Adam - great set and it really works well in B&W. I didn't know you could get durians that small. All I see here in Canada a monstrously large ones.
As for the P&S nature. I think I know what you mean. However, it could be useful many times. Yesterday I was at a backyard party and it was sometimes difficult to focus the M & 28 Cron for quick casual photos with a beer in the other hand. I can use fingers on my right hand to nudge the focusing tab, but it's not ideal. Though for such an application, would probably be fine with something like the GR.
Nicholas - love the graphical compositions, especially the bike frame!
Adam - great set and it really works well in B&W. I didn't know you could get durians that small. All I see here in Canada a monstrously large ones.
As for the P&S nature. I think I know what you mean. However, it could be useful many times. Yesterday I was at a backyard party and it was sometimes difficult to focus the M & 28 Cron for quick casual photos with a beer in the other hand. I can use fingers on my right hand to nudge the focusing tab, but it's not ideal. Though for such an application, would probably be fine with something like the GR.
Nicholas - love the graphical compositions, especially the bike frame! ...Show more →
Yeah, on one hand it's great (no pun intended), on the other.. I feel prolonged use would make me lazy. So I'll run around with an M tomorrow to make myself feel like I'm working for it.
And yea, durians here come in all shapes and sizes. Depends on the type. Also some pretty strange names.. Red Prawn, Black Pearl, Sultan King (and those are the tame ones).
I checked out the MM 246 and the Leica Q at the store today. The MM 246 is still the camera I would love to own but could never justify, but the Q is simply shocking; it's a camera that, for my needs, is basically perfect. I am stunned that Leica (whose cameras always have some issue or shortcoming that's difficult to overlook) has executed this one so well. I will be saving up for one, and selling my RX1 pronto.
Arka, what about the fact that you can only live-view magnify the center of the image? Given that Leica are the only ones with that limitation I consider it a pretty ridiculous one. Though I guess it doesn't matter to certain genres of photographers.
Lee, this point also baffles me somewhat, considering the camera's overall level of competence.
It could be that at this focal length, AF is fast and certain enough most times to negate the need to manual focus critically off-center. For near distance wide aperture shooting, focus peaking might be sufficient (though I somewhat distrust it with wider lenses). If the Q's AF was mediocre, we'd probably be reading more about people manually focusing it and disliking the center-only magnification. But this is just my hunch, not having tried one yet.
If this carries over to the next M, it will be an extremely contentious point.
I also thought it it was kind of dumb to not include the zoom/scroll option on the M and also Q. However, after using the M for quite a while, I have not really felt like I have missed it or wanted it. I do a fair bit of landscape/tripod shooting and still don't feel I need it. I also imagine that the majority of Q owners will not be landscape shooters using a tripod. BUT - I still have no idea why they don't implement this feature as it is so basic....
Like I said, depends on your type of photography. I use live view zoom on nearly every one of my shots, particularly in product photography I do a lot of, and I'm almost never at the center point. For me, this limitation takes the Q completely out of the running.
What I don't get is why the limitation exists. The theory with the M was that it was CMOSIS' fault, but they've had several years to sort this out and the Q I thought didn't even use a CMOSIS sensor.
Lloyd says the Canon 5DSR is a better monochrom than the Monochrom 246. His only defense for the Monochrom is if you need their lenses. I expect he will say the same about the Sony. We will find out soon enough.
adamdewilde wrote:
In an effort to try and convince myself to buy a M246 I decided to shoot the Q like a monochrom. It backfired because I had so much fun that I probably don't need to buy the Monochrome anymore. (I still might, who knows):
(I'm starting to get worried, this camera is so much fun/easy, it's turning into a point and shoot. Gonna switch back to the M camera before I get to comfy)
The center point limitation is one that is so dumb you wonder how it even makes its way in. I mean why wouldn't they add it? Is this something that would throw things off for Leica purists?
davewolfs wrote:
Lloyd says the Canon 5DSR is a better monochrom than the Monochrom 246. His only defense for the Monochrom is if you need their lenses. I expect he will say the same about the Sony. We will find out soon enough.
Leica's off center magnification issue is imho similar to Sony's thick sensor cover or uncompressed raw issues. Companies can be so stubbornly dumb about crucial issues sometimes. But no one is perfect
I ran into this annoyance recently with the M240 while on a family vacation. I had the camera focused and framed properly, tightened the ball head, and accidentally nudged the focus tab -- forcing me to loosen the head again, refocus, recompose and retighten.
Gary, I agree. I've gotten by so far. That said, some of the lenses like the 50 Lux ASPH can be difficult to focus accurately with a subject placed in the rule of thirds and with the aperture relatively wide open.
I agree that tripod work is where this becomes the most annoying.
adamdewilde wrote:
In an effort to try and convince myself to buy a M246 I decided to shoot the Q like a monochrom. It backfired because I had so much fun that I probably don't need to buy the Monochrome anymore. (I still might, who knows):
(I'm starting to get worried, this camera is so much fun/easy, it's turning into a point and shoot. Gonna switch back to the M camera before I get to comfy)
davewolfs wrote:
Lloyd says the Canon 5DSR is a better monochrom than the Monochrom 246. His only defense for the Monochrom is if you need their lenses. I expect he will say the same about the Sony. We will find out soon enough.
Depends on what you're after. If you're Lloyd and you NEED the highest resolution, best sharpness image, then that'll probably be the case... I can think of reasons to shoot the M (240 or 246) over a 5Dx style camera. A lot of it doesn't boil down to ultimate quantifiable technical results.
Lee Saxon wrote:
Arka, what about the fact that you can only live-view magnify the center of the image? Given that Leica are the only ones with that limitation I consider it a pretty ridiculous one. Though I guess it doesn't matter to certain genres of photographers.
That is an issue that has annoyed me somewhat on the M (particularly for off-center portrait comps or landscape shooting), but I've learned to live with it and no longer pine for it. On the Q, the focus peaking seemed particularly effective even without magnification, and I loved the fact that focus peaking worked while the camera was capturing video (something my RX1 doesn't do, and my Nikon cannot do given it doesn't even have focus peaking). I doubt it's something I would ever miss on a Q.
If it's something they fix on the next M, great. However, that's not a feature that would inspire me to upgrade (instant on and no crashing, on the other hand, might persuade me).
davewolfs wrote:
Lloyd says the Canon 5DSR is a better monochrom than the Monochrom 246. His only defense for the Monochrom is if you need their lenses. I expect he will say the same about the Sony. We will find out soon enough.
Like the 5D is an alternative for the leica.... Why not call a spy pen an better monochrom than both because its a much better stealth option.
He is really only looking in back or white In this context not a good thing.
davewolfs wrote:
Lloyd says the Canon 5DSR is a better monochrom than the Monochrom 246.
Gary Clennan wrote:
Same old rhetoric - this time from Lloyd....
I'm sorry to say, the rhetoric is yours, not Lloyd's. We see this defensiveness any time anyone says anything is better than a Leica product. It's not rhetoric, it's a quantifiable fact, and it has nothing to do with brand. He's saying that 50mp even with a CFA / debayering actually provides more resolution than 24mp without. That's just math. Now, as to his further statement that he prefers the 5Ds because the processing flexibility of doing the color>b&w conversion himself, that IS a subjective statement you're free to disagree with.
rscheffler wrote:
I can think of reasons to shoot the M (240 or 246) over a 5Dx style camera. A lot of it doesn't boil down to ultimate quantifiable technical results.
True, but I don't think that contradicts Lloyd's statements which were specifically about the quantifiable technical results.
So higher resolution is now the key factor enabling us to produce better B&W work?? I was thinking of buying an MM for B&W but now may consider the 5DSr as it has way more MP... However, being a dentist I really don't have the time to use any more cameras than I already own.
Well, I'm not saying that higher resolution is necessarily the key factor in better B&W work and I don't know that Lloyd is either. But higher resolution (due to the absence of the CFA) is the key (if not only) selling point of an M246 (since that's the only difference between it and an M240). So an assessment of the validity of that selling point is certainly relevant.
If only people could stop using sweeping statements on things related to personal choice, the internet would be a much more relaxing place.
Saying one camera is globally "better" than another camera is a ridiculous statement, as it's the users experience and requirements that determine what "better" is. There's a big difference between "The 5DSR has higher resolution than the MM246" and "The 5DSR is better Monochrome than the MM246". One of those statements is correct, and one is inflammatory.
