After using the Epson R-D1 for a while, I was not completely satisfied. It is a nice camera, I love the analog camera handling (manual shuttercocking, beautiful dials, quiet, display can be folded away) but somehow it felt a bit.. lacking. I took some nice pictures with the camera, and it did feel like shooting analog, but still, the photo’s from my M6 looked so much better.

It was mostly obvious when I was shooting during rehearsalweekend with my orchestra with a new lens, Voigtländer Nokton 35/1.4, a very nice, contrasty lens. The photo’s from the epson where quite ok. The photo’s from the M6 where AMAZING.

After that, I did some shooting for cinemasia. First I was shooting with my Nikon D200, but I did not like it at all, pics where ok, IQ better than the Epson, but still no love for SLR. So I ended up shooting with the M6 and R-D1 instead which worked ok.

Then I got obsessed with the M8. Saw some reasonably cheap M8’s on marktplaats, but it was a hassle to actually get one, until I could buy one from a very nice guy from who I bought the Voigtlander before. And I love it. I do prefer a black one, so maybe someday I might trade it in, but it is a beautiful camera and it does work like my M6.




So how does it compare to the Epson R-D1?


Things I like better on the Epson:

- Shutter is a bit more silent. I can cock the shutterm anually, but the M8 also has a discreet mode.
- Seeing all parameters on the dials, without having to turn on the display
- Black & white preview even when shooting raw
- Display can be folded away
- Iso 1600 is somewhat cleaner (less noise) than the M8
- On/off switch is better: on the m8 I tend to switch it to continues mode
- Less infrared sensitivity
- White balance is better (not that I use colour...)
- Small charger

Things I like better about the M8:

- higher resolution, 10 versus 6 Mpixel. Of course Mpixel is not that important, but the M8 is a LOT sharper, I can use crops better
- better framelines, 90mm frameline
- Automatic cocking
- 2500 ISO mode (not great, but usable)
- Smaller
- Much better contrast
- It’s a Leica, and I am not immune to snobism...
- Crop of 1.3 instead of 1.5
- Supports SDHC cards instead of just SD
- Just works like my M6
- Uses DNG

In the end, the most important things for me are: better IQ (mostly contrast), smaller and snobism... What I was looking for was a digital M6, for black & white photography and I found it. I might even do less film (although I just bought 20 rolls of xp2).

Next to the M8, the Epson feels bulky. It is bigger than my Nikon SLR.






There you have it. That made me decide to sell the Epson.

There are a lot of serious complaints about the M8:
- Loud shutter (but there is a discrete mode to postpone the cocking, and it is still more silent than a dslr)
- Infrared sensitivity (which is nice for IR phtography, can be dealt with with an infrared cut filter, and does not matter so much in black & white)
- Bad high iso performance (still usable, has a nice grain when converted to black and white and does retain a lot of sharpness)
- Slow writing to the card (is an issue, but I try not to chimp, so it’s not such a big deal)

And of course, what matters are the photos.

Tags: photography