[Leica] M8 questions

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 10:36 PM +0100 2/14/08, Tarek Charara wrote:
>OK, so here I am with a brand new M8... :^)
>
>I'm discovering a lot of things:
>1) It's a disaster for left-eyed photographers, the small screen 
>gets full of nose grease...
>2) The frames are very approximate, I have the feeling they were 
>more accurate with the film M's - Maybe I'm wrong...


It's the same for the film cameras. The frames are accurate at 
closest focussing distance. And because the long lenses have more 
extension, the frames are worse for them at infinity. Also, as the M 
lenses get to focus closer, the framing at infinity gets less 
accurate. For all the above reasons one of the worst set of frames is 
for the 75's since they have the highest reproduction ratio.


>3) 1/8000 of a second is something that can happen very fast! When I 
>forget to change ISO settings and find myself shooting in sunlight, 
>for example!
>4) It's nice NOT to have to get rid of all the dust with B&W...
>
>Questions to all the M8 experts out there:
>What is your sensor cleaning technique? I've bought the camear 
>yesterday and allready 3 or 4 dust specks in the blue skyes (nothing 
>terrible)...
>I'm going to take the camera (along with the film M's & R's)  next 
>week and next month to Benin and to Syria/Jordan in April/May - 
>pretty dusty out there - so, what is your technique to get rid of 
>the dust??
>

I don't worry too much about dust, but I generally clean the camera 
about every 3000 shots or so. It usually comes up after I find myself 
spotting 50 shots where the same dark spot shows up in evenly lit 
areas in images.


I take one picture of a blank wall, put the image into Photoshop and 
pump up the contrast. Lets me see everything. Then, if there's not 
too much there, I might leave it or blow at it with a bulb, and then 
check again. If there is more, I use a combination of a small (about 
6mm wide) paint brush which has been _very_ thoroughly washed 
(brushes often have greases or other material on them from the 
manufacturer), and lint free PEC pads wrapped arount a small, flat 
bit of plastic (also about 6mm wide) with some good pure isopropyl 
alchohol. The last is sometimes the only way to get gunk loosened 
which has gotten stuck on the sensor. After you think it's OK, check 
it again as above.

Do not used canned compressed air, as it's very easy to get some of 
the propellant spattering onto the sensor. Then you very definitely 
will have to use a swab and alcohol, and you might find yourself 
spending an hour at the whole procedure.

The smaller the sensor, the less problems I see. The full frame 
cameras are the worst by quite a margin.


>All the best from Paris!
>
>Tarek
>
>-------------------------------------------------
>Tarek Charara


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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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