Equipment->Reviews: June 2008 Archives

Looks like Edirol came out with a hardware update to the R-09 when I wasn't looking: http://www.edirol.net/products/en/R-09HR/

What's new, I can't really tell but it looks like it has better internal mics, a wireless remote (no more keypress fumbling sounds), 96 khz resolution on the top end, and a preview speaker.

Oh, here's a comparison of the two on Roland's page: http://www.roland.com/faq/en/R-09HR/R-09HR_Comparison.htm

Battery life appears to be the same which is a letdown. Surely they could've fixed that! All in all, important fixes for someone looking to buy a new flash recorder but not enough to entice be to replace my current one.

There's a more positive review of the Leica M8 by photojournalist Bruno Stevens:

Not withstanding all its technical qualities, the best point of the M8 is that it is a true M Leica. The ability to shoot discreetly in a crowd, to be inconspicuous on a street, and finally to point a small innocent-looking camera in the face of the people you photograph instead of a big black brick, the ability to see 'over' the frames of your pictures in the clear viewfinder, the incredibly small size and weight of a system such as described above (just ONE spare lens for four focal lengths) makes the M8 an absolute winner in my view.

Read more: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0709/camera-corner-the-leica-m8-on-assignment.html

The difference I think is that Stevens mostly worked in B&W which mitigates the most serious flaws that Kamber raised.

Photojournalist Michael Kamber gives the Leica M8 a realworld fieldtest in Iraq. His conclusions are pretty negative:

The Leica M3 of the 1950’s was an instant success, not because Leica held to quaint design and outdated technology (i.e. the M8’s removable bottom plate) in a misplaced effort to attract classicists, but because they used new technology to build a camera that was on the cutting edge of its time. The M8, in contrast, is years behind other cameras—a photojournalist’s tool that cannot white balance, consistently expose a picture or deliver reasonable low-light performance--and one which has poorly designed controls.

As I said earlier, I do not write this because I dislike Leica, quite the opposite. I have used their cameras for 23 years and invested tens of thousands of dollars in their products. When working in war zones, however, my first rule is to eradicate all the uncertainties from my kit. There are enough uncertainties when the shooting starts. The M8 introduces numerous uncertainties into the photography equation. For a working photojournalist in a combat situation, I would judge the Leica M8 to be unusable.

Read rest of article: http://web.mac.com/kamberm/Leica_M8_Field_Test,_Iraq/Page_1.html