Leica M8

Launch price £2990 body only

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Stuff says

Amazing images and great fun, but this quirky cam is way too pricey for most

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The first of Leica's M series, the M3, arrived to a sceptical public in 1954 and soon won the photographic world over with its lethal combo of awesome lenses, near-silent operation and bomb-proof build.

If you're not familiar with the concept of a rangefinder camera, it's how things used to be done – and it seems massively over-complicated.

Finding your range
The optical viewfinder doesn't show a view directed from the lens like on an SLR, but an approximate view of what'll be captured. Inside the finder is a secondary image, just a small portion in the centre – as you focus the lens, this smaller image with converge with the main image until the shot's in focus.

As you may have guessed, this means the M8 is manual focus only, but thankfully, unlike the M3, it does have an automatic aperture-priority mode on the shutter-speed dial. Shutter priority isn't an option, as aperture selection is also manual.

In all these aspects, as in the amazing, solid build quality, the M8 is much like the 35mm-film-based M7. Where it differs wildly is that it has a 10MP sensor and a 2.5in LCD.

RAW talent
Image quality is, as you might hope from a camera costing as much as a small island, simply extraordinary. Best results by far come from the RAW capture mode, as the JPG mode is a little washed out and far less punchy – just shoot in RAW and convert on your computer.