Leica M8 Street Photography Stress Test Portfolio

.

While preparing today's field test of the Leica M8, I spent some time in New York City giving it the ultimate stress test: a photo walk on the streets of Manhattan. My rig was a Leica M8 and a Leica Summicron-M 28mm f/2.0 lens, a Sandisk Extreme III 8GB memory card, and a spare battery. That was it.

Following Bryan Peterson's "Push ISO" tip, I shot in RAW format, at ISO 320, but deliberately underexposed by 1.3 stops to effectively "pushing" it to ISO 800. In my RAW editor, I lightened each shot by +1.3 stops. While I shot in color, I prefer black and white, so some of these shots were desaturated after the fact.

All of these shots are shown uncropped with no manipulation other than to get a proper exposure.

In addition to running the Adorama Learning Center, Mason Resnick teaches the world's first (and, as far as we know, only) online Street Photography course, at Adorama's online photography school partner, the Perfect Picture School of Photography.