Leica M8 Digital Review and Sample Photo Gallery

I recently had the pleasure of being able to trial the new Leica M8 digital rangefinder camera on Wednesday. A camera gear hire shop called L&P Digital Photographic in Artarmon, Sydney had a special offer which allowed photographers to have a free one day trial of the Leica M8. Not one to pass up an offer, I drove in and picked up the Leica M8 before work.

A little background on the Leica M8. Leica cameras have become the standard in photography. From National Geographic to Magnum Photo, many of the award-winning photos in the 20th Century have been taken with a Leica camera. Why? Leica cameras are considered to have the finest quality optics, producing the sharpest and richest photos available. I’d heard about the “Leica photo”, a photo with an indescribable quality that can only be seen on a photo taken through a Leica lens. And it was on Wednesday that I set out to see if this was true.

Note: the purpose of this review is to give you a personal account of my experience with the Leica M8; if you want more technical specs check out the Leica M8 review on DP Review.

When you hold the camera in your hand, you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. The classic design has not changed in decades (the original M series Leica film camera was released in 1954), the camera feels very heavy for something so small (it’s made of solid metal), and almost everything is manual. You feel like you’re holding a piece of photographic history.

The bare-bones Leica M8 is built like a tank

Not knowing what to expect from a 10 megapixel camera whose body alone costs A$5000 (add to that the A$6000 35mm/1.4 Summilux lens that was included), I set out and took some photos along the walk to work in North Sydney.

Coming from a digital world where everything snaps into focus when you press the shutter button half way, the manual focus of the Leica M8 took a bit of getting used to. It’s an interesting (and fun) way to focus - looking through the viewfinder, you see a small rectangle in the centre of the frame. If the scene is out of focus, you see a “ghost” duplicate of the part of the scene that’s in the centre; to focus you turn the focus ring on the lens body until the “ghost” and the original sit perfectly on top of each other. The dial at the top controls shutter speed and ranges from 1/2000 (from memory) to 4 seconds and bulb. There is also an Aperture Priority mode. Added just 5 years ago by Leica, it’s the only automatic feature on the camera and selects the shutter speed automatically based on the aperture you’ve set (much like other cameras).

Previewing the image on the large LCD on the back of the camera, I found the quality of the thumbnail to be lower than that of my Canon Digital SLR. I hoped that when I transferred the photos to my PC, I would be pleasantly surprised. I was.

The first thing that struck me about the Leica photos was the richness of the colours. Normally when I shoot with my Canon gear, I need to bump up the contrast and saturation to give the images a bit more “pop”. However, with these photos, the shadows, the reds, the blues, everything, was faithfully reproduced and soaked in colour.

The second thing that really took my breath away was the image sharpness. Never before have I seen every detail in a photo so faithfully reproduced. In this snapshot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, notice how even the buildings in the distance are still clearly distinguishable.

Even the tiny details (sailboat and houses) on the other side of Sydney Harbour are in sharp detail

This point-and-shoot photo of the Sydney City skyline at Blues Point, North Sydney has rendered every building in sharp, brilliant detail.

This stucco wall had some slight shadows on it and I thought it would be a good test to see how well the Leica M8 handles textures, as lots of cameras have trouble distinguishing such subtle details as stucco bumps on a wall. There was definitely no problem here; every detail to the corners was rendered sharply and flawlessly.

It’s not as apparent in this resized image, but every bump on this wall is captured in breathtaking detail

After work I spent a few hours with one of my friends taking shots of the back streets of my suburb, Crows Nest. I’ve always loved the slick dark back streets dotted with tungsten street lamps and dimly lit parking lots. In my limited experience with the camera feel that these kind of “moody” shots are where the Leica M8 really shines.

This photo of Felicia in Crows Nest’s back streets was taken hand held. The shots display a very unique quality about them that I think would be hard to reproduce with any other camera.

The same image sharpness was there despite the fact I was shooting hand-held with 1/30th of a second shutter and 640 ISO. I set the aperture nice and wide (1.8) which caused the photos to blur in all the right places. The rich and deep contrast and colour was like nothing I’ve seen before; the images had a certain indescribable quality to them - that must be the “Leica photo”.

This photo of Felicia exudes a certain dark and “grungey” feel. Note that all of the photos on this page are straight out of the camera.

Another moody photo of Felicia.

I know I’ve been speaking in superlatives, but I feel the image quality from this innocent-looking Leica M8 is worthy of them. The Leica M8 is the Ferrari of cameras: you get the basic features of a camera with no bells or whistles, but as a reward, you get some of the sharpest and richest photos you’ll ever see.

This is a hand-held photo of a wedding dress at a store in Crows Nest, Sydney. Note how sharp the stitching work on the dress is in the photo.