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Leica M8 Test Part One

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By publishing images of the pre-production camera, against direct instructions from the company that gave him the camera to test, and by not clearly stating that the camera he is testing is not the same as the camera Leica will be delivering to its paying customers, Puts is lying about the performance of the M8.

He has breached his contract with Leica, whether verbal or signed. I'm hoping it's a signed contract with penalties for violation. Are reviewers bonded for these tests? They should be, if Leica doesn't want them publishing certain details before the camera is ready.

I hope that Leica never gives him another camera or lens to test.
 
it would be an extreme exageration to compare the review of Putts to that of Reichmann. Putts reviews aim to be "purely scientific" so the analogy doesn't hold. For lenses, he is a master. when he talks aobut bodies, he makes it sound like the type of tiger they use the fur of on a top of the king of Thailand's edition of the Hermes (or whatever is called) would make any true Leica gentelman a better photographer. I mean, comm'on, read some of his MP, M7, R-D1, etc reviews, they are funny- they really make you doubt whether he was putting film in his cameras before switching to digital.
Daniel Entin said:
It's not a matter of either/or. We need the technical assessment
(this is a piece of sophisticated machinery, after all), and we
need the subjective eyeballing, too (this is an instrument of
creative expression). As Reichmann on The Luminous Landscape so
fairly says, Phil does his job better, then he goes on to his very
valuable subjective evaluation (how else would I know if I can
easily use the camera with gloves on, without Reichmann?)
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Artist Eye's

How wide? My 24L f/1.4 & 35L f/1.4 are fantastic even wide open, as is the inexpensive 35mm f/2.

My 17mm is somewhat like a fisheye but not to the same extreme.

I keep hearing bad comments about the Canon wides. My expierence is not the same as yours or these others. Even wide open and at 100% on screen they are very good. I have a 50mm f/1.4 Summilux that is also very good.

I just don't know anymore, we seem to have so many people who make rash statements that are not in line with reality. Are you a photographer or someone who just needs and outlet to make dispariging remarks?
 
that is interesting. wonder if Leica is unhappy.
 
rami said:
that is interesting. wonder if Leica is unhappy.
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Don't know about Leica but I am pretty sure the retailers will be very unhappy. They want (and need) that positive-rosy-sentimental aura surrounding the M8 lunch.
 
optical_illusion said:
Not only the review but also the entire site are down somehow.
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http://www.imx.nl : 403 forbidden
http://www.imx.nl/start.htm : 404 not found

so that's at least not a typical server error / hosting bandwidth problem, and suggests - strongly - human intervention. Says me, having just PDF'd the cached review that was till on my screen :)

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Bring Back The Mind Of Minolta !
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rami said:
that is interesting. wonder if Leica is unhappy.
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Personally, i'd have raised the whole proverbial legal team. I mean, reviewing 0.23 firmware for pics. Absolute rot, even if you might consider the numbering scheme is really cautious (i.e. how many iterations to production version 1.0? before November release?). I'm sure someone elsewhere has commented how, allowing the R8 delivers .dmg files, there is no talk of procedure in raw conversion. WTF is it with people with websites? I say that adding that this is one guy who makes no above the line money out of advertising.

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Bring Back The Mind Of Minolta !
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optical_illusion said:
Gee, the review is up again. But it seems the sample photos are gone.
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Yeah, this is the internet. They really aren't gone, and neither is the slight offputting taste of it all. Stupid, stupid, stupid :(

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Bring Back The Mind Of Minolta !
=====================
 
Review is back up - with the offending "illegal" betaware samples removed, along with the comments based on them,

Boy, does Erwin have egg on HIS face...

I'll wait for samples from Phil A. (and Sean Reid and everyone else who stuck by their agreement with Leica)!
 
Of course they aren't nasty. I'm quite pleased with mine. But there's no question but that Leica M lenses have an unfair advantage in that they don't need to be nearly as retrofocus as SLR lenses do, from 28mm and shorter. The 28 and under focal lengths became slightly retrofocus with the introduction of the M5 so as to prevent interference with the metering system on it and later M bodies.
 
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Artist Eye's

Yes, that makes sense as I've heard something along those lines. BTW I have the M5 and I do really like it. Yes, it's bigger than the other M's. I can't have everything. But the M5 is a very good rangefinder camera with TTL metering. It's funny they say it's the camera thet almost killed Leica and didn't sell well because of it's size and perhaps because it was the first M with TTL meetering (that's why it was bigger).

The overhanging "right way" shutter speed control dial is great. I don't have to take my eye from the viewfinder to find it-because it overhangs the front of the camera, also you can see the shutter speed settings via mechanical link displayed in the viewfinder. Very efficient. Now just match the two needles and the selected lens aperature value is matched to your selected camera shutter speed. Oh and focus-click and you have the shot.
 
Phil Askey said:
Bizarre then that Leica trust him with a beta camera and appear to
be unaware that he's published images from it.
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Erwin Puts used to be a big rah-rah booster of Leica. No other lenses could find grace in his eyes, whether from Zeiss, Konica or Voigtlander (he did have a soft spot for the Canon FD 55mm f/1.2 SSC, however), and he wrote a lot of nonsense and FUD about the Konica Hexar's flange to film distance making Konica lenses incompatible with a Leica body (I have a Konica M-Hexanon 90mm f/2.8 and use it on my MP, it works very well, so I know he is full of it).

Puts is even used in some Leica marketing material, like a reprint of his Leica lens compendium. So perhaps he thinks they owe him one. I suspect they won't let this slide, however, once they find out about it.
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Fazal Majid ( http://www.majid.info )
 
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