p.13 #1 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
sebboh wrote:
drop all the design elements that served a purpose with film but are now purely vestigial. make the battery and memory card easily accessible. take advantage of the lack of any need to hold rolls of film to change the dimensions a bit to minimize volume and fit a hand better without the need for a fake film advance lever. make all the bits that need to be electronic be modern and high end electronics. give it a higher max shutter speed, IBIS, and the ability to shoot telephoto and macro.
^^ Precisely, you get it. The camera needs to be designed as a digital camera from the ground up and not just be a film camera with bits added and removed to make it digital. They should not have cloned the M design, but created a new one using the principles of design that was used to create the original M line.
I urge anyone that has an M3, M6, or MP to take a really close look at it. It's a design wonder. There isn't one superfluous bit, everything has a function and is brilliantly designed. It's down to the smallest detail. They've completely missed that on the M9 and just cloned earlier M:s without thinking what they were doing. Just recklessly removing the film advance lever which served a very important ergonomic function without replacing it with something that would serve a similar function (while being a functional element of the camera) is just one example.
Here is another very simple example of their fundamentally incorrect approach:
You see that recess on the film M? It's there because it serves a function - to protect the rewind switch. They've removed the switch on the M9, but the recess is still there without any function whatsoever. What made the M system so good and why it survived for over 50 years is because it was a carefully thought out design with all parts being functional and necessary. Instead of following the "form follows function" principle when building a digital camera, Leica just cloned the film camera, violating the fundamental design principles that made that design great.
I don't have time to do it right now, but one of these days I'll make a separate thread about it, go through a couple of cameras both old and modern and focus on the good and bad design.
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I guess I'm a bit hard on the NEX - it's not much worse than many of the other cameras out there. I am however frustrated that they started off well making a new digital only design that did not try to imitate DSLRs that imitate SLRs, but they blew it and botched the job.
p.13 #2 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
I actually like the formfactor of the nex. It is small, it is large where it have to be (grip) it is small where it can and the wheels/controls are ok. When the nex-7 hits, I suspect that most will be happy about it's ergonomics.
p.13 #4 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
denoir wrote:
I guess I'm a bit hard on the NEX - it's not much worse than many of the other cameras out there. I am however frustrated that they started off well making a new digital only design that did not try to imitate DSLRs that imitate SLRs, but they blew it and botched the job.
glad to hear i'm not alone in my reasons for disappointment in the m9.
regarding the NEX, it really is an ergonomic disaster for two reasons:
1) the oft cited poor menus - they really are bad, but thanks to increasing customization options you don't have to use them much.
2) (this is the big one for me) the best way to shoot the camera is from the waist yet they designed controls for holding the camera to your eye. the grip, dial, and button layout would work decently if you held the camera to your face to use a viewfinder, but it is very awkward at waist level with screen tilted up. an easy solution to this (which sony has implimented in previous cameras i believe) would be to allow the grip to swivel as well as the screen. there are probably better ways to solve this that don't add more weak points to a small lightweight camera, but that is an incredibly obvious one.
3) no way to tilt the screen for ease of use in portrait orientation.
p.13 #5 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
sebboh wrote:
[3) no way to tilt the screen for ease of use in portrait orientation.
For me this is the biggest flaw. Otoh, with a EVF, this should not be so bad, even if it is a flaw in design in the first place ( reminds me of the Mamiya RB I had, nice to shoot in every position, you would still be able to shoot from waist level ).
p.13 #6 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
There are a number of functionality flaws, most of which stem IMHO from the fact that the original NEX 3/5 were designed to test the market for a "large sensor/small camera", and that approach "on the cheap", which also needed to be quick to market, lead to compromises.
A year later, the C3/5N/7 reflects a greater financial commitment, but remaining compatible with the previous NEX models, as well as designing for a commercial life of a year is not conducive to really excellent industrial design.
For reference, it is well known that Apple, a firm not exactly indifferent to or incompetent in good design, are going to come out with a new TV, and that Jobs signed off on the interface shortly before his passing. By the time it will hit the market, it will have been a design effort of quite a few years, not months...
p.13 #9 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
douglasf13 wrote:
As an owner of two Hasselblad 500s and two NEX cameras, and a former owner of a Leaf digital back and A900, I'm pretty familiar with the size and weight differences.
Note that the Pentax, Hasselblad H et al are signicantly heavier than a Hasselblad 500 with a back, and the lenses are generally bigger.
p.13 #11 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
Went out a couple of days ago, had my 5D with 50mm in my coat pocket (it's huge) but it was supremely uncomfortable, very heavy, unweildy, couldn't sit down properly on the bus or tram. It was raining heavily and I hadn't want it on my shoulder. I started seriously thinking about whether a NEX might not make so much more sense.
I went to Imaging Resource and downloaded their sample RAW files and spent a while playing with them processing to the best of my ability then running them through the stages I'd usually do to an image that I would use as fine art. Comparing to the FF cameras, not with the IR files from those cameras, the light is never the same between cameras so it's hard to say, but based on some 400,000 frames from my two 5D's over the past 6 years and a year with the 1Ds3.
Tonality, I'm a tonality snob in every way. I tried, tried so hard to be pursuaded that the crop sensor can match the tonality of the bigger sensors due to the DR and the far more modern build. I can get almost there with processing but it's so much more work than I'd need with a 5D or 1Ds3 file.
Yes it's smaller, yes it's an incredible chip, no it's not for me unfortunately, however good the camera is, the chip isn't for me and my tonality snobbishness.
p.13 #13 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
ulrikft2 wrote:
I like the x100 design. I also like the "retro" shutter speed dial.
So what do I really want?
I want a zeiss ikon, just with a digital sensor, just a bump where the film rewind is for thumb-rest, evf/ovf-hybrid. I want it to be utterly solid and heavy for it's size. I want it to be moisture resistant. I want it to be fullframe.. and I wan tit to accept m-mount lenses.
Yes Ulrikft2 - that's exactly what I want also - I hope it will arrive in our lifetime!
p.13 #14 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
I completely agree with Denoir's design musings on Nex, Leica and DSLRs. They are all failures in a number of respects.
The Leica could be improved in the way carstenw suggests, and some of the more practical suggestions from Sebboh. It also needs reliability to reflect its premium price.
DSLRs have been screaming for a substantial size reduction since they were introduced and moved away from the size/form of the Pentax LX/Nikon FM3a/OM4ti. Something like one of those moderately sized cameras, more directed to a purer digital design, but maintaining the direct controls, with the CV 40/2 or Pentax Ltd 43/1.9, would be my ideal.
The Nex 7 looks promising, albeit with the APS compromise, but so far the comparatively monstrous lenses do not. They need a pancake 35/40/45 equivalent like the Panasonic 20/2 for M43.
p.13 #15 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
So what do I really want? I want a zeiss ikon, just with a digital sensor, just a bump where the film rewind is for thumb-rest, evf/ovf-hybrid. I want it to be utterly solid and heavy for it's size. I want it to be moisture resistant. I want it to be fullframe.. and I wan tit to accept m-mount lenses.
p.13 #16 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
This discussion won't be finished until they invent a full frame, small form factor (somehow including a big LCD and full viewfinder, and 8 different customizable wheels/buttons) and a full line of pancake lenses that perform to Zeiss/Leica standards. Make it as ergonomic as a full frame body, but 1/3 the size. Oh, and price the kit under $1,000.
p.13 #18 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
This discussion won't be finished until they invent a full frame, small form factor (somehow including a big LCD and full viewfinder, and 8 different customizable wheels/buttons) and a full line of pancake lenses that perform to Zeiss/Leica standards. Make it as ergonomic as a full frame body, but 1/3 the size. Oh, and price the kit under $1,000.
I can see exactly why you might say this. But, in reality what we have here are a group of people sensitive to design and ergonomics wondering why designs aren't as thought through for photographers as designs were maybe 30/40/50 years ago. And I don't think this is nostalgia for some mythical earlier design age; I think designs were sometimes simply better thought through and not so subject to such short product cycles and false marketing/gadget mentality.
The Leica M9 is perhaps an exception to the gadget mentality, but not to the hurried production schedules or the constraints of the film design. Denoir demonstrates two examples perfectly above - the residual ridge, with no real function, and the thoughtless removal of the wind on lever with nothing to replace its very real ergonomic function.
For the Leica, one could also add, as further design failings, the commitment to the bottom plate and the restriction of the size of the LCD to match the constraints of the rear section of the top cover. Someone at Leica needs to start thinking outside the box - only then will we get good digital industrial design.
p.13 #19 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
I disagree. What we have here are very demanding consumers who have very passionate opinions about the most personal electronic device known to man. Which means when 10% percent of the people love something, 90% will be happy to point out that it's shit. Look above - somebody is asking for a "heavy for it's size" body? How can a company justify a heavy "compact" to go along with its' DLSR line? They cannot win.
Even without considering personal preference, maybe the M3 seems more well thought out, or maybe it's just not as hard to design a camera with so few features compared to modern equipment.
p.13 #20 · Giving up 5D II for NEX? My experience in Japan
Beni wrote:
Went out a couple of days ago, had my 5D with 50mm in my coat pocket (it's huge) but it was supremely uncomfortable, very heavy, unweildy, couldn't sit down properly on the bus or tram. It was raining heavily and I hadn't want it on my shoulder. I started seriously thinking about whether a NEX might not make so much more sense.
Tonality, I'm a tonality snob in every way. I tried, tried so hard to be pursuaded that the crop sensor can match the tonality of the bigger sensors due to the DR and the far more modern build. I can get almost there with processing but it's so much more work than I'd need with a 5D or 1Ds3 file.
Yes it's smaller, yes it's an incredible chip, no it's not for me unfortunately, however good the camera is, the chip isn't for me and my tonality snobbishness....Show more →
OK lets see it Quite a few in here have both FF and Nex. Lets see the tonality deficit!
PP Nice to see samples both with auto WB and and after PP. Be nice to have consise details on PP.
We can all visualize the DOF FOV. Now lets see the tones.. Why would a FF have an inherent tonal advantage? Or is this just a sony thing?
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