[Leica] Another R option (now M9)

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

He has a lot of good points, and some that are irrelevant.

I'm not sure I'd want an M that had all the things he wrote about, 
but I'd sure like some.

A viewfinder with more accurate framelines would be nice, but it's 
not necessary for me. However, having a more accurate focussing 
method, or at least a reasonable aid would be great, especially if it 
didn't go out of whack as easily as the present setup. With film, 
going out of adjustment a bit could be tolerated for a while. With 
digital, it can't. I like looking through a good M finder, but some 
modernization should happen

Speed of operation, especially write times and speedy review are very 
important for me, and that is the one aspect of the M8/9 that really 
grates on me at times.

A better LCD? Sure, why not now that they are available. Long shutter 
speeds? This truly baffles me. My cable release (which I use when I 
use shutter speeds longer than one second, has huge long exposure 
capability. These are things that I just didn't realize were issues.

Cost? I'd always like things to cost less. Doesn't necessarily happen.

The dynamic range of the sensor and the various other issues he 
mentions are a mixed bag. Yes, I would like the camera to go to 100K 
ISO noiselessly, but I'm quite happy (mostly) with the results in the 
range it does have. It hasn't been a huge limitation. DR is fine in 
comparison to the other cameras I have and doesn't appear worse to me 
in practice than that of the Canon 5DII. Artifacts around shots into 
the sun is not something I've noticed, but I have notices that all 
digital cameras have some issues when there is a severely blown light 
source in the pictures. The Canon achieves some of it's noise 
reduction, artifact suppression etc. by having a fairly aggressive AA 
filter and software smudging. It's not a direction I like in general. 
All in all, the M9 output is preferable to me to the Canon 5DII 
output under similar circumstances unless I'm in 6400ISO territory, 
so for the moment I'll take it as it is. Improvement is always wished 
for, but not necessarily in the same direction as digilloyd's 
preferences.

As usual, his comments are reasonable and balanced, even though his 
preferences are really not always mine.

As for trashing/praising the Leica, it's true. It's also true about 
Nikons and Canons or whatever, but since people didn't have to spend 
as much for basic entry, they're maybe not quite as zealous about it.




At 7:36 AM +0530 6/13/11, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote:
>Richard,
>Hats off to you, you are a brave man. Braver still if anyone follows the
>link to Lloyd Chambers' (digilloyd) article. (-:
>Cheers
>Jayanand
>
>On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Richard Man <richard at imagecraft.com> 
>wrote:
>
>>  Doug, this is the LUG, where that's only one true answer (tm).
>>
>>  Of course each one of us has our own OTA. Some people even have 2 or 3 
>> all
>>  by themselves!
>>
>>  And if everyone would just accept mine, then there's no issue.... and 
>> that
>>  would make an awfully quiet list :-)
>>
>>  p.s. did anyone else see this Michael Johnston blog guest-posted by
>>  L.T.Gray
>>  on the perils of trashing the CURRENT Leica products?
>>
>>
>> 
>>http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/06/tsk-tskbad-very-bad.html
>>

-- 

       Henning J. Wulff
  Wulff Photography & Design
mailto:henningw at archiphoto.com
   http://www.archiphoto.com