Ihr Lieben,
zunächst @ Oliver:
außer 5 und 8 habe ich die anderen Probleme noch nicht beobachten können. Und 5 (den Absturz) habe ich vermutlich selber ausgelöst, weil ich nach einer 10er-Serie die M8 zu früh ausgeschaltet habe. Und bei 8 vertraue ich auf den natürlichen Verschleiß ;-)
Aber zur allgemeinen Erbauung könnte ich eine Nummer 9 hinzufügen:
Staub auf dem... nein, nicht dem Sensor, sondern auf dem Display, genauer zwischen Display und der Glasabdeckung. Unlustig! Da vor kurzem zwei Leica-Mitarbeiter in München bei Foto-Sauter (Hausmesse) zu Gast waren, habe ich das Problem mal dort gezeigt: sie fanden's auch unlustig und meinten "einschicken!". Austausch des Displays sei notwendig. Bearbeitungsdauer unbekannt, aber Aussicht auf eine Ersatzkamera... schauen wir mal.
Und @ Hans:
also, ich sehe den Unterschied. Die Ecken (gut sieht man es links und rechts unten) beim uncodierten sind deutlich blaustichig. Und wenn man das sogar am Screen sieht, dann dürfte es auf einem großen Print deftig sein!
Und @ all:
Als kleinen Trost hier ein Zitat einer amerikanischen M8-Site (leider habe ich den originalen Link nicht, hab's auch gemailt bekommen), in der ein paar richtige und interessante Aspekte angesprochen werden
(sorry für den langen Text...).
Grüße,
Nick
Zitat:
>>Jon and the others, a lot if not all of the M8 reviews were done prior to the release of the current firmware (1.10.2) which brings the camera performance to a completely new level, it took some months to Leica to come up with the goods, but hey, this is their first attempt at a professional digital camera, an almost impossible task for a small company, yet they came up with a camera producing files on a par or even better than the best DSLR’s on the market…and as I said in my review, I feel that Leica made a very good decision in getting rid of the filter in front of the sensor, the current external IR filter strategy has no negative sides whatsoever, most people use a UV filter in front of their glass anyway, but even for the so called purists who don’t, these IR filters are manufactured by Schneider and are of the same quality as the Leica glass: immaculate. B.
*****
First, this is a camera for those who own M-mount lenses, those who used to own M-mount lenses and miss them, and those who don’t need to earn back the cost of the camera and lens collection. Many people (myself included) have been waiting patiently for the day that Leica (or anyone!) gives us a platform for shooting digital with M lenses. Epson came through with the R-D1s, and that was a good stop-gap body while Leica worked out the next generation of M body. Now that the M8 is out, it’s clear to me from my extensive use of it over the past 5 months that the image quality is capable of at least hanging with the best non-MF digital bodies available, and in some aspects, bettering them. Bruno is entirely correct to emphasize the microdetail preserved in these files. Coupled with the sharp lenses and a very healthy dynamic range, even shots in ISO 1250 or 2500 are coming out with more depth and dimension than DSLR equivalents, and ISO 320 and 160 are looking a lot like film, if processed correctly.
This brings me to my second point: digital processing. The reason that this camera is not for novice digital shooters is that it requires a fair amount of tweaking to get superb images. First, you need the IR filter in place. Second, you need 6-bit coded lenses for all focal lengths under 50mm, as the IR cut filter will impose cyan vignetting otherwise. This means that you need to send Leica lenses to Leica for coding (at $100 a pop) or you need to “hand code” Zeiss, CV or other lens brands by using a sharpie on the mounting plate. Third, you need to shoot RAW (which is DNG format in this case). The auto white balance is finicky and changes from shot to shot—as Bruno notes, accurate WB can be done in post, but not in camera. This makes shooting JPEGs more or less useless, unless you prefer to chimp black and white previews on the LCD. Fourth, you will need to really process these images in post. C1 LE comes with the camera, and is probably the best converter to use from an image quality standpoint. But for convenience of use, ACR and LR win. This means you’ll have to calibrate presets for the camera and you’ll find yourself tweaking a fair amount in post. Why? Because it’s insanely fun…the M8 DNG files can tolerate more push than any RAW file I’ve ever seen. Again, Bruno mentions shooting underexposed, which is a good practice for this camera. Other digital cameras do better at recovering highlights, but the M8 is exceptional at recovering from shadow. As long as there is no highlight clipping in the file, you are almost guaranteed to have a brilliant print. You’ll bring up the noise as you push to the right of the histogram, but that noise is the prettiest I’ve ever seen (another point Bruno gets dead-on).
Finally, don’t forget to consider total cost of ownership when looking at the $5,000 price tag. The hidden costs are computers, storage, printers, print supplies, and that damn lens addiction that is worse than heroin and will have you on the phone with your “dealer” far too often to be healthy. On the other hand, you are buying total control over your output, from capture to print and everything in between. A laptop and a nice printer can eliminate labs from your life altogether, if you’re not careful.
***
When you guys give Leica your feedback, you should petition them to allow the OPTION of writting uncompressd DNG files.
It appears that during the compression from a 20MB to a 10MB DNG Leica is tossing more information in the highlights, than in the shadows and midtones.
A colleague of mine who’s a noted imaging expert and the co-author of one of the most sophisticated pieces of image manipulation code on the planet, took a look at what they are doing and this really appears to be the case.
Leica swears up and down that their compression is lossless, but frankly I believe my friend, whom I have worked with for nearly 15 years. I also find it difficult to believe that there is no loss, when you are cutting your file size in half.
The 16bit DNG files would be twice as big, but there should be more information in them. Interestingly the prototype M8 cameras wrote 20MB, 16bit files.
The M8 would also have to process twice as much information and the storage capacity of your SD card would be cut in half, but it would be nice to have as an option when maxium image quality and dynamic range is needed.
The DMR back for the Leica R8/R9 writes uncompressed 16bit files. Color fidelity is extremely impressive. <<
