Leica M8 - 17 Years Later 

Great video!

Oh! that M8 is totally new! What a super good condition U got one! Lovely!

I save up every year and buy one M8. Up to 9 bodies now. Favorite camera. Ever. ...but the batteries suck. Cheers!

I had the M8, M10 and the type240. Sold all but User Them for nearly 10 years and 80.000 pictures. The M8 is the one I should not have sold. I am always looking for a deal on the M8. The M8` s pictures have a perfect feel. A delicate choise for artists. Toddy I use MP and M7. Great choises but in the digital world, the M8 is King

Great video and honest thoughts on the M8 and love that you're giving your genuine take on it.

nice welcome to the club

Thanks alot for sharing your thoughts with us all ! Intresting video ! I also like to use my M8 + Voigtländer 35mm 1.4 Nokton II + UV IR filter. Looking forward to hear more from you. Greatings, take care, Roger.

I have been using my M8 (upgraded by Leica to M8.2) since 2009 without a problem. Just love the image quality I get out of it. Hopefully I will get 10 more years out of it.

I have both the M8 and M10 and I really still do enjoy shooting the M8 with the quirks. I really thought the faster, smaller M10 would replace it (and get some money back had I sold it) but no. There’s a charm to the images that the M10 can’t replicate. The M8 has warmth while the M10’s outfit feels true to life. I’m keeping mine until it stops working. Then I’ll keep it as a collector’s piece of the first digital M :)

I started my digital Leica journey with the M8, 17 years ago. I finally sold it to purchase the M9 Monochrom, which I loved with its CCD sensor until I was drawn to the Q2 Monochrom. Finally a CMOS sensor true to Black and White photography. I’m considering buying an M8 again, I miss it. I kept my M lenses. I did some of my best photography with it, and started the M8 Photo thread on the Leica User Forum. Both the Black and White conversions and the colors it rendered are simply amazing.

Nice review. Great pictures. Thanks!

I’ve owned M-E M8 M7 M6 I’ve had plenty of Leica Glass. I shot them for years. Sold all except Leica M8 50mm cron. Reason being I kept the M8 is because I’m no Pro

Had my M9 for a few months now… what it has taught me is that you don’t need as much ISO as you think, or manufacturers would have you believe you do. An optical viewfinder is so refreshing, EVFs feel a bit weird after using the M9. The RAW files are quite robust and I actually find 1600iso quite useable, and the colours are just something else. I feel compelled to and enjoy using the camera more that any other I’ve had, and that is really the biggest draw. It feel fantastic in the hand, and yes it does slow you down and makes me more considered. I’ve been getting great results shooting gigs and I like that I don’t always know if I’ve nailed the shot. I enjoy that element of surprise if I nail banger!

Hi KO, Just been watching your 17 year later! vidio! Brillient! I have just recently decided to buy a Leica M8, it's a risk I know? I mean 17 years old!?!? I could be a buying a very expensive paper waieght?!?! I guess I do everything late in life, i always did, the thing is I always wanted a Leica rangefinder, but I never really understood that I would never be able to buy a brand new one! so I stuck to my other cameras, like my Fuji XPro2 and the like. I intend to purchase from MPB, so I hope I at least if I'm lucky I may perhaps get one years worth of life out of my new 17 year old M8. Any tip or advise would be very appreciative, KO, Thank you. John.

Nice video! I have m10r and MP240 but I find myself using MP240 more due to the Chunkiness, image color (which is warmer than m10r and look like film) and battery life. The advantage of the m10r I would say better low light and editing raw files ( When I try to recover shadow from underexpose image from MP240, the image kinda look green)

Having the m240 and10 P and I also prefer the larger M 240 over the smaller

I am considering buying this Leica. However, old age discourages me. I am afraid that you are an expensive camera that will serve me for half a year and then break. How is the Leica M8 doing with reliability even after so many years?

I don,t agree on the M8’s longevity. My friends is now on 80,000 shutter releases and has only been serviced once! Mine is also working perfectly. For me the M8 is a an older Rolex Submariner, capable of great age with well built attention to detail. I purchased my Rolex new in 1991 and it too has only required one service over that time. I feel that the M8 is in this pantheon of beautiful long lasting machines we all love and lust after

I still have an M8 and use it now and then but to be honest I have gone off it somewhat. The main reason has to do with focusing and its viewfinder / rangefinder. The viewfinder magnification on the M8 is 0.68, which compared to that of my old M3 (0.92) is minuscule. I would say that it is the primary reason why the poster of this video has some trouble focusing with it in some circumstances as he mentions in the video. The smaller magnification also means the effective rangefinder accuracy is lessened by this amount and that introduces inherent error into the process. Also, the finder collects less light than say the M3 (which in my view has the best finder of any Leica M - though I can say this as I am happy to shoot lenses of 50mm and above) and that does not help one little bit because it can add significantly to the difficulty of focusing the camera. If you are an older guy like me you must add to that the fact that the M8 finder (in common with all M cameras) does not support diopter correction - for this you need to buy a screw in diopter lens. These are less than ideal as a "solution" to this problem - they only come in a limited range of corrections (and usually also only in half stop increments). Good luck first knowing which one you need for your eyesight then finding one with that correction to buy. And if your eyeglass prescription changes over time you need to do it all again -happy days! Of course there are some variable diopter add on lenses available but these are expensive (especially the Leica ones) and the cost must be added to the already reasonably significant cost of the M body. All of this means I can only use my M8 in specific settings where I know that I will be photographing relatively static subjects and where I know the lighting will be good enough considering the significant limits on the M8s ISO range compared with more modern cameras (you really need to keep it below 640 ISO on the M8). It also means I need to be prepared to stop down somewhat to be sure of hitting correct focus. This is also not ideal as I love to shoot relatively fast lenses wide open when I can. There is still pleasure to be had in using an M8 if you think of it as being like a film camera and you are willing to live with its limitations. But , long story short, they are one bloody big compromise and while I will probably go on shooting mine for now, it I do find myself in a position to buy another Leica camera sometime in the future it will almost certainly be something in the Leica SL range, not a Leica M (which although technically much better than the M8 )are still somewhat limited due to the M's inherent design.

Great video! I love my M8. Quick question - who makes the loop protectors on the sides of the camera? Look better than the standard peak design ones.

I think the M8 is more suitable for outdoor shooting. Wonder where you got that black dot logo from?

Yeah I guess all the m8 users have seen all the videos haha

if you can.. get the jupiter 8 but with red P i highly recommend it

Great Video!! What lens do you recommend to use on a M8 given its has a 1.3x crop censor. I just got myself a M8 as well from a collector the shutter count is around 6000, really good condition and I'm in love with it.

Is it true that the Leica M8 camera's shutter usually fails after only 15,000 photos ?

Hello, do you know what brand Thumbs Up is that on M10? Is the brass one from Match Technical or some cheap?

Where did you get that great high polish J8? Also, the sensor on the M8 is the advantage esp. in B&W.

so does the m8 have the same issue of ccd corrosion that the m9 does?

Even a crap shutter should last 50000 actuations, so your 5000 is nothing really. The chances are the electronics may give up well before the shutter mechanism. I have seriously considered the M8 as I used to have a Nikon D200 with 10MP CCD sensor and I never felt that it kept me back. My only concern is the 1.33X crop factor which means my M lenses will at the widest be about 30mm ( using my 21mm Elmarit ASPH ). Otherwise the M8 is a viable camera.

I don‘t see any reason why the M8 won‘t last at least another ten to twenty years when used regularly...

The CCD sensor gives subjectively better looking pictures. This true of all brands, not just Leica. My Pentax istD and K10D could not be beat by the later CMOS cameras. Same with the old Nikon D40 and D100. Problem is that CCD sensors hit a technical brick wall regarding read out speed and CMOS had to take over to advance the ball in resolution. The M8 is probably the ultimate digital Leica for matching the "Leica look"..

What thumb grip brand in your m8?

which soviet lens is that

That an M8 only should last about 20,000 actuations is what worries me. I hope you're wrong. I have to admit that the very noisy/harsh shutter noise doesn't give me too much confidence. Mine has 10,000 activations today. At least I'm not going to be more thrifty about it, I hope it lasts forever.

Really??Only five year life span...what could go wrong with only 5k cliks? Asking because I am soon to buy one with 10k cliks.

I want the M8.2