Too bad that the screen of such an expensive camera leaves to be desired.
In defense to Leica, I rather have a poor screen to review my photo's after the shot if that means that I have a decent viewfinder to focus before the shot. One thing I regret of my canon 500d.
Not that I will spend so much on a camera for my hobby though
ulrikft wrote:
I have decided that when M9s go down to or close to $4000 used, I'll order one. I'll keep some of my nikon gear (d700 + 70-200) for sports until I'm sure I love the M9, then sell that too :P
Wow! Cool Converting to a complete Leica Man I might do something similar (getting rid of all my Canon L gear) despite being less than impressed with these digiMs...
ovredal73 wrote:
Wow! Cool Converting to a complete Leica Man I might do something similar (getting rid of all my Canon L gear) despite being less than impressed with these digiMs...
You should let me know if you are in town any of the next days, I can drop by with a few prints that show why I'm convinced.. it will be quite some time before an used M9 is down to $4000 though..
ulrikft wrote:
Here is a M9-shot pushed to iso5000, no NR, 100% crop. Fair bit of shadow noise, perfectly cleanable! If someone with good noise-removing skills want to give it a go, please do! I printed the samples over here in A3+ last night, if anyone lives in Oslo or nearby, I would love to show it to you if you want.
Looks very usable, especially remembering this is a crop from an 18 Mpixel file. Great news.
I beg to differ with those saying that f1.1 compensates for the relatively limited isos of the M9 compared to other current full-frame cameras. Wide aperture shooting is a dark art, and failure rates are high with any focussing system. Focus bracketing really helps when shooting at f1.2 but if you are shooting people and don't have the frame rate to focus bracket quickly, that makes it trickier. Great high iso performance improves all of your lenses by allowing you to shoot them stopped down a little more, so it can save you a lot of money by helping you to make the most of modestly priced lenses. A picture often needs more depth of field, not less. On the whole, shooting at f2 is simply better and easier than shooting at f1.2, so it isn't correct to conceive of very bright lenses as a compensation for high iso - they aren't. Bright lenses are also large and heavy, and they often block the viewfinder. Give me half a stop of extra camera iso over a stop of glass any day. Not trying to spoil the party, just staying sane as M9/Noctilux excitement reaches fever pitch...
ulrikft wrote:
You should let me know if you are in town any of the next days, I can drop by with a few prints that show why I'm convinced.. it will be quite some time before an used M9 is down to $4000 though..
In Volda starting my shoot tomorrow - will be gone for 6 weeks. But when I get back...
fourfa wrote:
handled an M9 in the store this weekend. In most respects, it struck me as just the same old M-mount rangefinder body as any Leica (I shoot an Ikon personally). The only thing that really hit me (without being able to use my card) was the rotten LCD screen. Small, poor color, dim, visibly blocky, unsharp, and artifacted on full-size image review. Zooming in to check focus was even worse - literally five seconds for the camera to render the image as more than gigantic blocks. It had a junky Class-6 SD card in the camera, is that delay typical with fast cards as well? Shooting currently with a 5DII, I was a little shocked at how backward the M9 screen was. Could probably get used to it, but man... I love the 5DII screen and would hate to give that up. Again other than that, pretty much same old same old so you know what you're getting.
edit - the other bug that I noticed is that image review always defaults to full-size playback. There is no way to default to the RGB histogram display on initial playback, which would be the best use for such a poor screen....Show more →
Hey, if Leica made it perfect, there would be no reason for people to upgrade in a few years and thus cheaper used M9's might not be an option. No way could I pay 7K for an M9 given its limited uses for my purposes (I need a close to 100% accurate finder for half of what I do) but I might pay 3-4K for a used one in a few years when the updated M10 comes out with a much better LCD screen and weather sealing! Heck, if Leica adds liveview (which would get around the lack of a 100% accurate finder) I might even go for a new M10. IQ seems to be there already.
Class 6 is a mere 6MB/s, the fastest SD cards out there are about 5 times as fast. The problem is that because Class 6 was the fastest rating available until very recently, there was wide variation in speed between the fastest and slowest cards with the same rating.
A slow class 6 card will take 3 seconds to save the average compressed DNG and 6 seconds for an uncompressed DNG from the M9 (18MB and 36MB respectively according to DPreview).
mawz wrote:
Class 6 is a mere 6MB/s, the fastest SD cards out there are about 5 times as fast. The problem is that because Class 6 was the fastest rating available until very recently, there was wide variation in speed between the fastest and slowest cards with the same rating.
A slow class 6 card will take 3 seconds to save the average compressed DNG and 6 seconds for an uncompressed DNG from the M9 (18MB and 36MB respectively according to DPreview).
Exactly. Reading through the article claims that class-6 can go up to 45MB/sec or 300X. It is misleading somewhat as it includes so much. The other misleading thing is that companies state "up to 300x" or maximum and minimum read speeds when write speeds are what really matter in the camera. Thus, a lot of those seemingly super fast SD cards are in reality not so fast. That could also be why class-6 seems like the rating is all over the place due to different companies using different rating criteria for marketing purposes. There really should be a better rating system, one that actually means something.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Exactly. Reading through the article claims that class-6 can go up to 45MB/sec or 300X. It is misleading somewhat as it includes so much. The other misleading thing is that companies state "up to 300x" or maximum and minimum read speeds when write speeds are what really matter in the camera. Thus, a lot of those seemingly super fast SD cards are in reality not so fast. That could also be why class-6 seems like the rating is all over the place due to different companies using different rating criteria for marketing purposes. There really should be a better rating system, one that actually means something. ...Show more →
The real problem is that when they setup the rating system, it was already obsolete. Class 6 simply denotes a minimum of 6MB/s read speed which was already on the low side when SDHC was launched.
ovredal73 wrote:
Haha, I dont think its that expensive to fly to Norway, you are most welcome, but I dont know we would have so much to teach you
Hehe indeed, I don't really know if we are of much use to you in that department But we do have good coffee and nice beer
I've finally decided to start saving, and sell everything I own when it's about time. I don't care about the price anymore. I hate the bulk of my D700 and only use MF anyway. I love fast wideangles, light gear and minimalism. What could go wrong?
Converting to a complete Leica Man 
