning) which necessary

implies some amount of projection back to 8 bit space, I dont think we really are hitting

the limits of equipment at this stage .. its all the photographer.. you :)

[stephen_jones8]

Leicas are only good at one or two things??? Not true, If you've used them for a while you'll

know that they are good at LOTS of things, landscapes, theater, portraits, candids, travel

etc. They are only not good at macro and long tele work. That's two things!

 

Out of all the lenses i've used over the past thirty years, leica lenses are the only ones

that consistently surprise and amaze me with their image depth and quality. I've seen

similar sharpness with Nikon lenses. Minolta lenses and similar color quality with Canon

lenses, but across the board,tonality, depth, color, sharpness,clarity...I'd rate Leica glass

the highest based on WHAT I SEE as opposed to what I read..The cameras themselves are

not perfect.NO CAMERA IS.

 

I believe that the Leica M8 is probably worth the investment as long as you realize that ALL

digital cameras soon become outdated by the next technology. For me 10mp is more than

enough but for you..a few years down the road, it might not be. I think it's not a good

thing that we have to keep updating our cameras. I want to use the same model for ten

years or so , so that I can get to know it well. I'm still using my M6ttls for that

reason.Digital is convenient but a nuisance to keep upgrading. hasn't done my eyesight

much good either, all that editing on computer screens for hours on end.

 

Ah..the good ol' days of film. Camera systems all had their own character. i never get

excited by going to the camera store to look at digital cameras whose controls and design

layout are pretty much the same.I think to be honest film leicas were a good buy because

of their longevity in terms of use. you'd be using them for years and years. But it's a fact

that the M8 will almost certainly be superceded fairly quickly by the M9...M10? and so on.

The nature of the digital marketplace and technology control this game...that makes the

M8 rather expensive for me. if money was no object, I'd go for it.

Well, just a few things to think about.