Leica Leica M8 and M9 - High ISO comparison

Brian

Product of the Fifties
A trip to the skating rink is always a good test for low-light, High-ISO, and Fast lenses. Yesterday, I took the M8 with the Minolta 50/1.4 MC mount converted to Leica mount and the M9 with the 50/1.1 Nokton.

I used M8RAW2DNG with the M8, shooting ISO160 at -3ev (ISO 1250 equivalent) and with the Disco lights on Manual, 4 stops under the correct exposure for ISO2500 equivalent. I used "Levels" and "Curves" in Photoshop to correct the exposure in Post. No Noise Reduction used. I posted the full-res images on Flickr.

The Leica M8, I've never had such clean ISO2500 shots from it before.

skate4_ISO2500 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr.

skate6_iso2500 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

It was Dark. 1/45th sec and F1.4 for most of these.
 
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"Whoops, I made a mistake" and left the M8 at ISO1250 and -3ev, had wanted to test DNG-8 at ISO1250, remembered to change back to RAW mode- but forgot to change ISO back to 160 for a few shots.

SO- The Leica M8 at ISO 10,000. no noise reduction, just playing with levels and curves.

skate8_ISO10000 by fiftyonepointsix, on Flickr

A bit worse than the original GAF ASA 500 Super-8 film? I used that a long time ago.

So what's the verdict?

Leica should have put uncompressed DNG into the M8 a long time ago, and would have spared itself all the criticism of high-ISO performance. I do not see much difference between the M9 and M8 at ISO2500 using M8 Raw.
 
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