The Leica M8 was clearly a highlight. This legend film camera producer made its digital debut. The design goal by Leica was to keep the look and feel as close to the Leica M7 film camera as possible. It is hard to resist the feel and aesthetics of this camera. Many aspects of this camera are different than all the other digital cameras (mainly DSLRs). The exception is the Epson R1 rangefinder camera.

M8 is a rangefinder camera without auto focus

The Leica M8, the first digital camera in the Leica M series of rangefinder cameras, was introduced by Leica Camera AG on 14 September 2006.[1] It uses a Kodak KAF-10500 CCD sensor. The sensor has 10.3 million 6.8 μm pixels and is 18×27 mm inducing a 1.33 crop factor, with a ISO 160–2500 sensitivity range. An electronically controlled metal focal plane shutter replaces the cloth shutter of all previous Leica rangefinder cameras, permitting 1/8000s exposures and 1/250s X-sync. The viewfinder magnification is x0.68 making for an effective rangefinder base of 47.1 mm. The combined viewfinder has frameline pairings of 24 mm/35 mm, 28 mm/90 mm, 50 mm/75 mm (actual focal lengths) or 32 mm/48 mm, 36 mm/120 mm, 67 mm/100 mm (full frame 35mm fields of view equivalents).