The first digital camera in Leica M series is not perfect but a classic.
There are some old products that may have faded out of people’s sight, but every time we think about them, we are full of memories. As a nostalgic column of GeekChoice, Geek Museum hopes to find these products that once surprised and moved us, and bring you back their charming qualities. Leica is one of the most influential camera brands in history.
In 1913, Oskar Barnack made the first prototype of Leica camera, which was also the first camera in the world with 35mm film. After several improvements, Leica I (Model A) was officially launched at the German Trade Fair in Leipzig in 1925.
In the next 100 years, Leica introduced countless classic cameras and lenses, and even more classic photos were recorded by photographers using Leica cameras. The portraits of Che Guevara, the kiss on Victory Day, Marilyn Monroe’s smile, Einstein’s tongue sticking out and other well-known photos were all taken with Leica cameras.
The history of Leica cameras may not be finished in several books, but this issue of Geek Museum wants to share with you the first digital camera in Leica’s most classic M series-Leica M8 released in 2006.
For a camera, 12 years is an out-and-out "old age", but from the appearance, Leica M8 has not left many traces of years.
Simple design, classic silver and black colors, the familiar "Coke logo", and the body made of magnesium alloy (metal frame) and brass (top box and bottom box) make Leica M8 look classic enough to look good in 2018.
Equally classic is the control of Leica M.
There are only two buttons on the front of Leica M8. On the left side of the lens is the lens release button, and on the right side is the wireframe lever. You can view the viewing range of lenses with different focal lengths in the viewfinder without changing the lens.
At the top, from right to left, there are a switch, a shutter speed pulsator, hot shoes and a small screen that can display the remaining number of SD cards and battery power. However, it may be that our M8 battery is a little aging, and the power display is not accurate. It is not significant to display the remaining number of SD cards for the SD cards that are now tens of hundreds of GB. Leica simply cut off this small screen in the later products.
With the pulsator on the right switch, users can directly choose three shooting modes, namely, S (single shot), C (continuous shot) or countdown, but the continuous shooting mode of Leica M8 is basically unavailable, its continuous shooting speed is only 2 shots per second, and it is very easy to crash in continuous shooting. After the crash, it can only be solved by removing the bottom cover and pulling out the battery.
Turning to the back of the camera, you can see a 2.5-inch screen that was still mainstream in 2006, but now it can be described as "garbage". Looking back at the photos taken with this screen for the first time is likely to make you doubt your life.
There are several buttons with clear functions on the left and right sides of the screen. A pulsator is integrated under the direction keys on the right side of the screen, which can improve the operation efficiency when browsing and enlarging scenes such as photos. On the upper left of the back is an optical viewfinder with automatic parallax compensation and magnification of 0.68.
When you turn to the bottom, you can see a knob. After removing the cover at the bottom, you can replace the SD card and battery. This 1900 mAh, 3.7V battery can theoretically provide very good endurance performance, but the actual performance depends on the aging degree of the battery itself and the external temperature.
Compared with Canon and Nikon digital SLR in the same period, the function of Leica M8 is much simpler. On the one hand, this is related to Leica’s design concept. Leica hopes that users can focus on shooting instead of spending time studying various complicated functions. On the other hand, this is also related to the focusing method adopted by Leica M8.
Auto-focus is an important indicator to evaluate the performance of the camera. Canon’s top-level high-speed SLR 1 DX Mark II is equipped with 41 cross-focus points, which is even more exaggerated in the era of no reversal. Fuji X-T3 is equipped with 425 phase detection points, and Sony’s high-speed sports machine A9 has 693 phase detection points.
Leica M is the other extreme. From the first Leica M released in 1954 to the recent M10 and M10-P, Leica M has always adopted a paraxial design with the view frame and the optical path of the shooting lens independent, without any autofocus capability, and can only use manual focusing.
When shooting, you can see a small translucent square in the middle of the optical viewfinder. When it is out of focus, the picture in the square is ghosted. Twist the focus ring of the camera to make the two pictures overlap, thus completing the focus. This focusing method is usually called "macular focus".
Photographers have also come up with many good ways to improve the focusing efficiency. For example, in hyperfocal distance, by using a wide-angle lens and a small aperture, the depth of field can be as large as possible, so that clear photos can be taken without focusing (similar to the front camera of a mobile phone). After mastering it skillfully, Leica M can be turned into a "street sweeping" artifact.
Compared with SLR in the same period, Leica M8′ s macular focusing has some special advantages. For example, when the shutter is pressed, the optical viewfinder will not be as black as SLR, and the surrounding environment can be better observed when shooting. The structure of manual focusing lens is simpler, so it is more convenient to make a small lens with excellent optical quality.
However, there are some inherent defects in macular focusing, for example, it is impossible to shoot at a macro (unless some new models are connected with a macro adapter to focus with LiveView), it is difficult to focus with a telephoto lens over 90mm (the wireframe of the viewfinder will be very small), and the accuracy is limited. It is not easy to focus with a large aperture lens such as Noctilux-M50 mm f/0.95 when the aperture is fully open and the depth of field is very shallow.
For "novices" who have never been exposed to paraxial cameras before and are used to modern SLR, reflex-free and smart phones, macular focusing still has a high learning cost, but in the eyes of many professional photographers, this "primitive" focusing method is an important part of Leica M’s unique experience.
Leica M8 uses a CCD made by Kodak, with 10.3 million pixels, and the size is APS-H, which is slightly larger than APC-C now, and the conversion ratio is 1.33. The Minolta M-Rokkor 40/2 hung on our M8 can just get the equivalent focal length of about 50 mm. On the M9 released in 2009, Leica upgraded the sensor to Quan Huafu, which made the M8 generation the only "defective pair" in Leica M history.
In order to get better picture quality, Leica also removed the infrared filter in front of the CCD on M8, and eliminated the moire fringe through the software processing of the camera. However, this design was later proved to be unreliable. Leica M8 has a high probability of making black objects purple in the sun. The solution is to install a UVIR filter in front of the lens. Leica has also given free UVIR filters to users who buy M8.
Leica M8 also has a very advanced mechanical shutter with the fastest speed of 1/8000th second at that time, and it can also shoot with a larger aperture in the sun to get better blur effect.
However, this high-speed shutter also caused the shutter sound of M8 to be loud, almost catching up with the SLR of the same period. The "elegance" of the paraxial camera was instantly halved with a "thud", which attracted the dissatisfaction of many photographers at that time. On M8.2, an upgraded version of M8 released two years later, Leica greatly reduced the shutter sound, but the shutter speed was also increased from 1/8000th of a second to 1/4000th of a second.
Considering that M8 is Leica’s first digital attempt on the M series, these minor problems are understandable. Fortunately, these small "bugs" did not affect the reputation of Leica M8 in image quality.
Today, there are still many fans and photographers who have a special liking for the color presented by the CCD of Leica’s first generation digital M, and even the graininess under high ISO has become a tool for many photographers to take black-and-white photos.
This is also the core reason why Leica M8 is still regarded as a classic by many users even though the product itself is not perfect. After all, technology will always beat time, but charming colors are the eternal pursuit of photographers.
Today, 12 years later, Leica M8 is still active in the second-hand camera trading forum at a price of about 10,000 yuan, becoming the first Leica M in the hands of many young photographers, and continues to play its unique value in this era dominated by smart phones and Quan Huafu mirrorless cameras.