Release Date: September 19th, 2006.

Leica's M8 is real... it exists, and I've had the pleasure of using a pre-production
M8 for the last week.  I have, however, been sworn to secrecy... until now.

I'll do a full report, when I return from Photokina, mid-October.  But, I promised
that LRflex list members would see it here first, so...
a brief user-report follows, for those who are interested.

Note: This page is a rush job... created just before heading to Photokina.
Items listed as they came to me... not in any order of importance.
More photos - below the text.
 

There's no film wind lever or rewind crank, which leaves a very clean top plate.

The hole for the rewind knob has been filled with an easy to read LCD display
 which shows both the remaining exposures on your card and the battery indicator.

Under the very standard looking bottom plate is the
SD card slot and lithium ion battery access.

Controls are intuitive.  The rear LCD screen is bright, clear and easy to read.
 The menus are simple, not heavily layered and quick to set.

MOST IMPORTANT!  Time from switch-on to picture taking is under one second!
A vast improvement over the 7 seconds needed by the DMR!

The M8’s sensor (3916x2634 pixels) is slightly larger than that of the DMR
 - both are 10+ megapixels.  Crop factor is 1:3 rather
 than the DMR's 1:3.7

A lossless compression is used one the M8's DNG files - thus  the M8's RAW files
are a modest 10mb in size, vs. the 19 mb with the DMR.  This means
both more photos stored on a given card or hard drive and
faster writing to the memory card. 

I will try to find out, while we're at Leica, if they plan to implement this
compression in an update of the DMR's firmware.

Looks, feels and handles like any "M" camera.  The body is 1mm thicker to
 accommodate the LCD panel. While dyed-in-the-wool 'M' fans may notice the
difference, I certainly didn't!  The camera is light (especially compared to the
R8/DMR combination), compact and both quick and easy to use.

Noise is higher than the 'tick' of the classic 'M' shutter, but that is because
of the motor winder (for the shutter, not the film!).  The R8/9 shutter is used,
and on it's own, it's actually quieter than the standard "M" cloth shutter.
The M8 is very quiet and inconspicuous in use.

Like the DMR, the M8 has no anti-aliasing filter over the sensor.
 AA filters reduce the moiré patterns caused by regular geometric patterns interfering
with the regular spacing of the pixels. But they also reduce the ability of the sensor to
capture fine detail. Because every other decent digital camera has an AA filter,
both the M8 and DMR will outperform cameras with many mega-pixels more. 
(The DMR’s picture quality has most often been compared to Canon’s 16mp
full-frame D1s MkII.  And now you know why!)

The meter is exceptionally accurate and the display is marvellous. 
In ‘A’perture priority mode, the shutter speeds are shown in the bottom of the finder. 
Manual metering is identical to the M6-TTL, with two arrows and a dot.
  But, unlike the R8/9, where you seem to be looking at the display, 
the numbers and arrows seem to ‘float’ in mid-air.
Large, easy to see (even with eyeglasses!) and not at all intrusive.

----------------------------------------

I am honouring Leica's request that users of the pre-production cameras not publish

any photos from the camera... this is a because the firmware (Version 0.23) is
not yet finalized and the pictures are not what Leica feels they should or will be.

This limitation is unfortunate, for the photos I obtained were superb!  It makes me wonder
what they have up their sleeve!

I apologize for the poor quality of the photos... Time was very short, and so I used a quick
and dirty image resizing program... the drop from 25mb tif files to 20kb jpgs
left a lot of artifacts.  Still, you'll get the idea.

There will be much more, in the upcoming issue of the LHSA's Viewfinder.
If you wish a copy, you'll need to join - a worthwhile idea.
http://www.lhsa.org/