[Leica] CV 15mm lens on M8

[tarek.charara at pix-that-stimulate.com (Tarek Charara)]

If you need the shot regardless of everything else, I would say this  
will work more than 99.9% :^) You can always crop later...
On the other hand the result can sometimes be an aesthetical  
catastrophe: everything is in focus, the main subject is diluted in a  
("noisy") background, etc...

I have just spent 8 days shooting horses and their riders in a very  
hot (42?C in the shade), very dusty & dry region in the north of  
Benin, testing my very new M8. I will, in the following weeks, post  
some pictures and some text about this adventure, but here are my  
first impression of the M8...
A few words to the conditions the camera was used in; first: Half of  
the time it was about portraits of horses with their owners/riders,  
people caring for horses, etc - very calm. The other half was in  
action - horses galopping in narrow streets or doing figures,  
sometimes less than 1.5 meters from my nose, I was sometimes on a  
scooter (behind the driver) amongst the horses and shooting from  
there...
Two constants: dust & heat.

- The M is a great camera for this kind of shooting mainly because it  
is very light. First I wanted to go the R route with long lenses and  
changed my mind later on and bought the M8. Following one's intuition  
is a very good thing... ;^)
- The M8 is absolutely fantastic, but has some drawbacks when  
compared to my film M's. For example: I can shoot 36 images in a row  
with Tom A's Rapidwinder and get a bit more than 2 images/second - no  
problem whatsoever. The M8 gives me about the same, but sometimes it  
just blocks! The screen then gives the following message: "Attention:  
Data Transfer", the red light in the bottom right corner of screen  
blinks and nothing happens. This can last minutes!!! Only if I  
briefly take out the battery, I would regain control - and lose 10  
pictures. I have lost more than a 100 pictures in this fashion.  
Something I'll check with Leica.
- I'm very satisfied with the battery life of the M8. I know it's not  
as "good" as the Canons battery life, but I managed to shoot up to 3  
2Gb SD cards on one battery, including the chimping. Ok, I did this  
in a very short period of time - maybe 3 hours.
- The frames in the M8 viewfinder are nothing like the ones in my  
film Ms. I'm tempted to say they're a joke. I don't know if this is  
regular, but the one's on my M8 are very unconsistent and absolutely  
unprecise. Unprecise in an unconsistent way - depending on the lens  
used and the distance focused. I had to go wider to make sure I  
didn't miss something in the action... And here is one of  
inconveniences of the smaller than 24x36mm sensor: I get the depth of  
field of the original lens, but a cropped field!
- The minimum ISO of 160 is too high! Specially when you consider the  
depth of field problems due to the smaller sensor! I sometimes found  
myself shooting at 1/8000 and f5.6...
- I didn't shoot too much in available darkness, the ones I did where  
made at 320 ISO and -2 fstops. The end result is very similar to  
Provia 400. I liked that.
- Dust. Ok, I admit that it was very dusty. Very very very dusty! I  
had the impression that the M8 sensor acted like a dust magnet!  
Something I didn't notice that much with dslr's... I had to clean the  
camera, lenses and sensor every night. I would like to say that I'm  
more than satisfied with the lenspen for cleaning the sensor and the  
Zeiss cleaning kit for lenses.
- The picture quality is stunning!

After shooting 5000 pictures with the M8, I think it's a great  
camera, very practical and discreet. By the end of the next  
assignment (Syria/Jordan next month), I will have paid the M8 with  
the money I would have spent on film and processing. I'll probably  
buy a second M8 soon!

I did have film backup. And my Rolleiflex for fun. I shot maybe 3  
rolls of Provia and 6 rolls of Plus-X 120...

Oh, one other thing... I'll definitly upgrade to the saphire glass!

All the best from the south of France!

Tarek

-------------------------------------------------
Tarek Charara
<http://www.pix-that-stimulate.com>


Le 28 mars 08 ? 15:20, TED GRANT a ?crit :

> I don't think anyone has hit on this yet with the wide glass. No  
> matter what lens you have on IE: 12-15-21 and no external viewfiner  
> you know you're covering a wide area so your butt is pretty well  
> covered if you look through the camera viewfinder, focus on the  
> centre of the scene you wish to photograph and keep it there and  
> shoot. You know without question you've 99.9% of the time it's  
> covered.
> In other words, you look with your eyes and see the centre of the  
> scene and some idea of what you'e going to cover with the 15, look  
> through viewfinder at exact same centre location, focus and click!  
> That easy! And I've done that in a rush thousands of times and it's  
> always as close as you need.
> remember KISS! :-)
> ted