The easiest body currently available to focus M lenses on is the SL2/SL3 (s)
I couldn’t agree more. I would have long been part of the SL system if they had not built such a large, heavy camera body. It was a deliberate decision, I suppose, to prevent the SL cannibalising too many M sales.
As I said before, in order for digital rangefinder in the evf to work with an overlay and register accurate distance without a physical rangefinder is to have electronic contacts to the lens. It's been done in many new manual focus lenses. Otherwise they use flybywire for af lenses, which I don't think Leica will introduce for the M line
wolfloid wrote:
The easiest body currently available to focus M lenses on is the SL2/SL3 (s)
I couldn’t agree more. I would have long been part of the SL system if they had not built such a large, heavy camera body. It was a deliberate decision, I suppose, to prevent the SL cannibalising too many M sales.
The SL2/SL2-S were easier to manually focus than the SL3/SL3-S. I have no idea why, but in magnified view the EVF of the 2 was much clearer than the 3.
saxguy wrote:
The SL2/SL2-S were easier to manually focus than the SL3/SL3-S. I have no idea why, but in magnified view the EVF of the 2 was much clearer than the 3.
Interesting - something similar I remember was done by Canon over 15 years ago. They purposely made their cameras more and more dedicated to AF and removed helpful features for manual focus to push selling newer AF lenses. Wouldn't be surprised if a similar strategy is used by Leica to push for L-lens sales with AF.
saxguy wrote:
The SL2/SL2-S were easier to manually focus than the SL3/SL3-S. I have no idea why, but in magnified view the EVF of the 2 was much clearer than the 3.
When I first heard about this I thought perhaps something to do with the 60MP increased data stream. But if it's happening with the 24MP SL3-S too, and both use the same EVF as the SL2 series....then I wonder what else might be going on in the SL3 series. Or, some kind of trade-off for some other new tech/processing in the SL3 series? Hopefully Leica can improve with a firmware update at some point for this IMO, important feature.
?
I see no difference on my sl2/3...same focus peaking, same magnification
On my SL3 there is not as much clarity in the EVF as when I would zoom to manual focus on my SL2-S. Many people on the Leica forum have reported the same thing.
Desmolicious wrote:
To sum up, the EVF is going to be an electronic rangefinder patch - where the old optical rangefinder patch would be?
I don't think that is what it will be.
I believe it will be a very high quality EVF with some advanced focus aids. Hopefully providing the best EVF manual focusing experience in the industry.
I am concerned that without IBIS in the camera providing a smooth magnified view will be difficult. Hopefully Leica can develop an electronic solution for this.
Desmolicious wrote:
To sum up, the EVF is going to be an electronic rangefinder patch - where the old optical rangefinder patch would be?
The EVF will replace the rangefinder system.. Thorsten Overgaard already forecasted this in an earlier video of his on YouTube in 2024. He saw that the Visoflex external EVF fits perfectly in size into the space of the rangefinder array where the viewfinder is currently located in M cameras. He predicted that the M11 is kind of a prototype for such EVF-M - now named M11-V.
1bwana1 wrote:
I am concerned that without IBIS in the camera providing a smooth magnified view will be difficult. Hopefully Leica can develop an electronic solution for this.
Doesn't the M11 with the Visoflex already support viewfinder stabilization? I'd hope the in-camera EVF will have it as well.
1bwana1 wrote:
I don't think that is what it will be.
I believe it will be a very high quality EVF with some advanced focus aids. Hopefully providing the best EVF manual focusing experience in the industry.
I am concerned that without IBIS in the camera providing a smooth magnified view will be difficult. Hopefully Leica can develop an electronic solution for this.
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retrofocus wrote:
The EVF will replace the rangefinder system.. Thorsten Overgaard already forecasted this in an earlier video of his on YouTube in 2024. He saw that the Visoflex external EVF fits perfectly in size into the space of the rangefinder array where the viewfinder is currently located in M cameras. He predicted that the M11 is kind of a prototype for such EVF-M - now named M11-V.
So it will be a pure EVF experience, not a hybrid OVF/EVF like a Fuji Xpro3 but like a Fuji XE4?
So similar to an XE4 but full frame and no AF?
I'm hoping that this will be something spectacular otherwise Fuji has already been doing it for years, but at APS-C level and with AF.
Mar 25, 2025 at 01:03 PM
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1bwana1 wrote:
I don't think that is what it will be.
I believe it will be a very high quality EVF with some advanced focus aids. Hopefully providing the best EVF manual focusing experience in the industry.
I am concerned that without IBIS in the camera providing a smooth magnified view will be difficult. Hopefully Leica can develop an electronic solution for this.
Like Fred said, I think the EVF will present a stabilized view like the Visoflex 2, but the big questions are how much resolution will it provide and will there be any focus aids? I am guessing that the resolution will be 3.7 million dots (like the Nikon Zf) which is more than the Visoflex 2 but less than the SL2/3 viewfinder. I expect it to have excellent optics, however, so still a quite decent experience. With regard to focus aids, I expect Leica to come up with something new, but I don't think it will be PDAF based. I expect it to be a variant of Picture in Picture with a small area providing magnification of an important area that can be selected and magnified overlayed over the full shot. I think that is doable and would provide an experience that in some important ways would be the best available. Those are just guesses, however, and I am very likely wrong on both accounts.
I just saw that batteries for the M10 series are still not available. It's been like this for several months now.
No way is Leica getting me as customer when they fail their existing customers like this. There is zero excuse for this seeing they have no problems producing batteries for current production cameras.
Sorry for this to be a rant, but is this their business model now to get people to upgrade? They going to do this to M11 owners once they move to M12 etc?
So it will be a pure EVF experience, not a hybrid OVF/EVF like a Fuji Xpro3 but like a Fuji XE4?
So similar to an XE4 but full frame and no AF?
I'm hoping that this will be something spectacular otherwise Fuji has already been doing it for years, but at APS-C level and with AF.
Pretty much a full frame X-E4. But (hopefully) with much nicer execution in terms of build quality, overall UI and manual focus assist tools.
The MF experience will make or break this camera. If they don’t achieve offering a viable alternative to the optical rangefinder, it will fail.
The feedback that the optical rangefinder provides is:
- in focus Y/N?
- how far out of focus?
- front- or backfocused?
Imo Leicas implementation in the M11-V needs to provide all three as well. The only MF assist tool that does this so far is Canon‘s, though third point debatable.
Steve Spencer wrote:
Like Fred said, I think the EVF will present a stabilized view like the Visoflex 2, but the big questions are how much resolution will it provide and will there be any focus aids? I am guessing that the resolution will be 3.7 million dots (like the Nikon Zf) which is more than the Visoflex 2 but less than the SL2/3 viewfinder. I expect it to have excellent optics, however, so still a quite decent experience. With regard to focus aids, I expect Leica to come up with something new, but I don't think it will be PDAF based. I expect it to be a variant of Picture in Picture with a small area providing magnification of an important area that can be selected and magnified overlayed over the full shot. I think that is doable and would provide an experience that in some important ways would be the best available. Those are just guesses, however, and I am very likely wrong on both accounts....Show more →
Stabilized view, yes but no IBIS in the M11-V. I agree with your estimate regarding resolution - they likely keep the SL2/3 viewfinder as "best" to be competitive with the SL series. I suspect Leica will implement a few things which won't make SL users consider the M11-V to avoid that more people desert the SL system Leica so heavily vested into. No idea which focus aid(s) will be used.
retrofocus wrote:
Stabilized view, yes but no IBIS in the M11-V. I agree with your estimate regarding resolution - they likely keep the SL2/3 viewfinder as "best" to be competitive with the SL series. I suspect Leica will implement a few things which won't make SL users consider the M11-V to avoid that more people desert the SL system Leica so heavily vested into. No idea which focus aid(s) will be used.
I don't see people deserting the SL system based on the M11V having a better EVF simply because one is AF the other not. What would canibalize SL sales would be creating a full frame CL not much bigger than the existing one that can use existing TL lenses and have a EVF as good as the EVF of the SL system. And put me first in line to buy that CL.
