written by speenth on 06/08/2007
Good Points
Small, portable, extremely easy to understand and operate. Refreshingly few bells and whistles.
Technically very high quality images.
Sculptured out of magnesium and brass - strong and a pleasure to handle. Ergonomically excellent.
Fantastic lenses and wonderfully few other accessories - the philosophy is minimalist matched to imaging excellence.
Bad Points
Expensive (but that's cost, not value).
Its a rangefinder - not for everyone and there are compromises on framing accuracy etc.
Not for tele-photography - the longest lens it will take equates to about a conventional 135mm.
General Comments
Brilliant as a go-anywhere camera for journalistic and candid use, landscapes and opportunistic photography. Small enough to be inconspicuous in the field, but sufficiently technically competent for studio work too.
Easy to scoff at - until you've tried one. Then everything else you ever used feels too big and clunky, too complex and a bit tacky. This Leica M8 is a piece of old-fashioned craftsmanship that puts creative photography first and hides its 21st Century technical excellence behind superb ergonomics. It handles intuitively, it takes wonderful pictures and it'll go easily wherever you want to take it.