More from suburban London, with the crowning of the May Queens for Beckenham, Eden Park, Elmers End, West Wickham and Coney Hall by this year’s London May Queen, after which everyone went to a hall down the road for a nice tea.
Perhaps it was the good weather, or the new camera – a Nikon D300 – but I seemed to take a lot of pictures.
Hi
Knew that D300 was going to prove irresistible. :-)
Tried one today but forgot a CF card to bring home the “souvenirs”
M8 works fine though, this just around the corner from the camera shop.
http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/architecture/53257-wayfarers-arcade-southport-uk.html#post556001
PS delete the link if you are unhappy at off site links from comments no offence taken.
ChrisL
I tried out both the D3 and the D300 shortly after they came out, and the D3 was better.
But having thought about it long and hard I eventually decided the D300 was a better camera for me.
Off site links are fine so long as they are photographic, though unless people are members of the l-camera-forum I don’t think they can see your post. I find having to use CornerFix a bit of a nuisance with the M8, but for me it’s hard to justify new lenses that wouldn’t need it. The M8 files were certainly a bit sharper than the D200, but I think the D300 will run it closer, and is certainly better at high ISO. But of course they are really different cameras, not comparable.
Peter
Doh! forgot about the Leica forum not showing pictures to visitors, I’ve never found out why.
The web consensus (not counting the extremes on both sides) seems to be M8=D3. I would fancy the Zeiss glass (primes, no auto focus) on the Nikon but then I’m still not really over my Ansel Adams quality counts/minolta spotmeter phase. I thought the focus on the D300 was very impressive indeed.
At IS0 160 or even 320 the M8 may give similar resolution to the D3 or D300, but really the Leica falls way behind at higher ISO. The D300 is as good at 1600 as the M8 at 640 in most respects, and the D3 better still. Nikon colour is considerably better in my opinion, and Leica’s auto white balance often pathetic.
One of my friends has a Zeiss lens on his Nikon, doesn’t seem a lot different to the equivalent Nikon to me, but I look at pictures not test charts. He’s happier with it than the Nikon, but I expect he had dropped that a few times.
I use a Leica because it’s the best tool for some jobs, but the M8 rather less so than the M2 or CLE. I don’t think they’ve really though about lenses for digital either – or we would have had a reasonably priced 21mm f2.8. And it’s totally short-sighted of them not to allow for the use of non-coded wide lenses through firmware. Etc …
Peter
Having four lenses for my M6 it made sense to get an M8 rather than sell the lenses. I did buy a 90mm Elmarit M for a good price, circa £400, but Solms wanted £350 to “check and calibrate” brfore coding. As it tested 100% OK for me and it was a 90 I forwent that pleasure. WB is better now but as I shoot jpeg + RAW I’m not too bothered. As you say for what it does well it does it very well. I get excellent files from my P20/Hasselblad V (another link- but no restrictions on this one)
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22425&st=658#
Post 658, bottom of the page – Orchid
but then I wouldn’t use them interchangeably.
Too many people want a one camera solution which is fine if you have a narrow well defined field. Goes back to the SLR marketing when they were sold with enough accessories to tackle anything (not that Leica haven’t been guilty of that either).
The ease of getting rapid results and viewing them critically close has made the hobby of the technophiles bliss. My P20 files wouldn’t look any better on your blog than your D200 and you certainly wouldn’t like to accommodate the file sizes :-) but my 30 x 30 Orchid on the wall is amazing. The wall size HCB prints at Bradford were more than acceptable and that was around 32ASA B+W in 1934. The man behind the lens though ……
“You’re a great cook – what pans do you use ? ”
ChrisL
Just to conclude this story: I did get back, with a CF card the shop to try the D300 again. The only lens “out of the box” was a AF-S DX 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G from a kit so my expectations were limited. I was, not for the first time nor for the last, wrong. Yes it was under a sunny f8 sky so not taxing in any way but the shots were excellent. I do see what you mean, the camera is somehow eager to shoot. In particular I found the release very good to use making my M8 seem clunky (I do have a soft release on that as well). I do want to try a D3 before I commit as they are dropping nicely now (http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/prod584.html). There is trade show in Manchester in June so it’s off with the trusty CF again.
In terms of image quality the D3 will win, at least with good lenses, as I found, so the test with a CF card may be a foregone conclusion.
As well as the body I would need a considerable investment in new lenses for it, But its certainly a good idea to try both out – handling the two together at a Nikon show in January the difference in size and weight is noticeable.