RustyBug
Offline
Upload & Sell: On
|
 Re: A Leica M camera with an EVF is expected by the end of 2025 | |
johnvanr wrote:
RustyBug wrote:
retrofocus wrote:
Steve Spencer wrote:
retrofocus wrote:
raizans wrote:
Steve Spencer wrote:
IMO, whenever they compete directly with other companies they struggle.
The EVF-M doesn’t compete with other companies, which is why it will sell well. Having an EVF is far less important than the impact of the lens mount. No company makes a camera that natively uses M-mount lenses (all manual) and has a built-in EVF. Other companies make mirrorless cameras with wider and larger AF lenses. The mount is so wide that some lenses have barrels that awkwardly “step-down” at the focus ring just so you can hold them comfortably, including third party manual focus lenses. The EVF-M uniquely offers a coherent, seamless user experience for a lens system that is ergonomically ideal, fully manual, and optically unmatched in both variety and quality. We might have been highlighting the EVF by calling the imaginary camera the EVF-M, but the key feature continues to be the “-M” part of the name.
+1. Exactly. Unfortunately Leica will charge a fortune just for this capability, but this is where they also have their monopoly.
This is not really a monopoly, IMO. Every company except L mount camera producers produce cameras exclusively for their own mount, yet they still compete with other companies. Leica will have to compete with Sony and likely in time Nikon and Canon for a small EVF based camera that can be used for manual focus lenses and it is only in the short term, in my view that the M mount would provide Leica with any advantage. In the long run there will be lots of lenses for every mirrorless mount built for manual focus and the mount will make little difference to what is offered as it already does for Thypoch lenses and for many Voigtlander lenses.
I also don't agree with this view. I waited since 2013 when Sony released their first series of FF MLC cameras to have a non-Leica brand making a FF camera which works perfectly with M lenses as rangefinder M cameras do. Guess what - it never happened. Reason is that other manufacturers focus their optimization on AF-based larger lenses with longer flange distance. That's why other MLCs have better compatibility with SLR and DSLR lenses but less with shorter flange rangefinder lenses. Even Panasonic L-Mount MLCs do not deliver here as well as Leica M cameras do.
Comparing this to well made manual focus lenses for another mount is also not a valid comparison: it is a totally different camera environment. In short: you can't and won't be able to mount M-mount lenses on different branded MLCs with adapter working 100% ideal at all focal lengths. It works with some brands being more feasible here than others mostly due to sensor stack thickness but it will never be as ideal as a digital Leica M camera is. No other manufacturer will optimize a FF MLC for rangefinder M lenses - it happened once with the Zeiss camera which flopped badly due to overpricing and provided performance.
You'd think that after a decade of witnessing all the foibles and myriad of ways that M lenses adapted to non-Leica bodies has revealed issues of performance degradation ... this ^ would NOT even need to be a point of discussion among M lens users.
We've seen hundreds / thousands of examples over the years. Fred's most excellent lens reviews have shown this over and over again ... in different levels of impact ... yet, the engineering is the engineering, the outcomes remain the same, that non-M bodies, not optimized for M lenses won't perform (consistently) as well as on the M for which it was designed (stack thickness, registration distance, etc.).
The Leica SL is probably the closest (stack thickness, microlens design, etc.).
From my own experience, for the kind of stuff I use M lenses for, that problem is overblown.
Sure, different folks can have a different "bar" that they measure by.
Weaker corners / color shifts in wides or fast apertures, etc. If you're shooting stopped down, slow, normal-ish glass ... yup, the issues may not reveal themselves as much. But, even if it isn't an issue for a given person ... the fact remains that we've seen some really crappy differences along the way. Whether or not that use case matters to one person vs. not another person, doesn't change the fact that difference is real. 
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1886307/6/
Scroll down to the corners around post #12.
YMMV, but not everyone is keen on the diff's.
That said, the point wasn't about personal preferences that tolerate diminshed performance ... it was the point that diminished performance is a point that has been throughly verified and really shouldn't even have to be repeated that its existence is valid. Folks can pretend that their low bar suggests that an adapted solution is "as good" as the native solution ... but, that's a fallacy ... well, at least if you're trying to achieve optimized performance vs. mediocrity or
certain use case compromises.
Bottom line ... the best performance you'll get out of an M lens, is on an M body. Pretty simple, and the evidence has shown it extensively. Everything else is some degree of degradation.
Sure, it might meet the needs / goals for some, but the objective evidence says otherwise.
|
