[Leica] Was shutter lag - now processing time

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

Geoff, it may use 13 crickets on treadmills, but it's too slow. It's 
slower than the M8, and the M8 is too sluggish and was too sluggish 
when it was introduced. Leica faces special problems with the M8/9 
sensor; that's a given but processing after image acquisition has 
moved on since 2004, and that's about the level the digital M's work 
at.

There are various points in the M8/9 performance where you can tell 
this. Turn on/ready to shoot should be essentially instantaneous. It 
is not. Writing to cards should allow for essentially continuous 
shooting, considering that the rate is only about 2 frames per 
second. It bogs down completely after 8 or 10 shots. Image review 
should be near instantaneous, and magnification should also be lag 
free. The metering etc. electronics should not introduce lag time 
into a camera system that is a lot less complex than most SLR's, but 
it clearly does. The general state of electronics in 2010, and 2009, 
and all the way back to 2006 is that these processes get down without 
noticing any delay. The problem might well be with Jenoptik, but it's 
Leica we and all other customers have to deal with and their final 
product we are using. So we can correctly blame Leica.

This operational sluggishness is one of the main reasons I'm not 
terribly interested in upgrading my M8 to an M9. I don't see the 
point of going to a camera that is even less responsive than the 
sometimes inadequate M8.

In earlier years the Leica film M was more responsive and better for 
low light shooting than any SLR. Now the M9 falls well behind the D3s 
in responsiveness and it certainly trails significantly in low light 
performance. That leaves its advantage in size and weight and 
rangefinder focussing (sometimes an advantage, sometimes not). On 
balance it's not hard to see why Leica has trouble convincing people 
to buy its cameras in large volumes. The present demand for M9's 
doesn't change that as 'large volume' doesn't apply.

The M9 has an advantage in image quality in my estimation especially 
with the fantastic lenses, but if you are interested in getting a 
useable image quickly under difficult conditions, better use a Nikon 
or Canon.

I happen to think the image quality of the M8 is sufficient for a lot 
of things, if not all but so is that of the Nikon D3s or even more so 
the Canon 5DII.

I believe that the main thing that Leica has to do for the M10 or 9.2 
or whatever is to at least increase the processing power and make the 
camera a lot more transparent by not having the photographer waiting 
for the darn thing to finish thinking about something. I want the 
camera waiting for me, not the other way around.




At 11:00 AM +1000 1/30/10, Geoff Hopkinson wrote:
>Howard the M9 uses two of the M8 processors but they are dealing with much
>more data as you noted. Stefan Daniel said that he is not yet happy with the
>processing time and has told his engineers to try to reduce this time.
>He also said that the decision to use the same processor rather than a
>derivative of the new Maestro was in order to reduce risk and the time frame
>in design development (which happened concurrently with the S2) The same
>development partners were used, being Jenoptik in this instance.
>
>Cheers
>Geoff
>http://www.pbase.com/hoppyman
>
>
>On 30 January 2010 09:36, H&ECummer <cummer at netvigator.com> wrote:
>
>>  Hi Luggers,
>>  I have been following the discussion about M8/9 shutter lag with 
>> interest.
>>  My M8 seems plenty fast to me - much like my M4 - the last film M that I
>>  possess.
>>  BUT, an area where the digital M's seem slow is in image processing.
>>  Henning alluded to this in his post.
>>  If you take three or four pictures in quick succession - (like in a
>>  panorama - or tracking motor
>>  bikes - see my Bali pictures) the processor in my M8 grinds away for
>>  several seconds processing
>>  the shots - before you can take any more. This doesn't really cramp my
>>  shooting style because I don't
>>  usually shoot machine gun style with the M8 - but it is annoying when
>>  compared with the Nikon D700
>>  where the processor is big enough to continuously shoot about 40 frames 
>> and
>>  I have never
>>  been able to choke the camera. When I borrowed the M9 for a day in 
>> Seattle
>>  at the LHSA meeting
>>  I found its processing to be even slower than the processing on my M8 - 
>> and
>>  it annoyed me.
>>  Why would Leica use the same processor in a camera with 80% more pixels?
>>  Cheers
>>  Howard
>>  (who likes his M8 despite its foibles and LOVES his D700)
>>
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  Leica Users Group.
>>  See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Leica Users Group.
>See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information

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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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