Leica M8 review (black)

Is this the same jacket? The top image, shot with our M8 review sample, shows how certain dark colors turn purplish due to the M8's too-thin IR filter. The image below, shot with a dSLR, shows the dark brown corduroy jacket as it should look.

Though we didn't experience any banding or ghosting in our sample shots, Leica says that some M8 units did experience these issues as well. Leica has issued a firmware upgrade to solve this issue, and noted that all new M8s will have this firmware preinstalled.

Since the M8 doesn't include autofocus, its performance numbers can't really be compared to most other cameras, but we still feel it's useful to share them. The camera took 0.8 second from switching it on to capturing its first image. The time between subsequent shots measured about 0.68 second whether shooting RAW or JPG files. Continuous shooting yielded about two frames per second regardless of image size.

As you'd expect from Leica, we were impressed with the image quality of the M8. For the record, we conducted our tests with a 28mm f/2.8 Elmarit-M lens with the Leica-issued corrective filter in place and the most recent firmware factory-installed. Images showed tons of sharpness, accurate colors, and a wide dynamic range, with plenty of detail at both dark and light extremes. We saw no evidence of JPG compression. Noise was practically nonexistent at the base sensitivity of ISO 160, remains extremely low at ISO 320, and just barely creeps in at ISO 640. At ISO 1250, the noise becomes noticeable and robs a minor amount of sharpness, but images are still very usable. By ISO 2500 noise becomes excessive. While there's still an impressive amount of detail for such a high ISO, the noise present changed to include more off-color specs and crossed our threshold for use at full size. While you'll probably be able to get away with using ISO 2500 images from the M8 at smaller sizes--for 4x6-inch prints or downsized for e-mail--we'd suggest you opt for lower ISOs when shooting more cherished photos.

The sad part about the problems faced by the Leica M8 is that the company could have avoided them. The decision to go with a thinner-than-normal IR filter was a conscious one, which the company made in an effort to eke all the sharpness they could out of their famously sharp lenses. Now, those same lenses will have to be capped with potentially sharpness-stealing filters anyway, and Leica has had to deal with cleaning the egg off its face. To its credit, even with the filter in place our test images were plenty sharp, so the company did step up to the plate and offer a decent solution for their customers. Now we'll just have to wait and see what Leica's customers think of their fix.