Leica's Limited-Edition White M8 Digital Is Beautiful

John Mahoney — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:10:00 EDT

I've really been digging these white cameras lately. Pentax's cookies 'n' cream K2000 and now the decidedly more luxe limited-edition Leica M8. If you have to ask how much it costs, it's not for you.

Details are thin, but the camera will be produced in ultra-low numbers at an undisclosed cost. I guess I'll just get busy with the White Out on my $20 Holga to make myself feel better. [Luxist]

Leica's $11,000 Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 Lens Is a Nightvision Owl Eye For Your Camera

John Mahoney — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Yeah, you read that right: f/ zero point nine five. As in less than f/1, which was where Leica's legendary Noctilux was positioned before and as low as Canon goes with their 50mm f/1.0L glass, making it the world's fastest major consumer lens on the market today (f-numbers are logarithmic, so that's over a full exposure stop lower for over double the light of an f/1.4 lens). The new Noctilux was leaked by a French magazine with details of a Photokina release later this month, and it looks like it'll use Leica's standard M mount, so it will work with your M8 digital or any other M-mount camera (Epson RD-1s owners, all five of you!) to let you take pictures like this:

Yeah, that's candlelight only. Taken with the previous f/1.0 Noctilux, natch, so you could even swap it for an even smaller candle and still pull off the same shot, or try some insane depth-of-field bokeh effects. Awesome stuff, all for €8,000 ($11,260).

And now that you're in a tizzy about super-fast, super-expensive lenses, take a look at the incredible story of the custom Zeiss lens Stanley Kubrick demanded for candle-lit scenes in Barry Lyndon. It opened up to a crazy f/0.7. Well worth the read.

[Leica Rumors via Gadget Lab, Photo: lylevincent]

Gizmodo: rangefinders

Leica's Limited-Edition White M8 Digital Is Beautiful

Leica's $11,000 Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 Lens Is a Nightvision Owl Eye For Your Camera