frederick_muller Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 <p>Interesting ... was in a London leica shop this week-end and was told "they don't buy used M8's anymore". At the same time, they pumped a used Monochrom out the door for £5,000. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carbon_dragon Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Clearly that isn't the case generally. There are plenty of M8's on the market. But one may worry about electronics parts availability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aplumpton Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 <p>Each shop has its buy and sell priorities and perception of the market, so I would not read too much into that. It would also be a surprise to learn that Leica repair facilities like those at the North American Leica New Jersey facility are not servicing the M8 anymore.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james_elwing Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 <p>Plenty of UK M8's for sale in general apparently, at wide variety of prices, but you are right about Monochrom going for around 5000UK pounds. It looked crazy so I checked it out.<br> Since they are for sale new, incl VAT for 6000 +/-, why would you? More money than sense; come on, that's an old Leica joke.<br> Incidentally, I saw a Jackie Chan movie shot in Australia last night where he runs a large mining ore truck over a Rolls Royce. We Australians don't respect established cultural icons; certainly not enough to pay 83% of the new price for a second hand digital camera ;)</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_bradshaw1 Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 <p>Well, I can find one online for under £1,000 fixed price and a couple of others for just over £1,000, also fixed. So if they're going to even slightly compete with that and cover their profit margin, they probably would have to offer a price which people won't accept, as they aren't willing to accept that their precious camera is now worth so little. I also can't really see why you would buy one now: I have a fine APS-C M-mount camera (Ricoh GXR with M mount module) with a newer sensor than the M8 which cost me significantly less than £1,000. I might be interested in a digital M if it was FF, but not really in another body which will make all my lenses be too long.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frederick_muller Posted January 20, 2014 Author Share Posted January 20, 2014 <p>Tim, I see the pricing you are seeing as the M8 market ... it's probably £770 bid - £1,100 offer and it'll be interesting to see if anything moves at £1,100. I am particularly interested in one seller who is offering M8's at £1,400 and M8-2's at £1,700. Anyone who lifts an M8 at £1,400 there is not checking the market, and I bet if I went to this guy to sell an M8 he'd bid £600 or £700. Well, on second thought, until he moves his units, he may be bid zero.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul_wheatland Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 How long will we use digital M bodies (ie how long will Leica repair them) thread from 12-29-2013 on this forum may add to this thread concerning Leica M8 model</h1> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carbon_dragon Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Check the KEH.com website for a price point. It's in US dollars but you should be able to convert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aplumpton Posted January 21, 2014 Share Posted January 21, 2014 <blockquote> <p>I also can't really see why you would buy one now: I have a fine APS-C M-mount camera (Ricoh GXR with M mount module) with a newer sensor than the M8 which cost me significantly less than £1,000. I might be interested in a digital M if it was FF, but not really in another body which will make all my lenses be too long.</p> </blockquote> <p>Tim, if I understand you properly, you don't see why anyone would want a 1.3X crop digital camera body (Leica M8), yet you are happy even with a higher crop factor on a Ricoh camera?? If one doesn't already have a sensor crop factor body they may not care that much about having a FF body and would accept the crop sensor just as most photographers have done in recent years.</p> <p>I paid full price for my M8 many years ago and I couldn't care two f**ts whether the resale value today is 1/2, 1/4 or 1/6th the price paid nearly 7 years ago. The pleasure of use over 7 years (and counting) is worth the depreciation. Yes, it is a heavy depreciation (actually about 1/3rd of original cost), but is that not par for the course with digital cameras? What is any 7 year old digital camera worth today?</p> <p>At $1700, it is still a decent system camera despite its few weaknesses. For those who shoot B&W IR images it is very good and its colour rendition is also very good, using the IR cut filter, although I prefer to forgo the filter and its potential image degrading effect which is common to any add on glass filter.</p> <p>If you want a digital FF body, there is the M9 or ME at a price, or the recent Sony A7 or the 36 MP A7r, at less than a thousand dollars more than a used M8.</p> <p>All this jazz about price (1400 versus 1100 pounds sterling) is a bit off target, when the particular feel and manner of use of the M bodies are as important as other considerations.</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_bradshaw1 Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 <p>Arthur: my point really was that I'm happy with the crop M mount on the Ricoh because it cost me something like a third of the price of a 2nd-hand M8 (the whole system was less than a 2nd-hand M8, but that includes the 50mm-e module I use most of the time: the M mount module was just a bonus). And secondly that the people who a crop-factor body would really appeal to, now, are presumably only people who have an investment in suitable lenses, and that, I ssume, rules out people (like me) who built up a set of film lenses and also people who are starting from scratch now, because if you were starting from scratch why would you build a set of lenses in lengths suitable for a crop body when there are FF bodies? That market will never get bigger than it is now, which explains the undesirability of such a camera, especially as second-hand M9s start coming down in price.</p> <p>(I guess the second point is predicated on people being both fussy about effective focal length and stingy. I am: I really use nothing longer than 50mm and nothing shorter than 35mm on 35mm film, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of money on a 28mm lens that I'll just never use on a film or FF digital body to get 35mm-e on a crop body, and equivalently I'd object to spending a significant amount on a crop body on which I would never use my (4, oh God do I have that many?) 50mm lenses.</p> <p>I certainly wasn't trying to imply the M8 was somehow a bad camera, just that I can see why shops might not be interested in it now.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frederick_muller Posted January 22, 2014 Author Share Posted January 22, 2014 <p>I love the M8's black and white rendition, though I find its color performance useless. For a guy who cut his teeth on ASA 400 Tri-X and HP-5, it's great. When I first saw its color performance, I thought it was an expensive black-and-white-only platform, but that's until I saw the Monochrom. As it stands, I'll probably continue to use my M8 for black-and-white-only and just run it into the ground ... at the end of the day, that's what Leicas were built for, shooting.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carbon_dragon Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 For landscape work at least the color rendition of the M8 seems fine to me and if it bothers you you can always use an IR cut filter. And if you use a regular IR filter, you get handheld IR photography without a camera conversion. And good black and white too. Very versatile. Note my own picture if they happen to display it at the end of this post is from my M8, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Williams Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 <blockquote> <p>Well, I can find one online for under £1,000 fixed price and a couple of others for just over £1,000, also fixed. So if they're going to even slightly compete with that and cover their profit margin, they probably would have to offer a price which people won't accept, as they aren't willing to accept that their precious camera is now worth so little.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, it's really a buyer's market now. The major London dealers generally have M8s on sale for £1200-1400, and I imagine acquire them for about half that. I suspect they can't shift crop sensor cameras with IR issues very quickly in 2014, whereas a nice M9, at about double the price of an M8, often goes within a few days of being listed.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Taylor Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 <p>I just went through the process of buying a used digital M. The M8s are super cheap, while the newer models really hold their value. I ended up with a basically brand new M9, (1000 actuations, all packaging, documentation and receipt) for about 60% of the new price. I was happy with that.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pensacolaphoto Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 <p>With the IR cut filter, the colors are beautiful with the M8.<br> I use it side by side with an M9,</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Herbert Posted January 25, 2014 Share Posted January 25, 2014 <p>"I love the M8's black and white rendition, though I find its color performance useless."</p> <p>Really, care to show some photos to show how useless it is?</p><div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frederick_muller Posted January 26, 2014 Author Share Posted January 26, 2014 <p>I stopped using it for color after I saw all those magenta blacks just about everywhere.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aplumpton Posted January 26, 2014 Share Posted January 26, 2014 <p>Frederick, I presume you have tried using the the UV/IR filters which overcome the IR sensitivity of the M8 and which resolve the magenta blacks issue. Coded optics lessen cyan fringing in the corners but color artifacts are mostly resolved using the UV/IR filters. Little used filters are likely available on the used market (as well as new), given that the M9 and later digital Leicas have in built IR blocking filtration.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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