Sketching?
Filed in - Leica (RF) - April 29, 2007I’ve been thinking of writing a Leica M8 review, but been put off by the effort involved to do it well, and the fact that lots of e-ink has already been spilled on the subject.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the format question. No, not sensor size and all that, but the difference between what used to be called small format and large format photography.
Mike Johnston’s posts on the cons and pros of the M8 has begun to nudge some of the ideas out of me.
To start with I agree with Mike’s assessment of the camera. Well, I would be a little more extreme. The bad bits are worse and the good bits better than he has written. But, yeah, he is mostly on target.
Where I differ is on the question of the camera’s role in life.
Ignore for a moment the fact that you can use any camera for anything if you want to enough and are good enough. Push that aside and what you have in the history of the M range is sketching cameras. Cartier Bresson said something along the lines of photography being instant drawing. Put together a teeny scrap of film with a fast and fluid camera. Add a dollop of unobtrusiveness and what you get are sketches.
The M8 is not the successor to this style of camera – despite the outward appearances. I’m not sure that we have a digital successor to the Barnack cameras yet. Hopes are currently riding on the Sigma DP1, but then they previously rode on the Ricoh GRD, and various Fuji cameras (because of their low light technology). I would venture to suggest that if your aesthetic intent is the photo sketch then a film Leica M is still where it is at (the new Zeiss Ikon is better in many regards but it is noisier).
Not everyone agrees with this and some wedding and social photographers especially find that the M8 is the unobtrusive camera for their digital needs. But, no, if you want to be the next HCB then the M8 is just slightly too slow, too clumsy and too finicky to do the job. And anyway, the M8 records too much detail.
The M8 belongs on a tripod. It is the smallest, lightest, most practical medium format camera every made. For field work it replaced, for me, a 645 camera and it gives better results faster. It goes to more interesting locations because it is better made and lighter. It is superior in every way. The ‘cons’ that Mike rightly lists do not matter in this context, and what is more, in comparison with most medium format kit they would be seen as plusses, not minuses in the evaluation.
Confusingly, the cameras that we used to call medium format cameras are now taking large format images with those high priced Phase One and Leaf backs.
It isn’t the only camera in the medium format replacement class. For portable landscape work the Canon 5D seems to be the favourite. The 1D cameras are on the large side and chip sizes from the other makers are a bit small (which isn’t necessarily so much just about the chip quality as the focal length needed).
If this is your sort of photography then you have a real choice to make as between the M8 and the 5D. There are some substantial practical differences such as the need for mirror lock up or not. Or the availabilty of zoom lenses or not. Or the depth of field effects that SLR viewfinders create. Or the lack of precision in framing that rangefinder viewfinders create. Or the availability of specialist lenses such as shift lenses. Or the lack of an anti-aliasing filter. Or the ability to use lenses from history with different optical signatures.
Any given person’s decision will depend on their take on the importance of these factors.
My personal choice was not the 5D because I don’t like viewing the landscape at f2.8 through an SLR viewfinder. I could probably learn how to do it, but haven’t, and possibly won’t.
Leica needed to make the M8 seem like an M camera for marketing reasons. But it isn’t. It plays a different game.
” And anyway, the M8 records too much detail. ” lol !
April 29, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
I have often thought of my Leica IIIc and Zorki Standard as sketching cameras. They let me try things out with a quick and easy camera. My Pentax *ist DL is also used as a sketching camera. Not that they don’t have other uses. And sometimes sketches become the final product. Sort of like a musician’s demo tape. I can think of several musicians who made demo tapes that they ended up releasing and they are some of my favorite music. Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and P.J. Harvey’s 4-Track Demos, for example.
April 30, 2007 @ 12:57 am
Without having set eyes on an M8, this seems to be a very perceptive article. I have read a lot (without really being in the market for one) just because I am curious about how digital will develop and how old and new mesh and what a transition looks like. Also, because having given up film for good, there are certain features of a digital camera that are still ‘not quite there’; particularly for use in street photography. Initially I wondered what you were going to use the M8 for but it became apparent over the months, as you have described above. That said, Sean Reid seems dedicated to using the RD-1/1s and the M8 for street photography. Obviously, as you say, each to his/her preference; at the moment the closest to an original Leica ‘idea’ for size and being unobstrusive is the E-400 but it is a consumer SLR lacking the necessary layout of buttons etc and, most importantly, the lens choice. The DP1 should be an interesting camera – I just hope that like so many bits of technology that people pin their hopes on, it won’t disappoint too much!
April 30, 2007 @ 7:01 am
JohnL
Too much detail….
One of the least popular things that I’ve said in the past is that more resolution isn’t always a good thing.
April 30, 2007 @ 9:23 am
I don’t own a Leica anything and hate my Canon DSLR, so I don’t have an axe to grind either way. Your SLR viewfinder DOF issue is easily solved on the 5D with an accessory viewfinder. This seems like a total non-issue.
Of course it’s apples and oranges, but if you give digital the benefit and assume that film grains have to be aligned to a grid as they do in a sensor, a 6×6 frame of Velvia, based on film area and dye cloud size, is 49MP. When, to the best of my knowledge, the biggest medium format digital back currently available can’t even match, let alone surpass that, I don’t think they can be called large format—especially if you do the math to scale that up to what’s required to match 4×5, 5×7, or 8×10. I’m not saying one is better, I’m just saying call it what it is.
April 30, 2007 @ 1:48 pm
I appreciate that Colin but in the general concept of photography where we seem to have a need to pick up the spot of dew on the back leg of a midge at the far edge of a landscape shot your comment struck a chuckle muscle (-:
April 30, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
Excellent thoughts here, thank you.
When Sean Reid pointed out that APS sensors are the new 35mm format, and full frame is the new medium format, he said there was no equivalent of the new compact digicams, until I reminded him of the 110 format.
Though honestly 110 did not give as good quality as, say, a Fuji F30. Nowhere near.
Somebody really has to pull out their thumb and make the “sketch camera”. I’ve been writing about this more than once.
April 30, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
Nicolai,
Your SLR viewfinder DOF issue is easily solved on the 5D with an accessory viewfinder. This seems like a total non-issue.
It is quite clearly much less of an issue for landscape photography than for any more fast moving type.
I’ve found some odd parallax problems using an external viewfinder with an SLR – probably due to the length of the lens (the, so called, nodal point can sit a long way in front of the camera body). Also SLR lenses tend to intrude into the field of view. Zooms need to be marked with the focal lengths you are interested in as well.
On the 5D with primes these wouldn’t be big issues.
May 4, 2007 @ 2:38 pm