> I'm kinda surprised that this combat photojournalist would consider > an M8 as appropriate to his field work after using a loaner. I could > tell immediately from fooling with it at the store that it fits in > the class of use that the K10D and L1 fit in, not the kind of bash > around rugged piece that the E-1/E-3, Canon 1D II, or Nikon D3 were > designed to be. > > Godfrey
The author ///wanted/// the M8 to be the right camera for the task because it's predecessors were classic combat cameras whose profiles defined the breed. So he forgave it many faults before finally damning it. And still, he and his professional colleagues await the "professional axe" that the M8 should be, but clearly isn't. He needs a discreet tough camera with good manners in the field. He doesn't want the OlyNikCanSon concept of TotL (nice acronym) where getting toughness also means getting a dangerously conspicuous and overfeatured (for his needs) behemoth of a camera. TotL for Leica once was synonymous with togh and discreet, but how discreet is a camera that will light up its rear LCD in the middle of a perilous night patrol, just because it got jostled? So he needs to tape up the controls to prevent them getting altered by jostling? That's nothing new, wedding guys have long taped shutter dials onto the x-synch value for their camera, or filled M-synch sockets with epoxy cement to prevent them being selected. An old boss once warned me that, in days past, press photographers would routinely fiddle with the camera settings of their rival newspapers' photographers. Some teachers at my old photography school would twist dials and turn knobs on any studio setup they saw unattended. It was a hard lesson to return from loading film to find your work undone, worse still if it went undiscovered until the film came out of the fixer a half hour later. So it became routine to protect your gear and frequently check its settings. This guy has forgotten how to check settings. OTOH I got the impression that this guy leans too heavily on technology. So he needs to set up the white balance and not use auto WB universally. Annoying but not really deal-breaking. So he finds the auto exposure erratic. IMO that's a legacy of the Leica's design, as it doesn't have a reflex focusing screen to aim its meter cells onto, neither does it get its exposure values from a live CCD display as DSLR-like bridge cameras do. This photographer should understand that and get over it, then modify his style to accommodate it, if he wants to use autoexposure that is. Or he can just work as sports and news traditionally did, precalculate his exposure, and precalculate any ad hoc variations like the shady end of the street gets +2 stops, or the pool of light outside that window gets -3 stops. Or he can go back to his Canon and quit whinging until Leica either goes bust or delivers the camera he wants. Regards, Anthony Farr -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
