powderhound2
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This isn't an official review, just subjective thoughts about my experience, however limited that might be.
I ordered the 128gb silver/gray model in January for €3230 ($3,537.82USD). I also ended up having to pay another $48.67 in import fees after shipment started through DHL. It took around 5 weeks for my Pixii + to arrive from the time I ordered it. I sent them a message 3 1/2 weeks in, asking for an update, and David responded quickly that its fabrication was near complete.
Anyway, shipping wasn't terribly slow, once the camera was on its way. It came while I was on a trip, but I got back last night and opened it up, excited to try it out, and a few things stuck out immediately. It really is a pretty cool looking camera and does feel like a high-quality product in hand, but after handling it for a bit, the body feels slick, and because of the surface, shape and size, my thumb sits on the back, is right where the button and wheel are. I have large hands, so this is just my experience. To me it feels awkward, and not comfortable. I don't enjoy holding the camera. I also live in an area with hot summers, and I can imagine my fingers getting sweaty touching metal, and it potentially slipping from my grasp. I owned a M11, and it felt great in my hand, and even without a prominent grip, didn't feel it was at risk of being dropped. Of course, I was always worried about dropping it just because of what it cost, but that's a different story. I'm not sure the M11 is a fair comparison, but tactile feel really matters to me. The Pixie viewfinder is bright, the frame lines bright, but the clarity of the rangefinder patch doesn't seem as contrasty as I'd like.
Setting the camera up via the tiny camera top screen was ok, with a confirm button and little wheel, but I'd rather do it on a regular screen like almost every other camera.
Putting that aside, importing my first 5 photos, shot with a Voigtlander 35mm APO-Lanthar lens (that was tack sharp on my M11), I found that every single photo, was what I would consider severely front focused. I thought I might have done something wrong, so I took a series of shots of a line of batteries, with the focus on a specific battery in the line, the same one in each shot, from different distances, and each photo was between 7-8cm front focused. I've seen rangefinders off, where the rangefinder images themselves were off, but never where the rangefinder looked lined up and the focused area, was not even close. I then tried three other lenses, 50mm, 28mm, and 90mm, and all where approximately that same distance front focused. I've shot every one of these lenses on digital M, and film M bodies, and never had focus issues. And in fact, have not had a lens on any camera, film or digital, be that far out of focus, let alone a series of lenses.
This morning, I was thinking about things a bit and I thought I'd go outside, and shoot some images on this bright sunny day, and set ISO at 80, center weighted metering, Auto shutter, and lens at F2. The camera for some reason was shooting everything at 1/45th or 1/30th. And because there is no screen, I wasn't seeing the results. And I didn't notice any exposure warnings in the viewfinder. Not having a viewfinder, I thought would make it feel like the film rangefinder experience, but to me It's one thing to turn a screen off, but a vast difference to not have a screen. I have a bunch of film cameras and that's part of the experience, and while I thought it was an interesting idea as I bought the camera, in actual use with a digital camera, it's a game breaker for me.
This brings up another thing. Yes, I can grab my phone and look at at the app, but the images on the app seem to show up as low resolution, and when I hit the share button to import the image to view it in all it's glory, the app says there is no image to import. Not sure why, but that's what I was getting. And the app is as updated as the App Store is showing, and the camera updated to the newest firmware.
The App has been buggy enough in the first 24 hours, that it really feels like it's not worth using. It routinely doesn't respond, or the screen goes blank until you shut it down and restart it. And it has failed to sync settings displayed on the camera itself, showing different ISO/format settings. I didn't see anything about live view on the app, but accidentally bumped this little line near the bottom and a live view window came up, but promptly froze, and I've yet to get it to work again.
With all that in mind, I took the camera in, and imported the images via cable to my Mac. Of course, at such slow shutter speeds all the images were blown out beyond rescue, like really bad jpegs that have been overexposed, like nothing recoverable.
Next, looking out a window in the house, with the same ISO and metering settings, I took photos from F2, stopping down one stop each time to f11, and after importing those images, they got brighter as I stopped down. I have no clue what it was doing now. All these shots were taken on the Auto setting for shutter speed, yet the shutter speed never went faster than 1/45th.
With the camera at my waist, I watched the OLED screen on top to see if the shutter speed was changing beyond 1/45th as I adjusted the aperture on the lens, and now it seemed to, so I focused the lens to infinity and took shots again, from F2-F16 and this time shutter changed. From 1/1000@F2 to 1/20@F16, and the exposure was good for all the frames. The focus only seemed to be spot on at F8, but everything in that frame should have been in focus.
So where does this leave me? The excitement I had, supporting a new camera company, an alternative new rangefinder camera is gone. I'm simply confused how something brand new would come this far out of spec and have so many weird things go on. It's the first digital camera I've taken out of the box and I have not been able to take a test photos that were in focus and exposed correctly. It's just strange. I'm not going to even bother messing with it additionally, I will be sending this back. I've long been a fan of underdog companies, but I've also been burned a number of times, and now after less than 24 hours since opening the box, I feel like it's happened again. I wonder if the point is that I should stop looking at the underdogs, at least until they're no longer underdogs.
Maybe it's good that the focus is so far off, because it has made me be a little more critical about the other things that would potentially bother me. I'm not writing this to trash the company, they seem like they want to make a good product, but it doesn't feel like the QC is there, and beyond that it doesn't feel it is the camera for me for several reasons.
Someone else mentioned something like, "Everyone knows that if there's a problem, they will have to send it back to France." I guess in my naivety I assumed that I wouldn't have to return a $3k camera back to France to make it functional immediately after receiving it. Nothing is perfect, but I don't think that's the expectation of many of us. I'm willing to put up with some quirkiness if the basics are solid. I'd simply like to be able to take a photo that is in focus without having to return it on day one.
So, the Pixii returns page indicates that it's going to be up to me to cover the return costs, and also pay 10% return fee, so I'm going to think of this as some sort of expensive camera rental failure. I'm sure I'll learn before the next one thing like this.
Image #1 - focused on the 2nd AA Battery
Image #2 - A masterpiece of unintentional overexposure
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