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Review Summary
2012-06-17T21:00:00
The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten. Most of the lens in my bag of tricks will fit and work as great on digital as they did on film.
vfm
2011-10-23T21:00:00
Overall a great camera. But you really need to practice a lot to understand the camera, its strengths and weakness.
CHRISTIAN L.
Better than I had wanted
By vfm
The quality will remain long after the price is forgotten. Most of the lens in my bag of tricks will fit and work as great on digital as they did on film.
The Leica M8 is the the first Professional Leica Digital Rangefinder Camera. It features high picture quality even with high ISO settings, with logical, Leica-typical intuitive functions, all in a metal housing made of highly stabile magnesium alloy, available in black or silver chrome.
High Resolution:
The minimal noise CCD was optimized for the special needs of the M-lens system & offers a high resolution of 10.3 mio.pixels. The special adaptation of the sensor with micro lens offset helps to avoid disturbing vignetting in the corners of the pictures. A very thin glass covering obstructs unwanted light by diagonal light.
Full Light Efficiency:
It is now possible to take much more detailed pictures with high sensitivity up to 2500 ISO, as never before with analogue film.
Concentrated & Intuitive:
The M8 features only the most relevant photographical digital possibilities. The functions such as time automatic & the manual focus in combination with the preserved rangefinder principal were maintained. A simple & intuitive menu allows for setting on the 2.5" screen in only a few steps.
Rangefinder:
The Leica M8 has a bright light frame for the 24 & 35 mm, 28 & 90 mm & 50 & 75 mm lenses. Through the focal length extension factor of 1.33x, the effective focal length is from 32 to 120 mm. This makes the use of the APO-TELYT-M 135mm/f3.5 not recommendable. The viewfinder magnification corresponds to 0.68.
Compatibility:
The M8 deliberately is without the resolution reducing Moire-Filter in front of the sensor in order to achieve the full performance of the lens. The high resolution of the M-system lenses produced since 1954 can be used with the M8.
Creative Photography:
The electronically steered & very silent metal blades of the focal-plane shutter can realize exposure times of up to 1/8000 sec. In well-lit surroundings, a photographer's creativity is not hindered with the use of selective sharpness with an open aperture. It is possible to take pictures during daylight hours with selective sharpness with the short flash synchronization time of 1/250 second.
Silent & Discreet:
In order to achieve a silent advance of the shutter, a rubberized silencing friction wheel was placed in the first gear step. The power is transmitted over a cam the entire length of the tension arm. This makes for a very silent noise from the motorized tension of the shutter.
Digital & Longevity:
The M8 has been designed to deliver professional results over many years. The closed all metal housing is made of highly stabile magnesium alloy. The top plate & bottom plate of the camera is milled from massive blocks of brass & then silver or black chromium-plated. For the future, raw data formats will implement the DNG technology due to the fact that it guarantees long archive security.
Raw data converter DVD Capture One, is included, as well as the Leica Digital Capture remote control CD software.