| Likes |
|
- Beautiful build quality
- Excellent LCD
- Apparently excellent image quality
- Simple, efficient interface
|
| Dislikes |
|
- Slow burst mode
- Slow image save and display
- Only center-weighted metering
- High cost (even if it's justified)
|
The Leica M8 is built beautifully – both the design and the execution show an attention to detail, a thoughtfulness and a clear vision of utility and elegance. It's a great example of how remarkable a manufactured object can be.
For some time, Leica has served the collectors' market, making limited commemorative editions, and plating cameras in gold. It all seems way too Donald Trump for a brand of camera that has been in the hands of great artists and of photojournalists who recorded history, and by doing so, changed history.
We don't expect that anyone with much sense will buy a Leica M8 because they think it's the only camera that will let them make great art or prompt a more humane world. Cameras don't do that. Still, we hope that the people who buy the M8 will use it, will shoot enough to see if it's possible to wear it out. (We're not worried on that score.) Because the saddest thing we can imagine for an M8 to go up on eBay in 30 years, still in a sealed box.
